Living in Chaos

First, apologies for being awol.  Between finishing up with the first half of school and dealing with some health issues, I've done very little beyond the absolute necessities.  Thankfully, all is well health-wise and we started our two week winter break yesterday.

A few days ago, I picked up David Gregory's book How's Your Faith and found a common thread - being raised in a household with an alcoholic parent.  Of course, that's where the commonalities end, as he was a child of privilege, and I was definitely not.

What was intriguing to me was how dealing with an alcoholic parent impacts, not just your childhood, but every aspect of your life.  Reading his story illustrated this wasn't an isolated occurrence for me, but others dealt/are dealing with this, too.

At 59 years old, some memories of my childhood stand out crystal clear.

Like -

Mom hiding money and half-filled liquor bottles around the house, trying to convince my father he had drank it all, and there was no money left for any more.  Actually I think this strategy backfired more often than not, as he would just go back to the liquor store and buy more on credit.  When he got paid, his liquor bill was the first bill paid, with Mom having to make do with what was left.

Like -

The vivid stench of rancid liquor that seeped from every pore of his body.  That was coupled with having the job of helping Mom to clean the vomit that he regularly upchucked while she wrangled him to go to bed to sleep it off.

Like -

During my middle and high school days when he went five years without a drink, and then when he arrived home late stumbling in from the detached garage, I knew in an instant that our reprieve from his drunken days of chaos was over.

Like -

When I was home for a break from college, and needed a ride to the bus station to get back to school, he was so drunk, my mother refused to ride the twenty miles to the bus station to see me off because it would have meant riding back with Daddy, who was flat out pissy drunk.  You see, she never learned to drive.  I drove the car to the station, but he would have to have driven it back home.  She knew she would be helpless and completely at his mercy on that drive home.  So she didn't go.  Of course, I didn't blame her.  Once Daddy and I arrived at the station, I went inside to wait on the bus.  Somehow he managed to stagger into the building, and when he did his pants fell to his ankles.  The embarrassment.  The shame.  The indignity . . . was palpable.  How he made it home alive and without killing someone else on the road was purely by the mercy of God.

These experiences are but a few that have shaped my life and my views of people who drink.  Of course, most folks don't allow themselves to fall into the "pissy drunk" category, but the assumption (wrong though it may be), is that's where they're headed until proven otherwise.

That's why it was so incredibly painful when I discovered that Ben and Frankie drank. Not because I thought they'd end up like my Dad, but because the possibility was too real in my eyes.  This is a topic I've covered many times with them, and it's not my intention to rehash old wounds, but simply to illustrate how all of our experiences - good or bad - go into shaping the people we become.

I share this not to make you feel bad if you're a drinker.  But hopefully, it's just a reminder that the things that happen when you're under the influence can/do have lasting effects.