Happy Father's Day 9
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: NYC
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Happy Father's Day 9
1:11PM on Father's Day; my 11.5 month old son and my wife are asleep. Have the grill heating for smoked chicken. Trying to wrap my mind around the fact that it has only been 9 days since I last drank myself into total oblivion. It feels like a lifetime ago.
Father's Day is a strange holiday. My father was a violent, abusive guy at home, while maintaining a public image (as a public school superintendent) of polished, controlled perfection. I haven't had any contact with him in about 3 years, and it should have been longer than that. I continued to seek a relationship with him, despite his having no interest in having one with me, for years. Very difficult to reconcile, once and for all, that your father is never going to love you and you will never make him proud.
This is my first Father's Day as a father. Remembering how omnipotent, how godlike my own father seemed to me is so incredibly humbling when I see my little son look at me. I remind myself today, and every day, that the things I say to him will matter a little. And that the things I do, the example I set through my actions, will determine a large part of how he lives his life and decides what is important in life.
But all of this, all the psychology I care to muster or ruminate upon, boils down to a single question: am I drinking? It's like one of those massive decision trees with hundreds of branches based on "If 'x' is true, then answer the following question, if it is true, answer the following questions...' etc.
For me, the tree has two sides. One is brutally short. The first questions is always and always will be "are you drinking?" If the answers is 'yes,' the tree dead ends immediately. There are no hopes, decisions or potentialities. Simply, the inevitability of ending up dead, jailed or insane and, by my own choice and hand, making my infant son's life immeasurably more painful and difficult.
On the other hand, if the answer is "No, I'm not drinking," the tree unfolds in infinite ways, all of life and its future possibilities opening up in front of me. Anything is possible. I can choose so many different directions, make so many different decisions that will enrich me and those I love. I get to be who I actually am, get to be the father my son (and every son) deserves, get to actually live my life.
I can choose alcohol. Or I can choose everything else in life, including my family, my sanity, my future and my self respect. In essence, I can choose guaranteed nothingness, surefire pain and suffering for myself and all my loved ones, or I can choose anything else in the world.
It is a measure of how deeply unkind to myself I learned to be, and how relentlessly I perpetuated this learned behavior long after I had the power to end it, that this has remained a decision at all.
This is Day 9 for me, and the sober year I put together about 3 years ago serves as a tangible signpost that I can, indeed, do this. And I will. I will never drink again. I truly believe that.
Happy Father's Day, one and all. Put sobriety first, and watch in amazement as so much of the rest of your life, body, brain and spirit heal of their own accord.
Father's Day is a strange holiday. My father was a violent, abusive guy at home, while maintaining a public image (as a public school superintendent) of polished, controlled perfection. I haven't had any contact with him in about 3 years, and it should have been longer than that. I continued to seek a relationship with him, despite his having no interest in having one with me, for years. Very difficult to reconcile, once and for all, that your father is never going to love you and you will never make him proud.
This is my first Father's Day as a father. Remembering how omnipotent, how godlike my own father seemed to me is so incredibly humbling when I see my little son look at me. I remind myself today, and every day, that the things I say to him will matter a little. And that the things I do, the example I set through my actions, will determine a large part of how he lives his life and decides what is important in life.
But all of this, all the psychology I care to muster or ruminate upon, boils down to a single question: am I drinking? It's like one of those massive decision trees with hundreds of branches based on "If 'x' is true, then answer the following question, if it is true, answer the following questions...' etc.
For me, the tree has two sides. One is brutally short. The first questions is always and always will be "are you drinking?" If the answers is 'yes,' the tree dead ends immediately. There are no hopes, decisions or potentialities. Simply, the inevitability of ending up dead, jailed or insane and, by my own choice and hand, making my infant son's life immeasurably more painful and difficult.
On the other hand, if the answer is "No, I'm not drinking," the tree unfolds in infinite ways, all of life and its future possibilities opening up in front of me. Anything is possible. I can choose so many different directions, make so many different decisions that will enrich me and those I love. I get to be who I actually am, get to be the father my son (and every son) deserves, get to actually live my life.
I can choose alcohol. Or I can choose everything else in life, including my family, my sanity, my future and my self respect. In essence, I can choose guaranteed nothingness, surefire pain and suffering for myself and all my loved ones, or I can choose anything else in the world.
It is a measure of how deeply unkind to myself I learned to be, and how relentlessly I perpetuated this learned behavior long after I had the power to end it, that this has remained a decision at all.
This is Day 9 for me, and the sober year I put together about 3 years ago serves as a tangible signpost that I can, indeed, do this. And I will. I will never drink again. I truly believe that.
Happy Father's Day, one and all. Put sobriety first, and watch in amazement as so much of the rest of your life, body, brain and spirit heal of their own accord.
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