Adult Child of an Alcoholic

Coming in hot with a realness post today. It’s been 2 years since my dad passed and I can actually say, and have been able to say, that I miss him. That wasn’t something I thought that I would ever really feel. My dad was an alcoholic my entire life and I was never as close to him as I would have liked, nor a “daddy’s girl”. My mom tells me that I apparently pushed him away from a very young age because maybe I already had a sense of what was to come. He was abusive, and while he of course had good days, the bad days are the usually the days that stood out the most.

We tried helping him battle his addictions, but if you know of or are an addict yourself – you know that no one can help you but yourself. You also can’t help someone that doesn’t want help. The disease is stronger than most, especially since alcohol is so socially accepted and promoted, and when my dad had his good days, I saw glimpses of the Daddy that I wish he could have been for me and I would hope and pray that he would stop drinking. When he would ask me what I wanted for my birthday, I would respond with “I just want you to stop drinking”. When he wouldn’t stop, I blamed myself. Why am I not good enough for him to stop drinking? What can I do differently to help him stop being so abusive? The answers to those questions never came because I had to realize that his demons had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him.

The “not good enough” story replayed over and over in my mind and the journey of self love has been a long road. I spent a lot of years trying to fill a void that I never quite understood until I got older. I used to think that telling people about my Dad meant that I was broken and admitting that to people, I thought, would make me lose friends. “Daddy issues” are real and manifest in different ways for different people. Not everyone ends up being a stripper and addicted to coke.

I’m a firm believer in allowing my past to shape me but not define me. What I mean by that is, every single choice and moment led me to be who I am today, but I’m not going to continue the patterns of my parents just because that’s how I grew up and that’s what I saw. So many times I see people not only stay stuck in those patterns, but stay so deep in it that they judge other people for not staying stuck with them.  As the saying goes, misery loves company, however, I knew, through and through, that was not a path I was going to follow.

He loved me the best way he knew how and in the capacity he could.  Now that I am an adult, I have realized that it is my job to redefine love and give it to myself and my daughters in a healthy way that does not carry on the pattern I grew up with.

Through years of therapy, a lot of hard work on myself (which is a daily practice), I forgive him and I have realized that he did the absolute best with what he had and guess what? That was good enough for me. The relationship that I had with my Dad was appropriate for the time and I have learned SO many things from him that I never would have imagined had he not been in my life. The things that I wished he would have said or done for me didn’t happen, but I can make damn sure now that my girls get from me what I never got from him. I absolutely wouldn’t be where I am right now, had it not been for him. He taught me strength and perseverance like no other and because of him I stand up for myself and take zero shit from anyone. I’m able to be the best kind of mommy to my girls because of him and I have the most amazing husband because of him too. We now have a clean slate and I feel him around me all the time. He’s a new spiritual guide for me and while I miss him and sometimes wish he was here to see my girls grow up, I’m thankful to be able to have a new and different kind of relationship with him now in the afterlife.

I love you Dad. QDTB.

xo,

C