Saturday, June 3, 2006

I cannot do this again

Today's quiz will appear tomorrow. I just need to vent.

So yesterday on my way out to get a burrito for lunch, I decided to call my stepmom because this was her first week as an officially retired person. It ended up being a long chat since my dad is off on a golfing weekend.

*sigh* Let me stop beating around the bush. The gist of the conversation was that after more than 20 years of sobriety, my dad has decided to start drinking again. Up until now, my dad has been a recovering alcoholic. Now I guess we can drop the "recovering." (My mom's sister, a former social worker, corrected me and said that in actuality he is a "dry drunk" since he never did any follow-up counseling after his time in rehab. She said that alcoholism is usually a sign of other underlying problems and that unless those problems are dealt with, there is a likelihood that an alcoholic will return to drinking after rehab.) I had suspected that he was drinking a couple of months ago. I had gone to his office to do some work for him and he wasn't there. The papers I needed weren't out so I started looking in desk drawers. I found a bottle of port, some plastic cups, and a bottle of mouthwash. A part of me wanted to think that perhaps he had the bottle for when friends dropped by, but then there was the mouthwash. I'll admit it. I have problems with being confrontational and so I said nothing to him. I shared this with my stepmother in our conversation. (I hadn't told anyone about my discovery prior to this conversation.) She said that there have been too many evenings to count during which he comes home smelling like mouthwash. She asked him point blank if he had been drinking and he denied it. I think we're in trouble.

After my parents divorced when I was 8, my dad hit the bottle. My mom swears that he drank before the divorce, just not as much. The custody agreement was that I would spend every other weekend with my dad. By the time I was 11, I had to call to ask if he was going to pick me up or not. Eventually I stopped calling. Why? Because the typical Saturday with my dad meant entertaining myself while he watched sports on TV and polished off a fifth of brandy. Then, because he couldn't cook back then, we would head off to dinner at a restaurant where he would kill a bottle of wine at least. Too many times in my life I have had to hear my mother lecture me on not getting in a car with him after he had been drinking. I didn't pay her any heed though because he was my dad. Those were some of the scariest car rides in my life.

He finally quit drinking when I was 18. One of his drinking buddies had committed suicide and it scared the hell out of him. By then the damage had been done though. It has only been over the last five years that I have had a decent relationship with my dad. I keep telling him that he should send thank you notes to my therapists from over the many years because I don't think that I would have anything to do with him if it weren't for them.

My dad met my stepmother about a year after my parents divorced. They dated off and on for about 10 years before they got married. Yesterday my stepmother explained that while she was interested in him, she knew that she could not get seriously involved as long as he was drinking. They got married two years after he quit.

When my dad is drunk, he can be very cruel. My stepmother and I both agreed about this. She had tried to talk to him about it because she is sure that the drinking is a response to his sister's illness. He also had a younger brother die from cancer this past December. He just gets defensive and denies everything. She thinks that I should try to talk to him but I'm not sure I can. I still remember the summer that I spent with my grandma (his mother -- also the one who was the fabulous cook) when I was 12 and turned to her and said, "My daddy is an alcoholic." Her response was, "I know sweetie but there's nothing we can do about it. He needs to realize that he has a problem on his own." She also said that we just needed to be patient and to wait. I don't think I have that kind of patience anymore.

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