I grew up in a family that, on the surface, seemed like it should have been filled with love and warmth. But the reality was far from that. My childhood was marked by a constant underlying tension, a sense of fear that never quite left me. The source of that fear was my father.
Whenever my father drank, something changed in him. The man who was once a loving father, who would smile and tell stories, would vanish behind a fog of alcohol. In his place, a person I didn't recognize would emerge - a person full of anger and aggression. He would always find an excuse to pick a fight with my mother, sometimes over the smallest things. The shouting would fill the house, the sound of glass breaking, doors slamming, and my mother crying. As a little kid, I didn't understand why this was happening. All I knew was that it made me feel unsafe. It made me feel like the world around me was spinning out of control, and I had no power to stop it.
I was terrified of my father when he drank. It wasn't just that I feared him; I feared what would happen next. The uncertainty, the tension hanging in the air - would it escalate? Would I have to witness another fight? Would my mother be hurt? It was always that feeling of walking on eggshells, never knowing when the storm would hit. Every night, I went to bed hoping and praying that maybe tonight, he wouldn't drink. Maybe tonight, things would be different.
But they rarely were.
As the years went by, I grew up in that environment, and I learned to cope in my own ways. I became hyper-aware of every little change in the air. If my father had been drinking, I could tell by the way he walked into the room, the way his eyes looked, the way his speech slurred. It was like a warning sign I had learned to recognize too well. The anxiety would rise in me immediately - my heart would start racing, my palms would sweat, and a wave of nervous energy would flood through my body. I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop it. Even though I was no longer a child, those old fears still had a hold on me.
I hated that feeling. I hated the power that fear had over me, and I hated the fact that I couldn't make it stop. My father's behavior, his drinking, was something I had no control over. I often wondered why it had to be this way. Why did my family have to suffer? Why couldn't things be different? Why couldn't my father just change?
As a child, I prayed for change. Every night before I fell asleep, I would whisper a silent prayer, hoping that tomorrow would be different. Hoping that my father would stop drinking. Hoping that the fighting would stop. I wanted peace. I wanted love. I wanted the kind of family I saw in other people's homes - where parents laughed together, where there wasn't fear hanging in the air, where children could sleep soundly without worrying about what the next day would bring.
But things didn't change. Over time, I learned to deal with the fear, even though it never really went away. I tried to find small moments of happiness where I could - times when my father was sober, when there was laughter and normalcy, moments that reminded me that there was goodness in him somewhere. But those moments were fleeting. They didn't last long enough to ease the pain of the battles that followed.
Even as I grew older, the scars from those years never quite healed. Every time my father drank, I felt that same panic rise in me. It was as if the child in me was still there, still afraid, still hoping for change. I could try to block out the feelings, to convince myself that I was no longer that scared little kid, but deep down, I knew that those experiences shaped who I had become.
I used to wish so desperately that my father could change - that he would realize the damage his actions caused. That he would see how much pain he put us through, how much it affected me. I wanted him to understand what it was like to live in a house where love felt conditional, where safety was uncertain, and where fear was a constant companion. I wanted him to be the father I always hoped he could be.
But that never happened. And so, I grew up, carrying the weight of those experiences with me, learning to cope in the best way I knew how. Sometimes it felt like the weight of it all was too much. Other times, I tried to bury the feelings deep inside, pretending they didn't affect me, convincing myself that I was strong enough to move past them.
But no matter how much I tried to distance myself from my past, those old fears would always resurface, like ghosts that wouldn't be exorcised. The nervous energy, the palpitations, the racing heart - it all came flooding back whenever my father drank. And no matter how old I got, no matter how far away I moved from that place, those feelings never quite disappeared.
I don't know if my father will ever change. I don't know if he even realizes the impact his actions had on me, on all of us. But I do know this: despite all the fear and pain, despite all the brokenness, I survived. I made it through those years, and I am still here. And even though I may never fully heal from the scars of my past, I know I am stronger than I once thought.
I still hope, in some small part of my heart, that things could be different. But I've learned to accept that the only thing I can truly change is myself. And maybe that, in itself, is enough.