it's not easy

growing up with an alcoholic father, an alcoholic father who i didn't know was an alcoholic was a little like the whole santa claus myth. we all know that santa doesn't exist, yet we lie, quite elaborately about him and how he's watching each of us to make sure we're good so we can get a bunch of loot on the birthday of Christ (who was born of immaculate conception, BECAUSE YOU KNOW, THAT HAPPENS EVERYDAY).

an alcoholic comes in many forms and flavors. my personal alcoholic came in the form of an extremely intelligent man who read the new york times and new yorker cover to cover every day of his life, who loved theater and classical music and used to ground me for a week for not putting the prell shampoo cap back on the bottle and would call me "a piece of shit" the way other dad's called their daughters "princess."

ah, yes, it was a lovely life. amidst the boyfriends and extra curricular activities was a girl terrified of what mood her dad might be in when she came home from school. he might be happy, or more than likely, he might want to pick a fight. he could be sleepy (you tend to fnod out after drinking too much) or in a rage about some insignificant event (like the fact that my mother cooked me a burger because i couldn't stomach the fish, or liver or tongue she'd made). he might be docile (although unlikely) or just mean, terribly, terribly mean and punitive. it was hard to know exactly what to expect, but what i did know, what i could be sure of, was that my father could be relied upon to be inconsistent. and my nervous system, i'm afraid has never recovered.

i don't do particularly well with those who aren't relatively predictable, or with being unjustly accused of things i didn't do, or being called names, like one of my dad's favorites: "stupid." i shudder when someone attacks me for no reason, or yells because they feel like it. i'm inclinced to want to run away when i encounter someone with these sorts of social skills. that's how i managed to live out my childhood, running away from the big bad wolf, into a world of sadness and silence. the divide between us became as wide as the distance between the earth and the sun and before i knew it, i had grown up and left home, having never been able to connect with the man who made me. and yet, i can't exorcise him. i can't seem to forget him or evict him. and what would be really helpful would be to throw him out of here on his ass.