by Julia Hinrichsen
content warnings: parental death, addiction/addictive behaviours
A week after my father died, we held his funeral. With him not being a churchgoer, there was no fancy funeral in a church, no priest speaking pretty words between frankincense and the holy mother, no grieving widow throwing herself onto his casket while sobbing uncontrollably behind a black lace veil. Just him and his urn, surrounded by old friends and family.
I stood next to my sister and my father’s wife, asking myself how a man of his size fit into an urn that small. I did not cry, just like I did not cry when I received the message of his death. I felt nothing except for the desperate thirst for a drink. For years, I have not been that thirsty for alcohol, but back then, I felt my stomach burning and my heart racing, longing so intensely for a drink that I would have bathed myself in Christ’s blood while searching for the promised wine. I bit my tongue until I tasted my blood, looking as miserable as people expected a daughter to look like after she had lost her father.
One week after the funeral, I finally found myself a bar, my one-year-sobriety-chip in my back pocket, eagerly waiting to be given back to my sponsor. I knew I messed up as soon as I set foot into this place: a dark dive bar with miserable faces, lousy drinks, and a bored barkeeper. I counted twelve steps to the bar, aligned with twelve steps of torture I endured after the twelve rings of hell I encountered while scrapping my stinky old self from the dirty ground night after night of nights I could not remember.
“I’ll have a Scotch,” I heard myself saying as I sat down in front of the bar.
I hated Scotch, but I wanted to punish myself for falling back into bad habits. I could not order myself a fruity cocktail as it would have felt as if I was celebrating my relapse.
My mind shut off the second my father’s body hit the ground; there was no conscience telling me to stop, reminding me of the progress I had made. Ever since then, my thoughts have been awfully quiet – at least the ones I needed to hear. There was no rationality, no sanity, just the voice of a junkie between the screaming match of questions, begging for a drink to stop the noise between my temples.
“I need to see an ID,” the barkeeper said, his eyes wandering up and down in my face.
I would not recommend becoming an alcoholic in your twenties, people always hesitate and ask for ID before they pour heaven’s nectar into your glass, keeping you waiting while your body is already on fire.
“Of course,” I said, a thin smile on my lips while strip-searching myself, emptying all my pockets and stapling knick-knacks in front of him – coins, keys, dollar bills, receipts, chewing gum, my sobriety chip, and finally, my ID.
“One year? Congrats”, he said.
“One year down the drain,” I said, handing him my ID. “Pour me some of that liquid gold I want to drown my thoughts in.”
“You’re the boss.”
He placed a glass in front of me, grabbed a bottle from the shelf behind him, pouring me two inches of something that I wanted to be the beginning of a night I expected not to remember. I wrapped my fingers around the cold, clear crystal glass, suddenly unable to lift my arm. I felt my stomach turning and my heart racing, my throat closing while becoming dryer than the desert.
I eyed the glass and its contents, its light honey color with its sweet, sweet promise. Just give in, feel me on the tip of your tongue, and give me the chance to make you forget.
My grip hardened, but I could not raise my glass. I pressed my lips together, trying to gather all the strength my body could provide to lift a glass from a bar, as I had done a million times before.
“You need help with that?” the barkeeper asked while observing me.
“Please don’t interrupt me, I’m having a crisis.”
“Sorry. Keep on with whatever you’re trying.”
“I’m trying to get drunk, but I can’t raise my arm.”
“Want a straw?”
“Slurping a Scotch through a straw? Yeah, exactly. Maybe I’m relapsing, but I still have a little dignity left.”
I switched arms. Same outcome.
“Try your feet next.”
“Don’t expect me to tip you.”
“You don’t have to; your little show is compensating me.”
A wave of frustration hit me, and for a quick second, I felt tears welling up. I needed a drink. I needed a drink so badly, but I could not raise the glass. My father was dead, and I could not raise a damn glass.
Thinking of him made the questions reach the surface all over again. I felt miserable. I did not grieve (which made me ask myself what the hell was wrong with me), and I did not cry, I only felt thirst. I wanted to drown something inside me, but I was not sure what it was.
The barkeeper looked at me, at my drink, and back at me. “Having a rough time?”
“My father died.”
He pressed his lips together. Rough topic, I get it. Nonetheless, what did he expect? He was not running a happy place, drowned in smiles and sunlight – quite the opposite. People entered this bar being miserable, trying to become more miserable while forgetting for a short amount of time how miserable they are.
“I don’t want to dive headfirst into embarrassment, therefore, before giving my condolences, how do you feel about that?” he asked while pouring himself a drink.
“I don’t know. I think I should grieve, but I don’t feel anything at all. Just thirst.”
“Why do you think you should grieve?”
“After all, he was my father. You should grieve about a dead parent, shouldn’t you?”
“Some people, even your parents, don’t deserve your grief.”
“But he didn’t do something wrong. He didn’t hit me or my sister, nor our mother. There was no abuse involved, no toxic behavior.”
“None you can think of. At least not now.”
Our eyes met. I watched him downing his drink before putting his glass on the table, obviously not struggling with its weight. He must have been a few years older than me, maybe in his early thirties. Too young to be working in a miserable bar, not tortured enough to deal with alcoholics and their sad stories all day.
While I studied the sparkle in his dark brown eyes, I thought about my father. If anyone asked, I could not describe my father. The few times I saw him, he acted nice. Cracking jokes, being a sympathetic host, asking about my career or my sister’s career. After our parents separated, back when we were little children, we stayed with our mother while visiting him once or twice throughout the months. The visits became less and less until we only saw each other on birthdays, his wife’s birthday included, therefore, three to four times a year. Sometimes, even less if something occurred. When I was younger, I tried to establish somewhat of a relationship, forcing him to take me to his place on weekends, at least one time a month. My efforts worked for a few months, with me being the sole motivator behind the whole mission. I was begging my father to see me. It hurt when I realized that our relationship was completely one-sided.
We continued with not having a relationship, seeing each other on birthdays, acting all smiley and nice, and not talking about the elephant in the room. There were no phone calls, no messages, and complete radio silence. Acting all smiley, all nice.
I stared at my drink. I thought of all the pain he caused me while not doing anything at all. I was mad at a dead man for doing nothing at all.
I was no affair-baby (I did ask my mother), I was – in fact – his daughter. I was a decent person. I did not torture animals, nor did I set fires. I graduated, I went to university, I got my bachelor’s degree, I got a job. Maybe I was an alcoholic, but I became one without ever bothering him about it. And yet he decided to call my sister instead of me. He asked my sister about me instead of calling me or talking to me. He would not ask me; he would ask her.
I stared at my drink and stared at my fingers, searching for traces of leprosy, something that scared my father off. You can’t transmit lepra by a phone call.
Sometimes, when a birthday occurred and we met, he said that it had been a long time – a way too long time. And I agreed and smiled because I was a coward. I could not bring myself to yell at him, to ask him in which way I fucked up so deeply that he ignored me. His goddamn child.
My only aggressive acts became me doing the same nothing he has been doing for years. He did not call, so I did not call. He sent no messages, and nor did I.
“He didn’t do anything”, I said, “and I don’t know why. And now that he’s dead, I will never find out why he didn’t do anything, why he wouldn’t call, why he wouldn’t message me, why he would ask my sister about me instead of talking to me. He’s dead, and he left me with a gap that will never close. I don’t know if I even care about him being dead, all I can think of are these questions he’ll never answer to me. And this is my life now. Whenever I will think of him, I’ll ask myself the same questions all over again. I will always ask myself why he didn’t care about me, and this question alone will fuck me up. It will fuck me up all over again, year by year, and this hurts so much more than just him being dead.”
“That’s one good reason to break your sobriety,” the barkeeper said with his voice lowered.
“Thank you. Now, if you would care to tell me, why the hell I can’t raise my arm?”
“I don’t think that this is up to me. This is all you. You don’t want to drink. You don’t want to feel more miserable. You want to feel angry and sad, and you want to grieve about the answers you will never get. Being drunk won’t help you to feel all these emotions, you know that. Everything will only become one big blur.”
I stared at my glass and sat in silence with the truth he was articulating. I looked at my chip and thought of how proud I felt when I received it; I thought of the twelve steps I took all by myself – without my father. I graduated, I got my degree, I got myself a job without my father, without his love or care. If I ended my sobriety with a lousy glass of Scotch, I would not punish my father; I would punish myself. And I was the one living; I was the one to care.
I placed my hands on my thighs. “Can I have a water?” I asked.
“You’re the boss.”
Julia Hinrichsen is a student at Bielefeld University and started writing as a child because she couldn’t paint. Today, she still can’t paint, but she never gave up writing.
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