Fingers crossed

This is my greatest fear

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, and now is as good a time as any to take a voyage around my father.

TL;DR:  My father is one of my triggers, and one of the main reasons that I'm so panicked by my own addictive behaviours.  He's also the reason Furiosa and I are so intimately familiar with our own psychologies (and each other's), and also why we're both so literate in self-reflection and therapeutic verbalisation.

My father's addiction is alcohol, and for the past 30 years I've watched him slowly slide from functional human being into almost complete obsolescence.  I have no idea how he's even alive, and this week it looks like he's beginning to gear up for one of his trademark stunts.

He's been such a dick about not having his bank card that the decision has been taken to let him have it back, knowing full well that he'll be drunk for several weeks, possibly months, with worsening health problems, trips and falls which will have him in and out of the Sad Old Man ward at the hospital.  I have my fingers crossed that this time round it will be different, so that's where the post title comes from.  I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the whole thing, but be warned:  you might be more than a little surprised by the time I'm done.

So, let's take some time to explore how I'm currently feeling about my alcoholic father, shall we?

Long story short: my father had a normal, if rather privileged upbringing in the 60s, education and larks, complete with feats of drunken bravado at the local hockey club.  He held the club record for downing a pint of Newcastle Brown while standing on one leg, on a chair, on a table for a good couple of years.  Office job in the city in the 70s, oil industry, world travel, duty free, fags and booze, &c..  Unemployment in the 80s, at which point the slide starts to become noticeable.  I'm not sure if the alcoholism was what caused him to lose his job, or whether it started as a result.  Who knows.

Mad Men is the perfect example of the kind of culture that I'm talking about

Nothing really out of the ordinary there, no childhood trauma or abuse, but the drinking culture of sports clubs and offices at the time are certainly factors.  The general consensus amongst my family members, however, is that bad parenting is to blame.  My father, and his twin brother, could do no wrong.  They were never held accountable by their doting mother for their actions.  Boys will be boys was very much the excuse, giving both of them (and they are both as bad as each other) a complete lack of personal responsibility.  This, we believe, caused all the early warning signs to be missed, all the blame to be shifted onto others and all the denial that continues to this day.

Miraculously, all his children have grown up to be nice, compassionate human beings.  We all have our issues and our questionable coping strategies, but we all like each other and we have all formed healthy, long-term relationships with suitable partners.  Those two things alone, in this day and age, appear to be very rare things, and the irony is that we probably have them because of, even in spite of my father's addiction.  Side-note:  my mother is my hero.  She has said to us all that she didn't marry the father she wanted for her children, but out of that she has salvaged four pretty awesome human beings, and she's done a lot of it on her own.  She is a bona fide marvel.

What we call his 'stunts' are trips, falls and other events that require an ambulance to get to hospital.  It comes to something that my youngest sister, by the age of 14, was able to pack an overnight bag for him and have it ready by the time the paramedics arrived.  These days the stunts happen roughly every six months or so, but it depends on where he is in the downward spiral and how easily he can get booze.  Every time it happens, it triggers my coping strategies, and I use fantasy sex to insulate myself from the complex emotions involved.  Spending time with him, such as when we visit my mother, can also trigger this, but that's a story for another post.

It's also worth noting the parallel that I cannot fail to draw between his cycles of addictive behaviour and mine.  If you haven't read Toormina Video, now is the time:

http://www.patgrantart.com/toominavideo/toorminavideo.html

It's a supremely unhelpful comparison to make, of course, but when I get low, I can see myself losing my career, my marriage and my family unless I seriously get my shit together some time soon.  Incidentally, when my depression was at its worst after University, and I was drinking socially and regularly, one of the things that prevented me from becoming an alcoholic was my existing addiction to fantasy sex.  I didn't need alcoholism, because I already had a means of escape.  My sex addiction actually saved me.  Again, that's something for another post.  Let's get back to talking about his stunts, which, now that he has his bank card again, I can see headed this way, sooner or later.

A thumbnail sketch, then, of his most notable stunt to date, which was about 3 years ago, in hospital with an ulcer in his small intestine.  The reason for being in hospital was actually what doctors call a PFO (Pissed, Fell Over) in their evil, snarky shorthand.  He'd been found face down in the alleyway between our house and the shops, got carted off to hospital and was recovering on the ward when his ulcer ruptured.  Crash operation.  Frantic trolley dash across the hospital to the operating room.  He has a very messy scar on his abdomen where the surgeon had no time for art or care.  We don't know what happened to his front teeth as tubes were forced in, because he was vomiting and shitting blood at the same time.  We still don't know what happened to his front teeth.

That was the bottom of one of his downward spirals, and after waking up in intensive care with his family around him, he managed about 3 weeks before hitting the bottle again.  3 weeks.  Since then there's been a few falls on the way back from the corner shop, and some really fun seizures about six months ago, but nothing to top the ulcer episode.  Every stunt before that one, I'd cross my fingers and hope that this time he'd finally wake up, get his shit together and turn his life around.  Fingers crossed that this stunt would be the last one.

And now he's got his hands on his bank card again, and everyone in my family knows what happens next.  We all know that we know, because we're exceptionally good at talking about it.  Lord knows we've had enough practice.  What happens now is that he spirals downwards as fast as he can get alcohol.  Mobility is an issue since both his legs stopped working a couple of months back.  That's right, his legs just stopped working one morning.  He had a walking frame for a while, but now he's back on the doddering about again.  He'll find a way to get booze, stay drunk for a number of weeks, exacerbate one of his range, nay suite of health complications and eventually wind up in hospital after some new climactic stunt.

And here's me, fingers crossed, that this time it will be different, that this stunt will be the last one.

That this time he'll finally manage to kill himself and leave us all to get on with our lives.

Fingers crossed...

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