My dad is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. I was about 14 when he got “dry” and he never truly entered into recovery.  He went to a treatment centre in Kingston for two months that was run by the military. My mother gave him an ultimatum, either stop drinking or she was leaving with my brother and I.  That night was pretty traumatic, he didn’t believe that we were serious and the fight that ensued was pretty horrific. I remember leaving the house before it got too out of control.  I went and spent a few hours at a friends house and when I got back things had settled down a bit and he agreed to go get help.  This started the process of him getting dry.  I can’t use the term “sober” to describe him.  He never ever really entered recovery, he just stopped drinking and never dealt with any of his shit.  He didn’t even truly stop drinking, he spent years drinking that near beer.  He obsessed over it the same way that he did when he was drinking real beer.  I refuse to touch the stuff.  I have had family offer me the same stuff, or even de-alcoholized wine or sparkling wine.  I have to politely decline these things, as I just don’t want to even pretend that I am drinking.  I don’t need to have a non-alcoholic beverage to feel like I am part of an occasion.  I just need to be there and be present.  

Dad got out of the hospital and came home and things seemed pretty good for a while.  he went to a couple of meetings and then suddenly stopped.  He also quit smoking when he came home and told us that the smoking really bothered him at meetings.  In those days all AA meetings allowed smoking.  He used that as his excuse to not attend them.  But he managed to stay dry for quite a few years, right up until about the summer of 2000.  I remember that I was about to graduate from college.  I was starting a new job in Toronto and getting ready to go full “adult”.  He went away on course for work down at and American army base.  When he got home I came home from classes in college and found him sitting on the back step of the house smoking a cigar and drinking beer.  My heart almost stopped.  What in the fuck is going on?  This seemed like a major fucking deal, but he was happy as hell (looking back he was drunk I guess) and Mom seemed to be okay with it.  She just said that he was going through something with his impending retirement.  She left it at that.  A short while later they left for a weekend trip to visit family in London and on the way home on the Sunday he told her that he was leaving her.  He was retiring from the military and was going to be moving in with a women he met online to Dartmouth, NS.  Later I found out that he had actually been involved with this woman for a long time.  In fact he had not been faithful to my mother and had been with this woman a few times.

What stands out for me from this time was that this was one of the first times in my life that my anxiety became completely overwhelming and unmanageable.  I shut down in both mind and body.  I was barely able to function as I was being pulled into too many directions and flooded with too many emotions.  I lost the ability to eat, I couldn’t sleep and I was barely making it too work.  Mare was pressuring me to move out of my parents house into a place with her.  I was being forced to face the real possibility that I was going to have to do this adult thing….(job, car payments, move out) my parents marriage was over and mom was not doing well.  It was just too much for me too handle.  I found out years later that I was prescribed an anti depressant during this time.  I don’t remember that happening, but it did.  And funny enough it’s the same one that I am on right now.

Fast forward many years now, Dad has been living in Dartmouth, it appears as though he has built himself a decent life.  He is married a nice lady named Pam; she has a really nice family that I got along with pretty well.  At this point we’ve all been out to visit and seen his new life.  We have done the touristy stuff, visited all the sites.  Made friends with the family and life is feeling pretty good.  I mean not exactly as I expected but good.  Dad was drinking the whole time.  I was under the impression that Pam was keeping a tight reign on his consumption.  But he is an alcoholic.  Those fuckers can be sneaky…I should know.  He was hiding out in the garage and consuming a lot of beer and whiskey.  He was always saying it’s where he went to smoke and read his books.  But what happens with alcoholics that don’t stick to a moral and spiritual program is that they rapidly degrade in both physical and spiritual condition.  He began to consumer more and more which began to lead to black outs.  My brother Pat and I took a trip out there to visit and Dad planned all these site seeing excursions.  One of which was a trip down to Port Royal in the southern part of the province.  He told us that he had planned a hotel down there as it was a really long trip but was totally worth the effort.  Okay, so we hop in the car and cruise down there.  It’s less than a two hour drive……ummm….Dad?  WTF?

He arranged for us to stay in some shitty motel in this tiny little town with one restaurant.  They didn’t even have a Tim Horton’s that I recall.  But they did have a liquor store.  So we go and stock up on supplies and head to the motel.  Pat and I rent some bikes from the place and take an amazing ride up along the coast.  It was really beautiful, the scenery down there is quite breathtaking.  We rode along taking in all the beauty of the coast line and the ocean, meanwhile Dad was back in the room….alone.   We came back and he had made his way through a bottle of whiskey and 6 or 8 beers.  He was pretty shit faced.  We each had a few beer and then Dad started talking.  He told us a story about when he was in Amsterdam after he and Mom got married.   (I will sum this story up quickly as the telling of it was pretty “sloppy”)  He was drunk…surprise…..and decided to visit the red light district.  He bought a dildo that he claims was going to be a gift for Mom. (GROSS)  Then he took a walk through the area and hit some bars.  He decided that a trip to see a hooker was in order.  This is where he claims that he had the dildo in a bag and the hooker was doing his thing and took the dildo out of the bag and jammed it into her.  At this point he breaks down into fits of laughter.  Then in short order passes out and proceeds to snore like a dump truck.

We were both at a loss as to what to do.  I don’t think that we said 6 words between us on the drive home.  Pat and I were in shock the rest of the trip.  Dad of course acted as if nothing happened; because he couldn’t remember that anything had in fact happened.  When we left to drive back to Ontario we finally had the conversation about what we should do.  Do we talk to Pam about what happened and about how much he was drinking?  Do we do nothing?  We both made the assumption that Pam was not a stupid lady and she probably knew what was going on.  So we left it.

I don’t remember how long after, it could be a few years, but I was sitting on our patio with my laptop and reading some emails and I get one from Dad with the subject: Shocking News.  He tells me in the message that he has been drinking to black outs and has been arrested for sexual interference of a minor.  Pam has kicked him out, he no longer has a job and he has left Nova Scotia to go live with his mother in Winnipeg.  He tells us that he is being “framed” by Mandy, Pam’s daughter.  Dad had been babysitting Pam’s grand daughters a fair bit as he wasn’t working.  This was only in the evening as they were both of school age, and I don’t think he minded because it gave him an excuse to stay in the house and drink.  He claims to have no memory of any incidents that involved the girls and that Mandy has a history of making up stories.  Mandy has gone to the police about the incident and Dad was arrested.  He has a court date in Nova Scotia, he has a conviction in Nova Scotia and also has a lengthy jail sentence in Nova Scotia.  East Coast Lifestyle, this story runs through my mind each time I sea one of those tee shirts or sweaters.

Yes, my father is a registered sex offender.  FML

I have many more things to write about this subject, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  A large shitty iceberg.

A very good friend of mine had an unfortunate encounter with a door yesterday.  And not in the way that some people have “walked into a door”, she actually wracked her face off the door.  This reminded me of a time when I was younger and walked straight through a screen door at a friends house.  When I was in high school I was very into playing guitar and it consumed the majority of my time.  My friend Lydia asked me to help her buy a guitar and to teach her a little bit of “guitaring”.  So I went with her to the music store (guitarery?) and we picked out a small reasonable guitar and we went back to her place.  She lived in a really nice house in Pembroke and they had a small library/study in the back part of the house.  We were back there working on her guitar skills and the time came where I wanted to step out to have a cigarette.  Now, I was pretty attracted to this girl.  She is beautiful, and smart and funny and we were getting along great.  Of course, I thought this was my way to impress her.  Hang out and be the cool musician guy that helps her with learning to play.  She’ll love that, she’ll think I’m the coolest.  The smoking was part of the “cool guy” image, I know how ridiculous.  I excused myself to go outside and have said cigarette, and she says “Just go out the door here in the study.”  I look outside and it’s gotten fairly dark out.  I can see into the back yard and they have a little patio back there.  OK, cool, I turn and proceed towards the open back door…….WHAM!  Right into the closed screen door.  My face slams full force into the screen, my body follows close behind and the screens essentially folds in half and collapses out of the frame onto their lovely patio.

Yep, Mr cool guy punk rocker musician, door wrecker.

I turn and look at Lydia and she has collapsed onto the floor laughing.  Thankfully her family are absolutely lovely and gracious.  They were more concerned that I was alright and once that was established we all had a good laugh.

C’est la vie

When I came into this new life and gave up the one that was slowly killing me I was warned about the “pink cloud”.  It’s a feeling of euphoria that some people get when everything in their life seems to be going amazingly well after getting into recovery.  I liked to think that I was not living on that pink cloud.  That my recovery is based on a real solid foundation.  But I am no different than anyone else.  I apparently have been holding onto that pink cloud for a long long time.  And right now I would give almost anything to get it back.  I am having a very hard time taking life as it’s being dealt to me at the moment.  I’m thinking of the term “a bitter pill to swallow”, however, I feel like I’ve been force fed the whole bottle.  I do my absolute best to remember that I am powerless over people, places, and things.  That leaves only me, the only thing I can control is myself and even that is a hard fought battle.  My prayer and meditation is sorely lacking and perhaps that is contributing to my state of mind lately.  I have had moments the last few days that are just so fucking frustrating and I can’t do anything about them.  I am constantly told that I have to take life on life’s terms…….well I don’t know how much more of that I can take.  Life is not playing fair lately.  Mare messaged me and told me that she has been in a bad mood all day and that got me on edge.  I never do well when she is like that, things are already tense around here and that just puts me into a state of being hyper alert to everything that she says or does.  So I was starting to have a panic attack before I even got home.  Fun!  Then I get home and my mother calls me and tells me that my Grandmother is not doing well.  She has had some really bad falls and has spent some lengthy time alone on the floor over night.  She has been put on some trans-dermal opioids for her pain.  This is serious fucking stuff.  It’s not a good sign and her condition is deteriorating pretty rapidly I guess.  I can’t do anything about this.  She is in her 90s and this is the way life goes, no one gets out alive.  But she is such a special lady I just don’t want her to suffer.  I want her to go the way Grandpa Joe went.  Just go to sleep peacefully, and drift off to the next place in the universe where we end up.  I have been praying for this all night.  I went to the meeting in Alliston tonight and I haven’t been there since I spoke there last year.  I was welcomed with genuine warmth and love.  It was amazing and it’s taken the sting out of the rest of the day.  I am so glad to have these people to turn to when I am feeling so lost and alone.

In gratitude….

I’m not in a great place at the moment.  I am lonely.  I left for a conference that deals the business side of my program and to learn a bit about the Bridging the Gap program and Corrections.  I left early on Friday and was gone all weekend.  As I was getting ready to leave my wife says to me “well drive safe, see you on Sunday or something”.  No sign what so ever that she even cared that I was going to be gone.  I don’t know if I’m reading too much into it, but it hurt.  It made me feel like I didn’t matter any more.  Like I just stay here, this is no longer my home.  She didn’t reach out to me at all the whole time.  Usually when she goes away I try to get the hotel number to give her a call to find out how her day went.  I got nothing.  I was surrounded by 400 other people and I’ve never felt so alone.  My mind takes me to dark places and it makes me want to isolate.  I don’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone or leave the house.  I want to just be alone to wallow in my misery.  I want to tell the world to fuck off.  There is no real cure to this, I just can’t allow it to drag me down.  I have to get out there and force myself to go to my group and to drive the lady with no license to the meeting, to reach out to people in the program and to some of my friends.  There are only a few people in my life that I know understand what this feels like.

When I got home, which was a little earlier than I had anticipated, Mare says to me “what are you doing home now”?  I apologized for showing up early and that kind of started a bit of spat.  She says she didn’t mean anything by it.  But how else am I supposed to take it?  It felt like I was not welcome in my own home.  I have to evaluate the evidence to see if what I am feeling is accurate or if I am just taking this personally.