Who Am I To Be Happy?

Chapter 2 paints a picture of childhood chaos.

By the time I was 18 years old home life was starting to stabilize.  My dad successfully stopped drinking for good.  Tom has been sober for about 13 years, and I couldn’t be more proud of him for it.  We have a pretty good relationship currently, and that is marked as a win in my book.  My senior year in high school is when I started drinking regularly.  I wouldn’t say my drinking was ever an addiction, but there were times I used alcohol to stop unwanted thoughts and feelings.  

Now at the age of 30 I have finally taken serious steps towards a healing process.  Healing from old childhood wounds that I’ve yet to make sense of.  Healing from insecurities of worthlessness, and never living up to  what my parents wanted.  Healing from personal failures that haunt me to this day.  Essentially learning how to be happy, what a foreign concept.  Happy, me… I can be happy?  Who am I to be happy, how does that even work?  Guys, this is what we're dealing with, a total rewire of my monkey brain.  Learning to be happy with myself, and not worry about living up to anyone else’s expectations is going to be hard to do.  After all, I've spent the better part of my life going against my gut, and doing what I thought others would want me to do.

When I was a kid there were periods of a stable home life.  I would walk home from school around 3, mom was there starting to get dinner ready, and dad’s big yellow and red work truck would soon back into the driveway… All was right with the world.  The very next day pretty much the same thing, except the clock would get to 4, 5, 5:30, oh boy this isn’t looking good, 6, and by 7 it was made clear dad isn’t coming home tonight.  This night may consist of an angry confrontation  between my parents at 12-1 in the morning, maybe just him passing out somewhere, backing the truck into our minivan, or possibly backing the truck into my basketball post… Yes all of this, and plenty more really happened.  You see, my dad was never violent, but he was more unpredictable when he’d been drinking, which was pretty darn frightening as a kid.  I never knew what to expect, but I would almost always wait up to see if he made it home.  Then, when I seen the tail lights of his truck in the driveway, a sort of panic would sweep through me.  Please just let him go to bed, I hope mom doesn’t start a fight now.  Oh no, what if he comes into my room, s**t he’s in the hallway, c’mon walk past my room.  This is what I could go through for days, or weeks at a time.  This was just life for so many years, but I never would get comfortable with it.  

When I was 15 years old I asked my mom to divorce my dad.  I questioned her reasoning for keeping us in a toxic relationship for so long, that is how I viewed it.  She told me how good of a person he is, and that his drinking doesn’t define his true character.  She was right, my dad is a terrific person who I now love and respect deeply.  This sounds terrible, but I can’t help to think if my mom made the right decision.  I kind of feel sick thinking about it, but I often wonder how life would have been if divorce was the route my parents chose.  Is that even healthy to think about now, does this make me a terrible person to hypothetically write my father off?  Would my personal self worth be any different today if things had gone another way?

Blaming others for my personal shortcomings gives me a hot wave of sweaty nausea, the kind that forces you  to lie on the cool tile floor until it passes.  Whenever I describe a situation or traumatic moment in my life, I am quick to defend, and reason with the actions that occurred.  Oh my dad was struggling with alcoholism, and he had a brutal childhood, so that is why he didn’t come home.  This is a real struggle for me in therapy sessions, the reasoning portion for traumatic events that have occurred in my life.  Does the reason why something horrible happened to you really matter?  It happened, stop making excuses for the opposite party, and find a way to heal the wounds that it left behind.  Just because someone has done something hurtful to me shouldn’t make them my enemy .  It makes me feel terrible reliving events that my father involved  not only me, but my mother and family.  The reason I feel so bad is because I know he’s a good person who I love very much, and I don’t want anyone, myself included to think negatively of him.  Forgiveness will take a great effort, but acceptance will command an epiphany that I have yet to find.

Accepting who I am, what a difficult  notion to examine, and grasp.  I can say with confidence that today as I write this that I am not fully happy with who I am, therefore not accepting of myself.  Being alright with the stuff I’m not alright with, isn’t alright, alright… What I’m trying to say is that if I don’t knock something out of the park I get disappointed with myself.  My high expectations of myself often cause me to shut down altogether.  Sticking with the challenge until the end will hopefully build self esteem, confidence, and will make me a stronger individual.  I want to look at the guy in the mirror and fully trust him, but for the time being I’ll keep an eye on myself.

Author's Note

Please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!