What is the cost of addiction? A daughter reflects.

He lived in a world of absolutes. Good or bad; tender kindness or vicious enmity; unbound pleasure or immutable discontentment.

He saw himself as irreparably despondent, devoid of goodness, and incapable of redemption.

He lived as a ghost in the shadows of our family; his only words rooted in drunken anger.

Muffled cries

How does addiction happen? It was a thrill that turned into an escape, an escape that morphed into a crutch, and a crutch that grew into a habit. The final death sentence disguised itself as addiction.

I often wondered if he saw these stages unfold before him. As a child, I told myself that he had consciously made the condemning decision at each stage. There must have been some control in it. I clung to the idea that he could have stopped himself and retreated.

What if he had cried for help, and there was no one around to hear it? Maybe people were, but his cries were indistinguishable from other noise. Did he silence himself, wanting to spare others from his tragedy?

Poison of absolutism

I deeply resented him because he was the child of an alcoholic; he knew the pain this affliction brought upon a family. Reigning through fear, his alcoholism polarized our members. His suffering brought only chaos that left us all shuddering and grasping for control in addiction’s vacuum. The mental turmoil spread like wildfire.

Maybe he was cursed from the start, unable to confront the pain of his past. He was traumatized, though unable to recognize it.

Still, I imagine it was returning to the ever-gray city that was making him sad. Having followed in the career path of his father, working within close proximity of him, and living only minutes from his childhood home, it’s possible that he saw his path as planned for him and believed he had no control over it.

Or perhaps he sensed his dad’s temper in himself and convinced himself that he was cut from the same pain-ridden cloth, thinking his dad’s demons were his own. He willingly surrendered to the addiction, swallowing the poison of his absolutism.

Impossibilities

What was his last opportunity to prevent this, and why didn’t he? My greatest fear is not that he couldn’t prevent it, but that he could. Did he see it as easier to give way than to fight it; was he exhausted by his internal anguish?

I long to ask him, but it’s impossible not because he is dead but because he lived as though he already was. Enduring him was enduring a ghost that endlessly tried to make us damned like him.

Death

Did he cry for help when his heart gave way ­­– muffled cries also lost in the universe?

Found dead.

Carted into an ambulance.

Earnest attempts to reverse this fate, but the doctors were years too late.

Picked apart in a morgue.

Turned to dust.

And when the shock settled, I felt relief. The madness ended. My abuser was gone.

I hate myself for that thought and my acceptance of freedom at such a steep cost.

Still, I pray he can hear my muffled cries given to the universe.