Don't Forget to Write

A smaller place

I drove my mom's car, she and my sister were in no shape to drive, especially in this snow. It was silent the whole way.

In my childhood room, there were still posters of cool cars and my favorite soccer players hanging from the walls. I aspired to be like those people, to drive those Lamborghinis and Ferraris. But now I know that none of that really matters. Every car had its beauties and its faults. I could fall in love with a rusted old pickup truck more than a new sports car. The posters around the room were just expensive toys that people liked because they couldn't afford them. And those soccer players, those role models, what a funny concept that was. That you should aspire to be like people in the public eye. Like that was possible. Like you could amount to the greatness of a professional athlete or the lead singer of a band. Or be like whatever the media portrayed those people to be, anyway. Surely, they had their demons. How could I have ever thought I would be someone special, like them? Someone other than just another student, or just another engineer, or whatever the hell it was I was going to turn out to be. In my older teenage years, once I got overlooking up to soccer players and rappers, I admired guys like Jon Stewart and Joe Rogan. Not because I wanted to be a famous comedian, but because both of them had an uncanny knack for calling out bullshit, (Jon Stewart's voice rang out in mind, saying "the best defense against bullshit is vigilance") much to the dismay of people who run the song and dance of the life happening around us. That was the kind of person I wanted to be. The guy that could make you laugh, but that also wouldn't take shit from the institutions. Who was honest and true even if it meant looking like the bad guy. Joe Rogan's dad left when he was young, and Jon Stewart had legally changed his surname to avoid having the same one as his father. I wondered if that was a subliminal reason to why I looked up to them. Certainly, most people have a father as a role model. But mine was more of a ghost. He never spoke much or did anything other than drinking himself to sleep, wallowing in the self-pity and grief and sadness of things he had no capacity to change. A pang of guilt shot through me, how could you be thinking like that mere hours after his death? But I have no control over where my mind travels. It just goes and drags me a long for the ride. It's always been like that. So, yes, I felt terrible that my father had passed and that I was having these thoughts. But I felt even worse that I never really knew who he was. I'd had more conversations with the neighbor's dads than I'd had with my own. It was a strange kind of pain. I had lost both one of the most important people in my life, and a complete stranger.

That night I laid awake for hours. I should have been tired, both physically and emotionally. My whole world had crashed and burned in less than 24 hours. I went from a happy guy with a girlfriend and two parents and the world ahead of him, to a (forced) college drop-out, single, and without a dad. Every few minutes I'd bring my first down into a pillow, or just whisper the words shit or fuck. I knew it was stupid, even as I was doing it, but I couldn't help myself. In these moments, I hardly cared about school or Camila at all. The only thing on my mind was the rocky relationship between dad and me. The awkward, ever-present silence. The underlying tone permanent and unwarranted disappointment. Whiskey breath and hard hands.

It wasn't even those bad memories that hurt the most. It was this feeling, this childish sentiment that I felt shortly after moving out; maybe now that we were both adults and I wasn't living under his roof, we could actually try and build something. A conversation, a friendship, anything. Maybe it wouldn't be the most loving of relationships. He had done a lot of terrible things in the past that wouldn't be forgotten, ghosts of the beatings and screaming matches would always haunt our interactions. But I had been holding onto this kind of ball of hope that maybe, just maybe, we could have some kind of mutual respect. It was a feeling I almost didn't even realize I had been holding onto until now. Now, now that I would never get the chance. I didn't just lose my dad, I lost a potential future, too. A future in which I didn't resent him.

The sun was beginning its stealthy approach over the horizon when I finally caught a couple of hours of sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later and stared at the ceiling. The lack of thuds and creaks and steps upstairs told me nobody else in the house was awake either, or if they were awake, they were lying in their beds just the same. I finally got up and went into the kitchen. His prescription pills were still laid out across the counter as if he'd be coming back later to take them. Antidepressants, anti-anxieties, lithium tablets, cholesterol moderators, heart pills, and several others. On the other side of the counter was the empty bottle of wine. Next to it was a half-empty bottle of brandy. I poured myself a glass and drank. Then another. I stood all this time because my legs refused to sit, and with each sip of brandy I took, I knew that I was doing something wrong, that I was drinking the very poison that had hurt my relationship with my recently deceased father. I knew that alcohol was becoming a problem. And I didn't care enough to stop.

I drank a third.

The air was stuffy and humid even though the temperature was low. The walls were tight around me. The rooms felt smaller. The whole world was smaller.