You are Only Fooling Yourself

When I was a kid and I would try to take a short cut – such as not washing my face after breakfast, Mom would say “You are only fooling yourself.” The reality of the role alcohol played in my family dynamic is only really hitting me now. Instead of avoiding the bathroom mirror, I’m looking straight into it and I see its affect all over us.

I have to admit, I have gone back and forth, over and over again about this post. This one is letting out a lot of family secrets – ones that for so long we choose to ignore, hide and refuse to admit happen. I feel like if I let it out, maybe I’ll get what ever relief I need. On the other hand, letting it out means I have to admit it happened and it is not ok.

And on yet another hand, it feels like taking a step backwards. I was hoping to make my blog less about personal war stories and more about my journey to heal.

But I suppose sometime we have to get the poison out before the healing can continue. So here it goes.
Alcoholic is a dirty word in our home. Dad drank a lot, but don’t you dare call him an alcoholic. My sister would drink a pint of Vodka with her prescription sleeping pills – but she’s not addicted. Even the ones who don’t drink every day tend to have an abusive relationship with the bottle. Mom used alcohol to self medicate stressful situations – lots of alcohol and cigarettes. One time to the point I had to make sure she got safely back to the hotel room and took care of her all night. And even me. I can admit I didn’t always drink alcohol socially or only special occasion. I also during a particularly stressful period self medicated with alcohol and cigarettes --- usually all alone because I couldn’t bear if any one knew what I was doing: that even the one who seems to be able to always keep it together got weak and broke down too.

The affects of addiction are plain to see. People know something is off even if they can’t identify it. It’s like if I went to school with food on my face. People could plainly see something was there, but perhaps wouldn’t know exactly what I ate unless they confronted me about it…

Hard to say where the demon known as alcohol addiction started – but it was there since I can remember. Dad passed out on the living room floor when we were small kids almost every weekend. Face down, dead to the world, passed out. My sister and I, no older than seven or eight, would try to wake him up to get him to go to bed. I can remember us both taking an arm and trying to drag him. Mom would say, he’s just sleeping, leave him be. And then we never talked about why Dad was so tired or why he wouldn’t wake up.

For a very long time, Mom worked very hard to hide Dad’s problem from the world – making sure he dressed appropriately and got his hair cut. We never called Dad an alcoholic. He didn’t admit to it, and neither did we. For a long time, she was somewhat successful at hiding his problem… At least I think she was…. Or was she?

I can remember on more than one occasion when Dad hit the Coors just a little too hard he would call into work sick on Monday. I remember one time his excuse was that he had gotten bug spray in his beer and that is why he was too sick to go to work… Seriously, this couldn’t have gone unnoticed, right? I mean, I can tell now when people at work have a drinking problem. People do notice and people do talk.

As time went on, Mom became more vocal about her dislike of Dad’s “other woman.” She did ask him one time, “Is it going to be me, or the beer” and he chose the beer. She wouldn’t leave him, because Catholics just don’t divorce. So with no apparent way to fix the situation, she became a unwitting supporter of it.

At that point, I suppose her yelling tirades were the only way she felt she could protest the problem. So Dad, not wanting to be yelled at, took to hiding his drinking. If he went into the beer cooler while we were with him at the grocery store, he’d instruct my sister and me not to tell Mom since it would only upset her. Problem was, we were freaking children! So Mom could get it out of us pretty easily that Dad bought beer. He would get disappointed in us and started doing the grocery shopping alone.

For the record, Mom was no better about forcing us to keep secrets. She’s addicted to shopping just as much as dad was addicted to beer. She’d do the same thing – “Don’t you dare tell your father what I bought today.” I one time let it slip she bought a pair of shorts right before we went on vacation. She was sure to let me know my big mouth ruined our family vacation. Funny, even though I have perspective now, I still feel like I did ruin the vacation. Some guilt is hard to shake….

And what better way to shed guilt by turning it around and putting it on your children, right? Cute little blame sponges they are! They’ll soak up any of your messes.

I digress --- back to Dad hiding his alcohol. Of all places, he chose our playhouse in the backyard. By this time he had converted it to his tool shed, so my sister and I weren’t able to play in there anyway. We both knew the beer was in there. We’d keep tabs, watching him on the weekend to see if he was getting beer out of there. We never said anything. For my part, I had learned my lesson about telling family secrets. I kept my mouth shut. Last thing I wanted to witness was another slamming, screaming, scary fight.

My sister also kept her mouth shut… for a while. I’d later find out she kept quiet because she was helping herself to his stash. What a perfect situation for a budding alcoholic --- an unsupervised stash of beer. And Dad couldn’t say a word if he found any missing, because he isn’t suppose to have it in the first place. He couldn’t confront her with out her going to Mom. His addiction was too precious to give up. Also, if he ignored the problem, it would go away. So he ignored the problem – he was only fooling himself.

We all knew when he was drunk. Even Mom knew, although she couldn’t figure out where he kept getting the beer. He acted different. He and mom would fight and yell at each other. He would reek of beer and sweat from being in the hot sun all weekend. At some point he resorted to drinking in the car I drove to high school. I know because on more than one occasion his beer cans would be rattling under my seat as I drove to school. I can only imagine what would have happened if I got pulled over and a cop discovered empty beer cans. What I wonder now is, would he own up to the fact that they were his? Or would he allow me to take the fall for him?

Every Sunday night I would have to not only have to inspect the car for beer cans, but also to see if he wet the driver seat. At the worse of his addiction, he couldn’t be bothered to use the bathroom. So I would have to check my car seat to see if he wet it and then scrub it the best I could and hoped it dried in time for the next morning. He thought he was fooling us because we didn’t catch him in the act. He was only fooling himself.

We saw the empty cans, we witnessed the behavior, we smelled the stench, we sat in the wet driver seat. He didn’t fool us.

Yet, we had to act like he did. Mom, the adult who could have done something, would only sometimes help me clean the car. But she was getting her college degree at this time. She couldn’t be bothered with trying to keep my father in line any longer. She needed to focus on her education. She closed herself off in the office and let me and my sister deal with the ugliness of my father’s alcoholism.

As long as that door was closed, the problem didn’t exist for her. She was only fooling herself.

It is ironic from this perspective. Dad didn’t protect my sister and I from our Mom’s rages. He escaped to alcohol and avoided being in the house with us. Mom wouldn’t protect us from Dad’s alcoholism. She was too busy with her own pursuits.

Even more astounding is my recent realization my father wasn’t the only one with the alcohol problem. Mom’s a tricky one though, since she won’t drink every day. Instead she drinks rarely, but to excess. Mom wanted to be able to drink, but since her husband was a drunk, she didn’t want him to know about it. She would buy her fancy hard alcohol and wine coolers. She decided the best place to hid her liquor was in my sister’s closet. To keep us quiet and buy our loyalty, she would offer us alcohol. At 16 or so I had my own bottle of Kahlua and of course, my sister had her pick of the closet stash. Nothing like fostering a kid’s taste for alcohol. I suppose if we are all alcoholics together we couldn’t point the finger at each other!

It was at this point, my sister’s loyalty changed big time. Around this time was when my sister summoned up the courage to rat out Dad about his playhouse stash of beer to Mom. I guess I understand now why sister decided to change sides. Dad was only supplying her with hot crappy beer. Mom was giving her expensive liquor. Loyalty to Mom wins out.

I still have a picture in my head – the two of them poking holes in the beer cans with kitchen knives out in the back yard. I didn’t partake. I was terrified of what my father’s reaction was going to be. One time I had hid has cigarettes and I thought World War III was about to break out. I’m pretty sure he punched another hole in the wall over that one --- hard to remember… I drove him to punching many a hole in the wall as a teenager. Thank God he took to hitting the door and the wall and not me!

And while I’m on the topic of giving children alcohol – allow me another tangent. Giving alcohol to children in my family seemed to be ok and dare I say normal. When my sister and I were small – and I’m talking under 5 years old, we had our own beer cups. The adults would drink their beer, having their social time. To shut us up, they would give *little* tastes of beer in our beer cups. My sister, the budding alcoholic, was still in diapers when my mother refilled her beer cup one to many times. AND SHE PASSED OUT!

I have to admit, sharing that story feels like a humongous betrayal. And for the longest time, I just figured all kids had beer cups…

One Forth of July, Mom bought us sparklers and wine coolers. I was maybe 15. Maybe it was the excitement of the holiday – or maybe it was the intolerance of alcohol – but I thought it would be funny to jump into the pool with all my clothes on. Instead of getting a good laugh, I was chastised for not being able to hold my alcohol well.

Funny – it was always Mom giving us the alcohol. Her rational was if we got it from her, we wouldn’t want to try it with our friends and that it would take the “mystery” out of drinking. Unfortunately, the only thing taking the mystery out of drinking did was to make alcohol an old, comfortable friend. One that some of us leaned on a little too heavily on when goings got tough. And for the others, a best friend that was visited everyday. And even though, the relationship with alcohol may have been severed because the secret was let out, it still haunts and troubles the family because it was never properly dealt with.

Keep bypassing that mirror– if you don’t see it, its not there!