Father.  A word I didn’t use much in my childhood.  My father was never there for me when I was a child.  I didn’t even know who he was until I was seven years old.  My mother didn’t tell me who my father was.  When I was a little child, I knew who my dad was as a person, but not as my dad.  It hurt growing up with a single mother and watching my brother go to his dads.  My brother was never happy going to his dad’s place.  Now I know why.

I was seven years old.  I was playing with my cousins at one of their houses.  When someone brings up my father who I didn’t know at the time.  One of my cousins made a comment about him being my dad.  Then, my older cousin tells everyone to shut up and that I didn’t know.  So, being the curious and questioning child I was, I asked what I didn’t know.  My older cousin proceeds to tell me that so and so is my father.  There was a long pause that felt like an eternity.  I looked over to my cousins mother and father.  As I looked over there I saw them slowly nodding their heads up and down.  I immediately ran to the door in tears and ran home.  I then came inside and my mom asked me what was wrong.  I told her the story about my cousins telling me who my dad was.  My mother and I had about an hour and a half talk about my dad.  I remember asking myself one question about 100 times that day.  That question was, “Why?”

My brother Alec always hated going to his dad’s house.  Alec tried giving my mom the most terrible excuses as to why he shouldn’t go to his dads.  At the time I was thinking why wouldn’t you want to go to your dads? Having a dad would be awesome, it would be so cool to have another home to go to every weekend.  That is until I was old enough to understand what an alcoholic was.  My father was an alcoholic.  He was a bad, no good, piece of crap alcoholic.  This man would make Alec come to his house on Wednesdays and weekends.  Alec would just have to stay at home alone when he got old enough to because his dad was at the bar.  His dad wouldn’t let him go out with friends on the weekends, stay at my mom’s house, or even go to our grandmas.  Alec even had to help his dad walk into the house and get him onto the couch just for him to pass out.  I remember Alec crying and begging our mom to not make him go, because he hated it. My mom, being the person she was, didn’t want to get into any trouble with his dad or his family, so Alec had to go to his dads until he was fourteen years old.  Me being only seven or eight years old at the time was confused on why he stopped going.  

Considering I was so young, I thought that it would be awesome to have someone teach you how to play catch, work on your car, and other fun father and son things.  I never knew the pain my brother went through.  I may have been a young child, but I still understood what was going on when my brother broke down in tears.  My brother was the only male role model I had in my life, and I had almost never seen him break down in tears like he did.  He was always my strong, big brother that never cried about anything except this.  That is when I finally knew what was going on.  I knew that a man that called himself a father was the biggest disappointment to mankind.  He did not deserve for anyone to call him dad or even a man, because a real man would have stepped up and tried to become a better father.  Did he do that?  That answer would be no.  What did this guy do?  He didn’t care about his kid or how Alec felt, he just kept drinking.

I am truly sorry and scared for kids who have to deal with alcoholic parents.  I saw what my brother went through as a child.  I wish for no one to go through the pain he went through.  I now thank my mom for everything that she did to keep me out of that situation.  I also thank my brother for stepping up and being the role model I needed in my life.  To even think about my father makes me sick to my stomach.  The people that have respect for a person who puts alcohol before his or her own family make me sick.  These traumatic childhood experiences are all I remember of my father and that is what makes me the man I am today. He has shown me how not to act when I have my own family.  I know that I will never put my children through what he put Alec and I through, because I am a much better person than that.