Personal Narrative: Growing Up With A Father

I grew up with a father who knew best how to take a pill. The night he died, the forty xanaxes went down easily. It was the rum that burned his throat a little bit, but that burn meant he was still alive, didn’t it? Somewhere in between the sips of fire, he passed out, and eventually he passed away. I would like to tell you I am angry with him, but I will not be angry anymore. I sobbed this over his still warm body one hundred times until my throat burned a little, too. My dad was a drug addict. I knew this from the time he started snorting white powder and popping pills without water. I knew this from the time my mother stopped supplying his habit, and it become a very violent atmosphere within a few days. I knew this when he tried to
quit,
and give up his addiction, something that he had had longer than he had his kids. I used to wonder how it felt to give up something he knew he could always count on to make him happy, until I gave up on my dad myself.
It stung a lot, but what hurt worse was not that he did not fight like hell for my brothers and I, but that I stopped fighting for him.
I hoped so badly for so long that my dad would choose me, like I was in a class and I was raising my hand so persistently to say “pick me, pick me!” only to realize he was not even looking. I am glad he never chose me, because I was too young to have any of the right answers for him. Likewise for my brothers, and my mother’s only answer after so long was to divorce my dad and his addiction.
It was not long after the divorce that I came to really, really dislike my dad. I did not want to see him, I did not want to be around him. I hated that he had left us, and it felt to me that he had chosen his addiction over my brothers and I. I stopped telling him I loved him unless I was forced, and I never wanted to even hug him. I never called him on his birthdays, even though
he called on all of mine. I told a lot of people that I wished I never knew my dad, but that was not true. For years, I let my anger and hurt get the best of me.
I let it take away all of the times my dad was a dad to me. I let myself forget how he always made me feel so important, like I was the best at everything I did. I let myself forget how much he bragged on my brothers and I, and how he always told us how proud he was of us. Up until the very last day I seen him, he would point me out to whoever he was around at the moment and tell them that I was his daughter, bragging about how smart and pretty he thought I was. The last thing my dad ever said around me was, “she is so beautiful, isn’t she?” I wish so badly I could go back to that moment, or a hundred others and just listen to him talk, just give him my time.
On August 16th, 2016, my father passed away around 8:00 PM from aspiration. The newspaper will tell you he was thirty five, a father of three, a son, a brother. It will never mention that my dad was an addict, because he was so much more than that. He was loving. He was funny. He was strong. He could talk your ear off, and he could trip over anything. He was creative, and could make you the best food you ever ate. Most of all, he was the proudest dad of three I ever met.
I believe in loving a man who passed out in the living room more times than I can count.
I believe in loving a man whose favorite thing was his kids and a xanax. I believe in loving bright green eyes and long brown hair. I believe in loving an addict. I believe in loving my dad.