live in love.

“this i believe” is a series on npr.  in this series, people are asked to write an essay based on the prompt “i believe”.  in the five years that have passed since this series started, “this i believe” essays have been written by actors, singers, dignitaries, waitresses, college students, middle school students, high school dropouts, drug addicts; people from every walk of life have put pen to paper and written profound essays on what they know to be true.  this is my “this i believe” essay.

Although I only have one sibling, my father has three children.  My sister and I are two of them; his alcoholism is his third.  I have watched my father forsake all other relationships in his life, including the ones he has with my mother, my sister and I,  in order to carefully foster his drinking from a casual Saturday night at a bar to an all-consuming, full-time relationship.  He forgets my birthday, my age, my favorite color, my likes and dislikes, but he never forgets to buy his alcohol.  It is first and foremost in his mind.

However, I know that this coming Tuesday night, I’ll box up his empty wine bottles and leave them on the side of the road to be collected by the garbage truck.  I’ll wash out his glasses, clean up his spills, kiss him on the cheek when he comes home from a trip to the liquor store.  I’ll creep downstairs and make sure he’s all right, and I’ll spread a blanket over him when he stumbles into bed.  I do not think that this makes me an enabler, or a bad person.

I believe in forgiveness.

My father is an alcoholic, but he is also an entrepreneur, a caretaker, and a good person.  He has made sure that my sister and I have always had everything we need, and much of what we want.  He overcame great poverty and the struggles of a new, foreign country.  I have memorized all of these facts as though they were an affidavit.  Whenever someone finds out about my father’s alcoholism, I whip these out in his defense.  However, when I am alone, at the end of a trying day, and my father is belligerent, none of these points come into my head.  Instead, one key sentence swirls through my brain, like a haunting, soothing lullaby; “I forgive you.”.  

I believe that my father’s sobriety would be pointless and short-lived without our forgiveness behind it.  I also believe that a family that is suffering as much as mine is needs forgiveness more than an intervention, or a case of “tough love”.  I believe that forgiveness will lead to beautiful things, even if my father’s sobriety is not one of them.  I believe that forgiveness will allow my soul to escape from this dark place with no scars.

I love you, dad.