Family | alcohol abuse
My Father Was a Troubled Drunk
A brief history of the man who created me
My father often pops up in my stories and poems. I reference him to explain my own behavior, but I also use him as a character, usually portraying him better than he was or even totally different. I also talk about him in my book, but merely fragmented — the highlights so to speak. I guess I’m writing this to have the whole story on record somewhere. It is not meant as a tribute, nor to credit him in some way — that he does not deserve. This is how I remember him and what I have been told about him — I cannot say that all of this reflects reality.
Before I was born
My father was born in late 1947. He had an older brother and they grew up in a middle class suburb of a town near Antwerp. I know my grandfather as a calm, silent and even pleasant man, but he and my father never really got along. I don’t know whether he was happy as a child or teenager, or as an adult for that matter; I have seen photos in which he appeared to be happy and I witnessed him being somewhat happy while being drunk, but I don’t know if he ever was truly happy.
Not ready to be a dad
My parents were quite young when I was born — my father 21, my mother 19 — and I…
