Sleep to be Awoken

My father, the man who never had a role in my life, the stranger in the crowd, a phantom of a man, was an alcoholic and, so, by natural psychology, I am at risk of being one. I don’t drink. Never have and I don’t want to. It’s the only goal in my life that I’ve the pleasure to announce I’ve kept. When I was a teen, I never wanted to drink illegally. As an adult, I am the sober man at the party, the loner, the unfunny one, lifeless and devoted to his sobriety. It shocks people to find this out. I’m sure some of you are staring at the screen with uplifted eyebrow questioning my honesty. In fact, the only alcohol I’ve consumed is always a part of a recipe, and never out of a bottle.

This probably puts a lot of people who have read my stories to question them. All my characters drink. They hang out at bars and grow drunk, hating society, becoming shadow men incapable of loving. They drink to regain a certain ease with themselves. To become happier than they have ever been. But it is fiction. The accounts of the characters are neither myself or anyone I know.

And with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave
Kicking shadows on the street for every mistake that I had made
And like a baby boy I never was a man
Until I saw your blue eyes cry and I held your face in my hand
And then I fell down yelling “Make it go away!”
Just make a smile come back and shine just like it used to be
And then she whispered “How can you do this to me?”

I lost my cousin to his addiction to alcohol. New Year’s Eve 2003 I went to bed. I woke up in 2004 to hear from my mother my cousin was dead. The medics said he didn’t feel pain. That his neck was snapped the moment he collided with the object he crashed into. The wreck was so bad that his legs had to be amputated. He was cremated, his ashes somewhere, forgotten.

At times, I still find myself thinking he’s not dead. I never saw a body. Never seen the evidence of his death. When I see a chubby guy with a scruff beard, I still think he’s around. I think it’s the guilt of knowing that I was the one that expressed that he wasn’t welcomed in my mother’s home anymore. I wonder if things would be different had I not said that. Would he still be alive?

When Teddy died in 2001, I think I was a little distraught. No one I knew had ever died before, not a friend and never someone my own age. I was in my BCIS class when the announcement that Teddy had not made it. He’d been in a coma for some time and was struggling to live through. I think that was the first funeral I ever attended where I felt this coldness growing in me. From that moment on, I never wanted to be associated with the substance.

I canceled all my friends who were drunks. I promised never to grow to close to them. So when I found out my girlfriend at the time favored the drink, I was distraught. Despite the fact that we probably weren’t made for each other, the one thing that was a constant for me was her passion for the drink. I didn’t want to stand around and watch someone fall into that trap, confusing alcohol for happiness.

Addiction’s held you back
But you don’t care
Cause you’re on a high again
And it’s not fair
Consuming alcohol
While I gotta drive
Take a hit from the drugs you stole
And try to survive

Since your life was over
You haven’t yet been sober
You have held me back so long
Everything you do is wrong

My brother, the middle child, named after my father, following in his footsteps, is also an alcoholic. I’ve seen him in and out of the system since I was a kid. And while I love my brother, I have absolute no respect for him. He’s wasting his life on the bottle. He’s a rotting mess. It depresses me that I don’t know how to talk to him, or what I can say to make this disease leave his body.

And the saddest part of the story is that my brother is painfully aware of his condition but refuses to do anything about it. Alcoholism, like all addictions, is an ongoing battle between the alcoholic and the substance. I’m sure my brother feels like he’s losing his, which was made clear to me when he asked me to kick his ass if he was ever a bad father – he told me this at 7:00 am as he and his friend were still up drinking from the night before. I told him I didn’t have the time and I’ll deal with him after school.

You are one of God’s mistakes.
You crying, tragic waste of skin.
I’m well aware of how it aches,
And you still won’t let me in.
Now I’m breaking down your door,
To try and save your swollen face.
No, I don’t like you anymore
You lying, trying waste of space.

Now I sit here and stare at this screen thinking how I came to this point. After swearing never to care about people who might be headed down the path of a bad addiction, I find myself compelled to take care of a certain person. As I told this person, I don’t want to be up at night fearing that the phone call will be someone telling me of their death. I worry enough about my brother, I don’t need to worry more about someone else.

I just hope that this person seeks comfort in something else instead of drink. That drinking shouldn’t be for the buzz. This, of all things, is now bringing me closer the edge than I have before.

I tried to help you once
Against my own advice
I saw you going down
But you never realized
That you’re drowning in the water
So I offered you my hand
Compassions in my nature
Tonight is our last stand

I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
And our scars remind us that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel