Maybe the worst thing about drunks and narcissists (sometimes one in the same) is that everything is always about them. Always happening to them and nobody else. And for an alcoholic, anything is an excuse to drink. A cousin’s impending death, for example. No matter that you have not been close at all for at least the twenty-odd years I know about. Any sort of disturbance on your radar is a reason to selfishly drown in booze and then subject your family to your incoherent, arrogant and aggressive ramblings. Just go to sleep. I like when you close your eyes in the kitchen chair and start to slump over to the side a little bit because it means you’re going to quiet down. The flash of a thought of a fear that I am going to become exactly like you, or that I already am exactly like you, forces itself upon me when I take a drink. Which, oddly enough, is quite a fine justification for needing a drink.

The cycle continues.

I watch you interact with her and I watch her deal with you. I hear the annoyance, no — irritation — exhaustion, bewilderment, complete and utter lack of hope — in her sigh as you open your mouth again and again and again only to talk at her so that she will listen. It’s never the other way around. I am confident that you have never really heard to her. Her concerns, her feelings, her opinion. You like to talk at her, not to her. You like for her to hear you, but not respond to you. It’s a one way street. Listen to me, love me, take care of me, but fuck you. Fuck your needs and what you want. Just be there. Be a body for me to sleep next to. Be a companion. Be a loyal servant. Get me a beer. And a cold mug.

Thanks for working and putting food on the table. You did it, and I have to always remember that. You didn’t leave us. You never left us. You came home every night. Rarely sober, but you came home. And who cares that you were three or four or six beers deep as you read us our bedtime stories “the funny way” and we convulsed with laughter on the couch? We didn’t know the difference. You’d wrap me tightly in my towel after a bath and carry me to the couch and drop me and you were the only one I wanted to do it because your arms were the safest place in the world.

You’re never content.

I wonder what haunts you. What could have possibly been so bad that you cannot live without whiskey and self-loathing. The thing that scares me most in the world is that you two aren’t still together because you love each other, but because you’re both afraid to leave and have been this way for a very long time. A marriage of convenience. A marriage of comfort. And when did comfort become such a bad thing? Since when does that word carry such a negative connotation in regards to marriage? Who wouldn’t want to be comfortable? But the thing is, you don’t always seem comfortable. Not unless she is steamrolling over her anger at you. Not unless it’s two in the afternoon and you’re buzzed.

She doesn’t deserve your negativity. He doesn’t deserve mine. How could I not be you? All I see is the similarities. I have your eyes. Out of four children, I am the only one with your eyes. And your total self-involvement.

Maybe it’s because of those times when you’d bully her, not physically, but emotionally. And everyone else would be smart enough to run out of the room but I thought if I stayed I could somehow diffuse the tension. Say the right thing or be a distraction. But you were relentless in your mission to drive her away.

Why do you want to push her away?

When I have children — if I have children — I hope I can remember to not show them that. I don’t want to tell my children that things are hopeless, that the world is a shithole. I want them to be optimistic, though I am pessimistic by nature. I want them to be generally accepting and confident, though I am wary and insecure. I don’t want them to think that I am miserable, even when I am. But how can you fake that kind of thing?