Dolly Parton was my girlfriend

Nostalgia. These last few months have involved a lot of me retracing my steps, correcting my path. I’m surprised most days because I had no plan to dig deep into my oldest memories to regain my stride, instead planning all along to go only through the last decade or so, mark my path and revisit them at a later date like I’ve placed a book mark. Instead…I keep having flashes of my childhood and find myself clawing up from there. The stand outs that are particularly bright these last few weeks are memories of the times that I spent with my dad. Just he and I (drop a pin here “Bar”) and the first and likely the oldest, is me sitting on my dads lap while he was trimming my finger nails. I know that the television was on, and I know that he had a Pabst Blue Ribbon because I remember drinking from the can. My dad would do this thing when he would open his beer, something that no human born later than 1985 would recall, he would peel back the tab and he would drop it in his beer can. From there he would take a long guzzle but thats not what stands out. What stands out most is the intimate way that my dad was trimming my nails, and I have thought of it every moment in my adult life when ever I have trimmed either my nieces and nephews nails or later my sweet Jonahs nails. Propped on my dads lap he would bite my nails to trim them. One by one…carefully and methodically. I rememeber the sour smell of beer on his breath and a pipe with strawberry tobacco extinguishing in the ash tray. I remember goosebumps and falling asleep hot with summer sweat and thats where the memory ends. The only memory I have of me sitting on my dads lap (drop a pin here “Back of a Harley”) It must have been one of his days off, or before he went into his second shift job at Cat. Speaking of Caterpillar, my second place Dad memory is walking with him and a women…that I believe he worked with, through the streets of my hometown (drop a pin here “fence post”) my guess is from the VFW to the car because it cuts to me riding in the back seat, dropping her off at her apartment. I couldn’t tell you if it was all in one day but one must sumise that it was because it starts in daylight and ends at night. For some reason, I feel like it was around the forth of July and for some strange reason….I see her as Truvy, Dolly Partons character in Steel Magnolias and Tammy Fay Baker because of her sparkeling lip stick. Who was this women, what were we doing with her and why? She leaned over the back seat and looked at me and said “You want me to be your girlfriend?”

What do these memories have to do with me now? What could I ever decifer through those memories in relation to my current life situation? I have no idea. What I know is that they happened, and as fleeting as they are, they have molded me in some way. I find myself cocking my head to one side thinking about them, trying to make out faces in my minds eye and poof, done. My dad was not a bad man, he was a pained man, and he moved through his life always trying to make up for lost time and until later in his life never finishing what he started. I’m not a bad man I too am a pained man and the more I reflect on my life these last dozen or so years the more I find myself surprisingly more like my dad than not. Was he always trying to make a memory with me by asking me to tag along or was I just a bystandard too young to be a designated driver? (Drop a pin here “one hitter”). Am I a sequal to my dads life? Is my story another example of history repeating itself? Do I blame myself or do I blame the generations of drunks before me, for gifting me this empty disease? You’re lucky enough to be along for this ride. You’re lucky enough that you don’t have to try and answer my questions, they’re mine to decifer and yours to Muse.

I miss my dad. I hear his voice all the time but don’t hear him giving me advice, you know…from one cleaned up drunk to another trying to clean up. I want to be able to drive down and sit next to him with a pack of cigarettes and a couple pitchers of iced tea and ask him how long this battle lasts. I want him to tell me that it will hurt but that the gift is at the end of the journey. I want him to tell me that he’s proud of me and when I hit my stride or some daunting anniversary I want him to tell me that he told me so and that he never doubted that I would get there. I want him to tell me that his mistakes were bigger than any I have ever made and that I still have a silver lining. I miss my Dad. I miss him more now than when he died. I miss him more now than when my sweet son was born. I tell myself that was him that opened the clouds and showed me the light of the sun through the trees the day I carried the anchor and chain to the side of lake….5 days before my day 1. 🧡🧡🧡

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Dinner, Drinks and Superman

Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez on Pexels.com

Just remember that phrase; It may never be clear. The truth is there simply isn’t a rule book or a list of directions out there for anyone to follow when they’ve chosen and in some cases been forced to become sober. The only clarity you may have is that this time, may very well be your last chance to get clean. Like any addict, I always felt like I had the upper hand in my addiction. I absolutely knew how to play the game. Well I thought I knew how to play the game. It’s a mix of sad and funny to think back on my drinking. I was never going to be my dad, a shameless and broken drunk that scared his kids and had stinky feet. Turns out I may have been worse. At least my dad played it straight. He was exactly the drunk he showed his kids and his wife. He never hid his drunken rages and certainly never stowed himself away in a spare bedroom or one of his kids beds to “innocently drift off”. Gary showed each of his colors to us. Proud as a peacock. I on the other hand…I created a character. A make believe cast member in a make believe 1950’s TV show. We all have swords to fall on, mine will be losing time. Losing precious experiences and clouding priceless memories with my son and bruised husband. I have managed in a very small period of time to almost completely alienate the dream that I had for myself. For better or for worse…it’s my story my non-fiction. And sharing it with you is my gift. I hope in some small way I can help you see through your shadows.

I was a classy drunk. I drank white wine with fish and poultry, when I was alone I drank it straight from the bottle…classy for sure. Red wine was my best friend for several years, she and I had plenty of laughs together. It just so happened that she was weak sauce and eventually what started as two glasses in a matter of about a year became three bottles a night. But I was classy. Vodka martinis had a certain allure…”filthy dirty” was how I ordered them. “Three ice cubes and three olives please, blue cheese if you’ve got them”. Beer was reserved for football games, camp fires and garage parties and only the best German beer for me, you see I was classy. Behind closed doors what you didn’t see was that if I started with a glass of wine at a party or a restaurant, I finished with a bottle of wine at home behind closed doors. If I started with a martini, I finished with a bottle of cheap grape vodka in the basement…and hid the remnants deep in the cushions of the couch. Classy. Every night before 5pm, I would finish “taking my tylenol” which consisted of a bottle of wine or two glasses of water (code for straight vodka) which was just enough to take the pain away. If I had some extra unexpected time before the husband got home, I would literally stand in the back office window, staring at the garage waiting for it to open while drinking without looking at the bottle or the glass. The more I could swallow before he arrived, the better. I would always manage to get dinner ready and have the house all shiny and clean you see, thats what sober people do they clean and keep things tidy, drunks are slobs and slovenly. Candles were lit, Food was on the table and eaten in short order, the sooner we could eat the better to cover up the smell on my breath. Bedtime for my son was always my looking glass moment. One of many times in my day to day that my conscience caught up with me. In retrospect it was never so hard that I stopped, just hard enough to remind me how big of a piece of shit I was. You see, the drink always followed me into the bathroom for my boys shower time. While he was safely showering away, I was taking the time to “drink in private” on the other side of the shower curtain. Anything I could do to keep the glass of wine or booze out of sight from my husband. It was after the shower that the heavy, hidden guzzles would sink in which was always the perfect time to usher my sweet boy to bed. That way if I passed out it wasn’t because of the booze, it was because I was warm and cozy with my sweet guy. Here’s something shitty, I devised a plan early on just how I wouldn’t let my kid smell my drunk breath. I would tuck him in making sure he was facing the wall and then I would prop myself up in just a way so that once again…my drunk breath wasn’t going in his face. It occured to me later that the main reason I always had a fan going in his room wasn’t to keep him cool or to provide him with white noise it was because doing so would blow my drunk breath away from him. More on my drunken “patterns” later but, inevitably I would in fact fall asleep. Over time, my husband stopped waking me and let me sleep. It was better for him to let me sleep in there that way, my snoring wouldn’t wake him and he could get a good nights sleep. What I regret most about that pattern are a few things. 1. In the last 6 years, my son never got the real Dadda at bedtime. I always imagined I was that parent that read Superman stories and talked till my boy would drift off and I’m now left to wonder how many times I drifted off snoring, leaving him to fear me or wonder why I wouldn’t wake up when he tried to stir me. 2. Though it takes a team to create co-dependant behavior and my husband is responsible for himself…how far did I push him away to make it okay with him that falling asleep (passing out) with our son, was a better alternative than waking me and asking me to bed. 3. How did I manage to make dinner DRUNK every night without serving something charred or raw? Drunks will do everything in their power to keep up appearances and NOT give themselves away. Noone is the exception. More to come…