Spin the bottle

My father is an alcoholic. The only thing is, I never really felt that drunken shadow until this year.

He has always been a phone call here, another wife there. I can't describe to you how many times I sat on my porch with my overnight bag as my only witness for hours. He just wasn't ever truly there.

And then my grandmother died this December, and we couldn't put her to rest because my father was in rehabilitation. They weren't going to even tell me. It had to take a death to see just how empty the bottle really was.

he sobered up. Got a house, got God, got a dog.

Did I worry? Yes. This is a man I could barely hold a conversation with. Mom was the one I always fought with, not dad. However, things seemed okay.
And then he quit his job. Barely a day went by in my younger years when my father came home from hard days work.

But it was okay. He got another one.

Which he quit.

He went to the beach last week, and I watched his dog. Yesterday I asked him how it was. Through the descriptions of fishing, eating, and relaxing were the few syllables of we got drunk..

It kills me. It kills me that he has screwed up his life for so long. It kills me that I can't believe him when he promises things. It kills me that he told me so nonchalantly. And it kills me that I can't say anything.

Like an empty spinning bottle, the torn label dancing with its glossy reflection on the bar, I can only hope I land pointed in the right direction.