Mackenzie Mays’ previous work for The Toast can be found here.
In my panty drawer you will find my father’s ID, his social security card, and a photograph of a cat I’ve never met. The cat is fat, with Goosebumps-green eyes, and sprawled out like a starfish. Stuck to a screen door, only her own claws keep her from falling to the concrete below. The back of the photo reads, “This is Gracie. She is meaner than hell, but I like her. Sorry about the toothpaste – it’s how we hang photos up in here.”
My dad is in jail.
But that’s not usually how I start, when asked about him. I say things like, “He lives in Ohio.” “He’s an engineer.” “Super smart.” “Great taste in music.”
All of those things are true. But there are other truths that are harder to say.
I don’t say that the strange collection of items in my drawer are likely his only possessions. Or that he didn’t have an address of his own to send them to when he was arrested, so he sent them to me for safekeeping. I don’t talk about how I used to practice walking straight lines when I was little, in case the cops ever made me. I don’t talk about how I could never get my fingers to dial 911 even when my mom begged me to, or how I learned how to play catch not with a ball, but with my father’s car keys – him stumbling back and forth between my mother and me, trying to snatch them.
Why exactly he’s in jail is not important, especially since he says he did not do it and I believe him. The real reason – the simplest answer – is that he’s in jail because he’s an alcoholic.
The term “alcoholic” gets thrown around a lot, like when your friends self-diagnose themselves because they drank wine three days in a row. But when people say the word around me, I get a very familiar pit in my stomach – the panicky kind that used to kick in when I’d try to spend the night at a friend’s house, but always asked to go home before sunrise.
I don’t like to talk about my dad for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I don’t want people to think of him as an alcoholic and nothing else. In situations like these, there is Jekyll and there is Hyde, and people tend to say goodbye to both because of the one. I can tell you that he was a successful businessman, that he married his high school sweetheart and put everything on my and my brothers’ Christmas lists under the tree, but then you’d notice that I talk about him using the past tense. And then I’d have to explain that he’s not dead.
For people with a parent who’s an addict, you hit a certain age and everything changes colors. You’re 24, and all of a sudden you’re watching the movie of your own life play out and the character you’re wishing would do something – the one you wish would spare some kindness – is yourself. Self- pity turns to apathy turns to anger turns to shame turns to guilt; you will cycle through these emotions more times than you can count.
Anger is always the best – the comfiest hole to crawl into. The guilt is always the worst. You see him for the first time in years and he’s limping and says it’s from a frostbite incident and that turns everything you thought you knew about his situation on its head. But then you think about the time you watched him twist a wet towel up and slap your mother across the face with it, and your hole gets cozy again.
With age comes wisdom, and because I am one of the lucky ones – because my mother found a way out and took me with her, because I’ve always had troops of people there to explain that “your dad has a disease” and “he’s a great man, he’s just sick” – the story of my father has changed the way I see the world and everyone in it. I know that things are not what they seem and that people often don’t have a story – they have several.
My dad hasn’t been an active, healthy father in more than a decade. But that doesn’t change the fact that he used to volunteer at our library, or that he let me sing the “bitch” part of that Hall and Oates song.
Even though he has to check “yes” on the part of the job application that asks if you’re a felon, even though I watched him wrap his hands around the neck of the person I love most in the world and squeeze, there is kindness, still. I won’t ever forget the ways that he hurt my mother, but I can live most days without replaying one of those scenes. That gift — that ability to let it go and carry on — comes only through the grace of my mother, whose strength has allowed her a new life and me the same.
She has allowed me to stop hurting for her but she can’t make me stop hurting for him.
Even though the short phone calls from a county jail 2,400 miles away are the first sober conversations I’ve had with my dad since I was 12, these things remain true:
My dad woke me up in the middle of the night so that I could see Hale-Bopp soar across the sky. He let me stand on the roof of his car because I thought that I could see it better that way.
Once, the neighbor kids tattled on me for being a brat and he made a big show of sending me to my room in front of them. In that room, he asked me not to tell anyone about my punishment, and proceeded to play “Don’t Worry Be Happy” on repeat.
He cried during A Walk To Remember, and I keep his love letters to my mother from when they were young in the same place I keep his letters to me. My letters have a more complicated return address, with a cell number and numeric ID, like he’s a dog that has been micro-chipped in case he gets lost. My letters are a lot more complicated in general.
And in these letters, I am reminded that among his many titles, he is still a dad.
“Don’t wash the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher like your mom did. At least wait and see if you’ve got a couple that actually need it.”
“Don’t move to California. You will get kidnapped. And don’t go anywhere ISIS is.”
“Do you have a 401k plan? If it’s offered, get it! Even if you start out with a very small amount it will add up.”
“Don’t get mad but I think Beyonce is overrated.”
“Does your boyfriend still hate Glenn Beck?”
“If you ever need a rose made of toilet paper, I’m your man.”
These letters are proof that he still tries to be a father, no matter the circumstances — no matter the limitations. He has never failed to find a phone and call me on my birthday or Christmas. I have seen him prove to be a better dad than dads who are free, who aren’t sick. Better than dads who are considered upright citizens.
So I won’t pretend that he is something that he isn’t, but I also won’t pretend that he is wholly defined by his sickness. I don’t know what will happen once his sentence is up – once his forced sobriety is over. I don’t know what most would consider “freedom” will mean for him.
It’s not easy. Memories are bad and good and confusing and pop up when you least expect them. Sometimes I go on with my life without thinking about him at all – sometimes it’s too hard to write back. Sometimes I feel guilty for how good my life is, and other times I feel angry because it’s not as good as it could be.
But I do know this: love and hate can exist in the same heart. And the people who made you will continue to be a part of who you are, but you can decide how.
The meaning of family will evolve and teach you things about yourself that you didn’t know. It will make you realize that you’re allowed to condemn your loved ones, but no one else is. It will offer you a chance to accept the good qualities of your parents as your own and use their faults as a chance to grow and overcome. It will help you to relate to people in general. You can learn to appreciate what you’ve become because of your family, and despite them.
On my right hand, there is a dainty marquis diamond. My mom took it from the engagement ring my dad bought for her when he was my age and put it in a setting that was more “me.” The diamond is loose and if you flick it with your finger, it will wiggle up and down in-between the silver prongs. I took it to a jeweler in college to be repaired, but they said it was unfixable.
The jeweler told me not to wear it – that eventually it will fall off and be gone forever. I should just put it somewhere for safekeeping, she said.
I wear it every day knowing that one day I’ll look down and it won’t be there. But wearing it is better than pretending that it doesn’t exist. The ring is mine, beautiful and broken at the same time.
Oh….I’m crying. Thank you so much for writing and sharing this. It’s lovely. My daughter’s father is an alcoholic. She is five now. I am going to print this and put it in her “To Read When You Are Older” file.
I know this story in my soul.
I think the hardest part for me is feeling relieved when I know my mother is in rehab or jail again, because at least I know she is safe. And maybe she will be there long enough that her brain will clear up and I’ll be able to talk to her, not the horrible twisted version that alcohol makes her.
This was lovely.
Thank you for this. I so relate even though our circumstances are different. I struggle with parts of my parents I see within myself, especially now that I am married. And I often alternate between anger and hopeless and sometimes both, because I feel powerless over these traits. It’s often tougher for me to recognise the positive aspects of certain characteristics, it feels like I am invalidating my pain somehow.
Oh man. I understand all of this completely (except that my dad isn’t in jail, but that’s really more a matter of luck than anything else at this point. But the rest is him to a T). The good man/bad disease is easy to reconcile intellectually, but in practice it takes so much work to pull yourself off the rollercoaster, only to have the whole ride start all over again (Oh he’s being nice and normal! Oh wait now he’s a mess again and he’s done something to make me angry! Retreat! Oh wait now he’s being nice again and he’s your father and he’s really just doing the best he can unders the circumstances so you should not shut him out completely AND repeat…)
I did not tell many of my very best college friends (who had very limited interactions with my dad) about the alcoholism part until we’d been out of college for years. They were upset, thinking that it meant I didn’t trust them with the truth, but in reality, I was a) protective, and like you, didn’t want them to see him as an alcoholic first and a person second, which is precisely what has happened and b) blissful in the knowledge that they saw ME as a whole complex person, rather than labeled as “girl with the alcoholic dad” and an object of well-meaning but misplaced pity. I’m not sure they understand that to this day, but this explains the whole sentiment better than I ever did! Lovely work!
Yes, to all of these things.
I’m still at the point where I struggle to fully forgive everything. I can remember all of the good things–he was hard on us, but because he cared; he never let us forget for a moment how much he loved us; he let us pretend to sleep on the living room floor when he knew we were really just pretending so we could stay up late to watch whatever he and my mom were watching; took us on dozens of weekend fishing and camping trips. But with that, I can also remember having to leave in the middle of the night to go to my grandma’s, or waking up to yelling and things being thrown around, or the times he didn’t show up to whatever school event, or the years he was in jail, and it’s so hard to let go of all of that. So for now I keep my distance (see him once in a while, but try not to let myself get excited), but I hope someday I can finally start rebuilding that relationship.
Thanks for this. Bookmarking it to return to it another time.
Oh, thank you for writing this. My dad was a quiet alcoholic for a lot of my childhood and although there wasn’t any violence or horrifying incidents, it was enough to destroy my parents marriage. I still think he was and is a great Dad, and I loved a lot about my childhood, but sometimes I try to tell a story to my friends and see the looks on their faces and remember ‘Oh. Yeah, that.’ Trying to get across that no, this is a funny story! I love my Dad! Despite the weirdness! can be tough sometimes.
Thank you for this! I really struggle to know how to talk about my Dad and seem to have settled on “he was a troubled man” – a while ago some friends were making a zine on the theme of parents that I wanted to submit to but had a panic attack instead, I think it’s healing to read other people’s vaguely similar experiences.
Thank you for this, the story of my dad and me is weirdly similiar to yours and this has provided me with some perspective (and quite a bit of tears).
Thank you for this. It means more than I can say.
Thank you for writing this! I have a similar story to yours and while most days it doesn't bother me, and I can live with it, when something important is coming up that I would really like a parent to be at, I find that I miss this person and become really emotional and sad. Reading this and seeing comments from others with similar stories has helped so much. Thank you again, and thank you everyone for the other comments on this story!
Love and hate can exist in the same heart. I remember writing about how much I hated my dad in my diary. I’d yell at him that he was destroying his liver. He was never violent when he got drunk. Both my parents drank every night, and they wouldn’t get aggressive; just childish and annoying to the point where my sister and I felt like the parents. In the end, it wasn’t a failed liver. My parents were drunk and my dad fell down the stairs and that was it. But looking back I can only remember how good of a dad he was, all the stuff he did for us, how much fun we had. You’re right — alcoholism doesn’t define a person. I don’t tell people about it. I feel weird even talking to my boyfriend about it. It’s such a personal struggle for people.
Love and hate can exist in the same heart. I remember writing about how much I hated my dad in my diary. I'd yell at him that he was destroying his liver. He was never violent when he got drunk. Both my parents drank every night, and they wouldn't get aggressive; just childish and annoying to the point where my sister and I felt like the parents. In the end, it wasn't a failed liver. My parents were drunk and my dad fell down the stairs and that was it. But looking back I can only remember how good of a dad he was, all the stuff he did for us, how much fun we had. You're right — alcoholism doesn't define a person. I don't tell people about it. I feel weird even talking to my boyfriend about it. It's such a personal struggle for people.
This is just gorgeous, intimate, heartwrenching writing. Thank you.
This hit me right in the heart, thank you for articulating it so well.
My first time delurking to say thank you so much–my situation with my dad is so similar, and you have cut straight to the heart of how it feels and how complex it is. I really aprpeciate it.
Ugh, appreciate it even…I got hit with the feels.
My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s never been physically violent with us, and I’m thankful for that, but it still doesn’t mean that the only person he’s hurting is himself. You really captured the whole range of what it means to be the child of an alcoholic, and in so few words—I’m impressed. Thank you for writing this, for articulating so perfectly many of the things that I find hard to say.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing your personal experience and capturing so eloquently what it feels like to love someone and be so mad at them and fear for them all at once.
Thank you so much for this post. I’m going through the same thing right now and my dad is in jail for numerous DUI’s and is serving 3 months. Him and my mother are divorced now but me and my brothers have always kept a good relationship with our dad whilst trying to steer him off alcohol. Like a lot of people commenting, my dad is the most amazing person when he is not drinking or drunk but he has left scars and memories of violence and abuse that are hard to ignore.
I think it helps to just find some peace. Find the positive elements your dad has taught you and use the negatives to remind you of who you do not want to be.
Thank you again for sharing. This post meant a lot to me while going through this time.