My parents and I on their wedding day.
This is one of the only photos I have of the three of us together
I can't remember the specific details - the date, time or even the season - of when I left home for good, but the feelings surrounding that period of my life have stayed remarkably clear over the years.
I would have been about 13 or 14 years old. I remember this because I walked to school during the last half of my Grade 8 year instead of taking the bus, which I would have had to do if I was still living with my father on the other side of town.
It was my second time staying with my grandparents over a two year period, the first stay setting a series of events into motion that never slowed despite assurances and promises things would be better. Even at a young age, I could look at everything that happened and know things weren't going to be as easy to fix as the lawyers, social workers and counsellors thought. Family issues rarely are.
The night of the first incident, I was on the phone. I can't remember who I was talking to or what prompted the altercation, but what I can recall is how drunk my father was.
He had started drinking much earlier in the evening, an entire 24-case of empty, amber bottles lined up along the side of the stove. Our phone hung from the wall next to the fridge with a chair moved underneath it to sit after the cord started to crackle from being stretched around the corner and into the living room.
The cord stretched a different way that night when he came at me, angry and tried to wrap it around my neck. I remember dropping the phone and running to my room, shutting the door only to have him push it in before I could lock it. That was the night he told me to leave, since obviously I didn't like the way he was choosing to run the house.
So I did.
Even though my mother hadn't been in the picture for several years, my brother and I remained close to her parents, our maternal grandparents and they were the first people I called. I remember walking down the end of my street to meet them after my father passed out. There were red marks on my neck and the police were called. I knew that night that going forward, things were going to be different.
Everything had changed. During the two years it took for my grandparents to be named my guardians, there were court dates, visits to counsellors and a period of time where I was sent back to live with my father because the courts said I was too young to make a decision about where I wanted to live. My father said he wanted to get his life together, to get his addictions under control and even though I didn't believe it, I went along with it. I knew it was only a matter of time - I'd either turn 16 and be able to leave on my own or he'd slip up. The latter seemed just as likely as the former since I knew he didn't really intend to change his ways, so I waited.
Within less than a year, I was back at my grandparents house. Barely a teenager, I learned how to be disappointed and how to be let down by someone who was supposed to love me unconditionally. And while I didn't think the situation had a big effect on me as a teen, looking back as an adult, I can see the way my relationship with my father coloured the way I looked at other relationships during my teens and early 20s. Even after severing ties with my father, our relationship gave me a really twisted idea of what love should look like and for a long time, I looked for it in all the wrong places.
I will not break the way you did, you fell so far/ I've learned the hard way to never let it get that far
I spoke with my father at Christmas during my first year of university. He called my grandfather's house, wanting to talk to me. Drunk, as usual, he spent most of our time on the phone talking about how miserable he was and how drinking was making him unhappy. I felt like a broken record, answering back with "if it's not making you happy, then stop." Each time he'd say he didn't need to stop because he didn't have a problem. I wasn't even 20 years old and he was expecting me to be the adult in our relationship. I eventually gave up. That was the last time I talked to him.
I used to get a lot of questions about my family and for those who didn't know me growing up, the answers usually surprise them. Considering what I've been given to work with - a mother who was absent for most of my life, an alcoholic father and a brother who's constantly in trouble with the law -the direction my life went doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
Instead of staying in the town I grew up in, I left as soon as I was able to and have only returned for brief stays - Christmas breaks, summer vacations. Instead of dropping out of school in Grade 9, I worked hard at my schooling, got a scholarship and completed a university degree. Instead of drawing welfare or expecting someone else to take care of me, my professional career began two weeks before I graduated. Instead of going nowhere, I decided I would do something with my life. I wouldn't be like my parents.
Because here's the thing: while I would often come off indifferent when people asked me about my parents, I was actually holding on to a lot of hurt and hatred.
To my mother, both for leaving when I was younger and reappearing in my teens. It felt like she'd brushed off the responsibility of actually raising me, coming back when the heavy lifting was done and expecting things to be fine when there was no way they could ever be.
To my brother, for the way he let what we went through destroy him when he could have done so much with his life and to all those working in child protective services who did nothing to help him because let's face it: unless you go through these kinds of things, you have no idea how to handle them. The type of problems kids like us deal with can't be learned from a textbook.
Most of all, to my father for all the ways he let me down. For the way he chose alcohol over my brother and I time and time again. For every time he spent all day in bed, sleeping off a hangover. For the way he treated the women in his life. For every time there wasn't enough food in the house because he drank every cheque that came in. My experience with my father had me convinced the only thing I could ever really count on was myself.
But the trouble with holding onto those feelings is they don't serve you. While I was busy hating my parents, my family and everything about where I came from, my growth was stalled. And in that stalled place, I made some pretty bad decisions. It wasn't until I let those feelings go - for real, not just for show - that things started changing.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6:14-15
Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
Colossians 3:13
I didn't stop hating my immediate family overnight. It was a process that happened in stages - dishonesty with regard to my real feelings, actual indifference, sadness, pity then - finally - forgiveness and yes, love. Love, even though my relationships with my mother, brother and father are likely to stay exactly where they are, at least for now. I have more growing to do and I'm not sure I can do that inside their circle of influence.
But I can keep wanting the best for them. I can keep praying. And I can keep looking to God for strength and wisdom so one day I'll be able to pick up my tools and start repairing the bridges that we've burned.
so let it go and be amazed by what you see through eyes of grace
the prisoner that it really frees is you.
