Saturday, October 10, 2009

New Song

Apparently my last blog... Yeah. I was in a bad mood but it all worked itself out the way it needed to.

Have u ever wanted to be so close to someone and they just don't seem to open up completely? Well that's how its been with my father my whole life. This man is the best father any daughter could ever ask for. He has really grown into a man that I love with all my heart. He has definitely had a hard time in the past with many things.

My dad doesn't really ever talk about his past. All I know is that my grandpa loved to race rally cars and my dad loved to watch him. On my dads 18th birthday, he came home to all his stuff packed outside the house. His stepmom had thrown his shit out saying that he was an adult now. Could you imagine?? All he ever says about her is that she is a horrible person and then he stops himself from going on, what that means, I don't know.

He then proceeded to live in his car for months until he decided to join the marines.

My dad served 8 years active duty as a cryptologist and a mechanic. He has plenty of amusing and dare-devil stories to go on forever.. After he served, he met my mother and had three kids.

My dad fell into a horrible addiction while he was married to my mother. The addiction was to methamphetamines.

It all started when he started working graveyards. One of his coworkers gave him some white powder and told him that it would help him stay awake throughout his 12 hour shift. What his friend didn't know is that he would be giving my father a poison that would soon destroy everything that he lived for.

When you are addicted to drugs, you don't think about anything other than getting high. You can't operate properly(or at all) unless you do get high. The drug tells you at first that you want it, then you crave it, and finally, you need it. A drug's sole purpose is to brainwash you to believe that it is your higher power and you will sacrifice anything to be with it. It tells you that everything is great and you will be on top of the world forever. What it forgets to leave out is that it will come at the cost of your body, mind and soul.

My father is a good man who became sick. Addiction is an evil disease that sadly, many people cannot overcome. I do not blame him for the pain he put my mother and family through and I definitely don't blame him for what he put himself through. During this time period, he was not fully my father, he was taken over by something dark.

My mother divorced my father when I was 8 years old. She divorced him because she knew that he had started doing some type of drug and the fact that he had some woman in the house while we were all at school. My poor mother. From there it just got worse. He was spending so much money on his poison that he started to sell our toys for drug money and pulled two full time jobs. Despite all of this, he still tried to be a good father and spend time with his kids every other weekend.

A couple years later, he met my step-mom. she was just as sick, if not more sick than he was. She introduced him to a new drug called crack cocaine. My dad had completely checked out at this point, but I knew that there was still a small part of him on the inside that was screaming "HELP"

Everything became extremely real to me when I was about ten years old. I was sitting on the couch watching a movie with my brother(who was 8) and we heard a glass break and a big thud in the kitchen. We walk in and see my dad on all 4's with his eyes wide open and shaking profusely. We started crying and calling his name but he couldn't answer us. We thought our dad was dying. At that age, no one should ever have to see that. I know he wanted to answer us and tell us that everything would be okay and that he was so sorry but he physically couldn't. Like I said earlier, drugs come at a price of your body, mind and soul. After my step mother came in, she rushed us out of there and proceeded to yell "dennis why would you do this shit with the kids here, you are such a weak individual, I hope your proud of yourself". I had so many mixed emotions going on that I didn't know what to think. Is he dying? If he isn't then why is he acting like that? Only one thing had clicked in my mind and at that moment I knew at the age of 10 that my father was a drug user.

I loved my dad, I loved him to death. I knew that if my brother or myself told my mom about this incident that she would make sure we never saw him again. So we made a pact that we wouldn't ever say anything. And we didn't. From that point on, we went through a roller coaster with him.. From living in a nice apartment with food in the cupboards and a warm bed to sleep in, to living in a tent for 3 months. I tried to play dumb but I knew what was going on... It was really devistating to see how drugs can manipulate someone's life.

I had to partially let my father go and either let him continue down that dark, unforseen path, or attempt to do the hardest thing in his life, recover from his disease.

Well its been years since he's done any hard drugs(thank god). My dad is definitely a stoner but I will take that over the old him ANY DAY. To re-iterate, I have always loved my father and have never blamed him for any of this, I blame the drug.

Our relationship with eachother has soared to new heights ever since I left home for bootcamp. We talk on the phone for at least 2 hours once a week and I love it. He tells me all the time that he is proud of me and that I made the right decision. A new side has come out of him that I have never EVER seen in my entire life. He told me the other day that if I needed to talk about how I feel homesick, or how I'm getting along with the different personalities here, or just how to stay sane, that I could talk to him and he'd let me know his experiances that he had when he was in the marines. He wants to talk about his past with me? But more importantly, his feelings? I thank the lord everyday for the relationship that he has given me. I am so lucky that I have such a strong person as a father.

Not everyone is as lucky as I am <3

No comments:

Post a Comment