I grew up thinking my father could do anything
Watching him throw a baseball at what seemed like the speed of sound,
Or build a deck with his bare hands.
I grew up in his shadow, shoes far too big for me
Even had his name, but the second model
As time went by I saw chips of the marble
Start to fall away and replaced with Johnny walker black bottles, a weak keystone
But they held his ship together.
As time went by I lost the severity of his demise in weeks, months, and years.
Till we split apart, my mother gave up and left
And he slid further down into the trenches
We moved down south after I internalized the break with copious amounts of liquor and substance.
Me, still a rebel without a cause, and the skin and bones that used to be my father.
I grew apart from him and found someone I truly gave my all to.
2 years passed and as he was silently falling apart I was growing.
I neglected him for a long time and only when my life halted
Did I see the damage he had done.
After a few brushes with self harm, and thoughts of the end, I started to get the inkling that he had broken.
I started trying to come around more but he was crippled.
I remember on my birthday he asked me:
Shortly after I came to his house, fully prepared to listen to drunk teachings of all sorts of circular nonsense and do some laundry.
Face down on the floor, blue and bleeding on the carpet from a wound that I can only assume was sustained by falling. I cried. I panicked. I called my mother and then the police.
I remember his eyes rolling around like they weren’t attached to anything.
I remember slapping him in the face making him repeat his name over and over as I tried to get him upright.
And amongst the chaos and tears I heard the most heartbreaking, guttural phrase;
My pillar, my granite warrior of a father
Reduced to debris right before my eyes
His only plea was to let him die in peace.
That dug deeper than anything else could.
If you have never felt your heart break inside your chest then you will not understand the gravity of that statement to me.
The paramedics got there and made him try to throw up, but he wouldn’t. He told them he’d only taken 2 sleeping pills and was tired.
I found out later he had taken thirty.
And I tried my best to hold it together. Talking to his work, any friends I could find the phone number for trying to make certain he would have a job if and when he decided to go back to his life.
I hated him, or rather I hated the mess he became.
Some months have past, and he is better now.
He’s met a woman and is ecstatic, oozing with the scent of new love, enraptured.
But I am still afraid, as I love to see his trademark smile that has been absent for a long time, I can still see that blue, cold face and the pain that came with it.
Through all of this I hope to find a new, old father. One that wants to hunt rather than hide.
I have realized one thing, though
Something I should have from the start
In order for someone to be totally together,
They must be completely picked apart.
