Despite my dad’s alcoholism, my parents stayed married for 25 years, till his death parted them. In all that time, only once did I hear my mother mention the word “divorce.” I was 12, and by then I had often indulged a fantasy about their divorce, so I was kind of excited when she suggested it. I had my eye on a nice 2-bedroom apartment just right for a single mom with 4 children. I was dreaming big. A 2-bedroom apartment was a step up from the squalor we happened to be living in.
The D-bomb was dropped in a tear-filled rage. My mom had just purchased a transistor radio, a nice one, about the size of a 2-slice toaster. We kids borrowed it to listen to American Top 40. Bad idea. We were too rough with it and bent the antennae. That little mishap escalated into a knock-down, drag-out between my parents, culminating in the declaration that she had had enough and wanted a divorce. The only thing keeping her in the marriage were the kids, or so she screamed.
I was old enough to recognize a cliché when I heard one and came to realize that we had a long way to go before reaching the promised land. To be clear, I wanted to separate from the drunk dad. I had no problem with the sober dad. The difficulty for me as a 12-year-old was that I rarely saw the sober dad. My mom saw him sober before he went to work. His employer saw him sober while he worked. But my time with him was in the evenings and weekends, when he was either drunk or on his way to getting drunk. That’s the dad that was giving me grief.
My mom was the only sober adult in the room, so I put the responsibility of saving us on her shoulders. She lacked either the imagination or courage or adventure to do so, and I condemned her for it. WHY DIDN’T SHE STEP UP AND FIX THINGS? JEEZ!!
In my late 20s, I found out why. There I was, in the same position as my mom, metaphorically. Though the drunk dad was dead, I was still living with him. I kept the torment fresh and alive in my head—clearly one of us was not moving on. I wondered—could I do what I asked my mother to do all those years ago—leave my dad?
Ugh! It’s so hard to change. And problems are so hard to fix. I like it better when I can blame my mom and dad for everything—that medicine goes down easy, but it’s not a cure.
I wanted to change, and I decided on a first step—I had to forgive my dad. (Yes, that’s a cliché, too. I guess I take after my mom.) I had very little practice with forgiveness and wasn’t sure how to go about it, but a little experimentation goes a long way. My version of forgiveness didn’t change my dad and his bad behavior one bit. All forgiveness did was move the spotlight from my dad and put it on me. Complete exposure. Essentially, I became the only one in the room to work on. The worst part—I wasn’t able to attribute all my shortcomings to being raised by an alcoholic. Some of my flaws and failures were just my personality. That spotlight wasn’t hiding anything.
Well, nothing dims a spotlight better than a little empathy and compassion, and I started to learn how to spread it around a little (saving an extra portion for myself). I came to believe that every drink my dad took was going to be his last—at least, I’m convinced that’s what he told himself every time he raised his glass. But for some reason, he couldn’t stop. That doesn’t excuse his drunken behavior or neglect, but it does soften it. And it softened me a bit. I didn’t see that side of him or that side of me until I forgave him. For some reason, that little opening was just big enough for me to step away from his life and focus on a life that mattered more—my life. I’ll tell you—taking responsibility for your own actions and your own emotional well-being, it’s no picnic. No wonder my dad drank.
Into the Comfort Zone 