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My father has always been an alcoholic.
Ever since I was a kid, it was just a part of the background noise — bottles clinking, slurred words, footsteps too loud at midnight. Life wasn’t easy as a child. It still isn’t, to be honest.
Funny thing is, I used to think he was the cool one. Sweet, even. My mother was always the angry one — shouting, scolding, sighing like the whole world was on her shoulders. I didn’t understand why she was so bitter back then. I didn’t know what it meant to hold up a family by yourself.
Dad, though… Dad would smile. He’d joke. He’d let us eat candy before dinner. He made me laugh — once. Maybe twice. It was enough to make me think, for a while, that he was the better parent.
But he wasn’t.
He was the kind of man who’d yell so loud the neighbors would lock their windows. He’d punch the walls, the table, sometimes the air, and I was always scared he’d eventually miss and hit me instead. Sometimes I think he did — just not always with his fists.
As the years dragged on, his addiction got worse. The bottles piled up faster than the bills. My mom — tired, still angry, but trying — tried to get him into rehab. She begged, she screamed, she cried. She called places, filled out forms, followed leads. But no one wanted to take him in. Said they were full. Said they didn’t have the resources.
I don’t know. Maybe they just didn’t want to deal with another broken man in a country that’s too corrupt to care.
And so he stayed. He drank. He slept. He cursed the sky, the government, the walls, and eventually, us.
He became a routine. Same old deadbeat dad. Same old lazy father. Same old smell of beer at 10 a.m.
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I used to ask myself questions I never said out loud.
Would I be wrong if I wished he’d disappear?
Was he ever good to us?
Is this the “best dad ever” people talk about on Father’s Day?
Maybe I’m being cruel. Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m not cruel enough. I don’t know. I just wanted him to grow up. To shut up. To finally act like a father. Even just once. Even just for one day.
But I guess it’s too late now.
I watched them take him away. Cuffed hands. Stumbling feet. His face still desperate, still drunk, still trying to make sense of what he had become. The red and blue lights flashed against our house like a warning sign — this is what it looks like when you let yourself rot from the inside out.
I didn’t cry. I just watched.
And I think that’s what hurt me the most — that I didn’t feel anything, or maybe too much to understand what I was feeling.
I still remember the first time I said “I love you, papa.” I must’ve been five.
This time, I only said it in my head.
I love you, papa.
Even if I shouldn’t.
Even if you never really gave me a reason to.
