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The father obsession
Here I am, 33-year-old me, attempting to be sober for the umpteenth time. And yet, this time, it feels right. It feels like all the struggles, all the hardships, all the way from realising that I had a problem with alcohol to this, here, now, all this meant something. It was not vain. It’s like I had to go through all this to realise so many things in my life, to understand the root of the problem and the best way to handle it.
Here I am, drinking tea and writing to you. I don’t know you, but I know for sure that if you ended up on this website, reading this text, it’s probably because you’re looking for answers, for help, for support. I know that because I’ve been there, too. Too many times.
I hope my story will inspire you to find your way or to help a loved one finds theirs.
My relationship with my father never was the best one could imagine. Quite the opposite, actually. To the point that I had to wait for my grandmother (who lived the house next to his) to pass away to take the decision not to contact him ever again. It’s been two years; he hasn’t been in touch either. That says quite a lot on our relationship. It had never been an easy-going one anyway, since the very beginning.
My father has a problem with everything that is different. I guess it’s not his fault, he certainly got that from his own father, who was the same. Maybe he didn’t have the courage, the ability, or the will to differ from the path his father had shown him. A path full of alcohol, hate, violence, shame and intolerance. A path that I’ve been trying to avoid all my life.
We’ve always been very different. Too different, I guess. So much so that one of his greatest fears in life came true, in the shape of his first born. My father had always wanted his boys to be men, real men, working with their hands, holding their liquor, and bringing girls back home every weekend just to prove they were so virile. Except I wasn’t like that. I would never bring girls home. Not that I was shy. Just that I was gay. Deep down, I guess he always knew I would end up being one of his worst fears in life, and I always felt I was a failure to him, that’s for sure.
Ironically, that awkward and tense relationship also had consequences on me, kind of the same, actually, in the opposite way: my worst fear was to become like my father, an alcoholic that doesn’t think of himself as having an alcohol problem, full of hate towards everybody that is different from him.
Knowing how life can have very sadistic ways of teaching you lessons, that’s obviously kind of the path I ended up on, around my 30th birthday. Right at this point in life when I had everything to be happy about, a life I would have never believed I could ever have, and yet, I was unhappier than ever, drinking every day, getting more and more anxious and afraid of everything around me, even developing racist tendencies when drunk (like father like son), and growing a very weird feeling of shameful hate inside of me. That’s when I understood the person my father hated the most was… himself. I had to take the same road to understand that, as I was feeling terribly guilty of being who I was, dreadfully ashamed of my drunken habits, and extremely terrified of life.
Why? How did I end up there? I had been so obsessed with not reproducing the memories I had of my father as a child (which were almost all bad memories of him being the worst drunk version of himself), not becoming who he was, that I stressed myself to the point that I couldn’t handle life anymore without a relief… a relief that I found in alcohol.
The other irony in that story is that I used to smoke joints every night from 18 to 27. I was totally addicted to cannabis, and no good came off it, as it ended up stressing me out more than it would soothe me. And one day, just like that, I decided to quit entirely. I did it without even thinking it through, without help, just by stating to myself: I quit smoking joints. And I was so proud of that, that I didn’t see it coming: I didn’t see one addition replacing the other. I didn’t notice the vicious circle taking shape right under my nose, while I was patronising my boyfriend for drinking too much!
It didn’t take long – less than a year – for me to start having alcohol problems: always wanting more, more often, feeling more and more guilt and shame, more anxiety… and what’s better to relieve anxiety than a nice glace… a nice bottle of wine? Am I right?
And so it started.
My greatest strength turned out to be my worst weakness: I thought too much, analysed everything too much, always wanted to understand everything in and around me. To the point of exhaustion. I developed a general anxiety disorder, and even if I knew that alcohol was a big problem in my life, it was a quick fix that became a daily solution. You can imagine the constant war in my head, during those years. I was torn between what I thought to be true, my convictions and ideals in life, and what I actually did every day. The anxiety grew, and I started fixating on things like the plumbing, the roof, or the fridge. I would find problems everywhere, and worry about them, even if they were sometimes not real, or at least not that big of a deal. They were too me, and I couldn’t handle the waves of anxiety as I was constantly looking for solutions to every little problem in my life: from my psychological state to the dripping faucet. It’s like my brain wanted me to constantly fixate on things, obsess about problems or potential problems to come, to find solutions, knowing precisely that would cause my downfall. Why was I always scared? Why didn’t I feel safe in the home I chose to live in? Why did I feel this urge to always find and resolve problems, to always have my brain focusing on potential bad things that could happen in my life? Was it because I wanted to be prepared, just in case? Was it because I had developed a defence strategy as a child and a teenager against my abusive father, to protect myself, my mother and my brother, and that strategy had become a way of life? Was it because I didn’t want to face my truth (which one?) and so I needed to constantly find problems to focus on? I will never know for sure. Maybe a mix of all that. Maybe it was just chemicals in my brain not working properly.
It all seems very sad, but I took that as a lesson. Not one I was happy to learn, though, don’t get me wrong. But we don’t always choose what life throws at us, and we all do our best with all the cards we hold at each point in our lives. I tried to moderate my drinking many times, failed, tried again and again and again, failed, thought about it, learnt from it, tried quitting drinking entirely twice, failed. But I never gave up on the idea; because life would be too easy if everything we attempted was a direct success. When you learn how to ride a bike as a kid, you fall, you try again, and you fall, and you fall, and you fall. And yet, you perfectly know that you’ll get there with time, you’ll ride that bike. That’s how I saw it.
I also looked for help to get better on a psychological level. I tried many, many different solutions. Some didn’t work at all, some others made me realise where the problem lay without really resolving the issue, but again, there’s no miracle solution. For the first time in my life, I therefore decided to take meds against anxiety under medical supervision, and I’ve now been alcohol-free for 35 days. The longest since I started drinking at 16.
This time, I know it’s the right time. I will be sober and find peace. I will use those meds as a crutch for a few months, a I plan to gradually stop taking them to enjoy like as my very true self, always under medical supervision, of course. And finally, I will stop obsessing over the fact that I’m scared I will end up like my father. I’m a different person, and that’s where I start to learn to love myself for who I am.
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