A/N: My father is an alcoholic...and my mom and I believe the alcohol has finally taken its toll on him. He's told my brother that he doesn't have long to live. He's giving his prized possessions away to friends. He's gone to the same doctor twice in a little over a month. I don't know how to deal with this, so I'm writing. no slash...one-shot
I hate him. I hate my father. I hate that his memory still haunts me. I thought I was finally free of him when he drank himself to death, but I was wrong. I will never be free of him. And for that, I hate him.
I use to make excuses for him when I was younger. When he couldn't make it to the school talent show because he was out at some bar drinking. I would tell my mom that it was perfectly fine. But it wasn't.
He may have been abusive, but back then I didn't care. I always forgave him. I loved him.
But not anymore.
After he died, mom told me that he had once been a good man. But then liquor took hold of his life, and he was never the same. She told me not to blame him, because everyone makes mistakes. How can I not blame him? He was the one who would backhand me when I would ask him to please stop drinking. He was the one who would beat my mom with his belt just because he loved the power.
How can I not blame him?
Mom use to beg him to come with her to the local rehab for help. In return, he would get right in her face. He would call her nasty names that I dare not repeat.
I hate him for what he did to my mom.
Sometimes I would walk into her room while he was away at work, and would find her laying in bed, crying. I would ask her what's wrong, but she never answered.
Then I didn't know what was wrong, but now I do.
I hate him for making me fear for my life.
I use to stay up every single night, afraid that the liquor would turn him into a murderer. Afraid that I would wake up to him standing over my bed with a knife. I would stay up until I could no longer keep my eyelids open. And yet, I still loved him.
I remember once when I decided to run away. At least, I thought I could run away from it all.
He found me two hours later, and beat me to the point that it even hurt to breathe. That's when mom finally said she had had enough, and walked out with me in her arms, never looking back.
I was in the hospital for three weeks. And during those three weeks I would silently pray that I would awake to see my father sitting in the chair beside my bed, asking for forgiveness.
He never came.
When I was finally released from the hospital, I vowed to never think of the man as my father again. I vowed to never forgive him for what he had done to my mom and I. I vowed that if I ever saw him again, that I would kill him.
Fortunately, two years later he was found in the back of a bar dead. The liquor had finally killed him.
His family tried to get me to go to his funeral. How dare they? They wanted me to cry with them as my father was lowered into the ground. I would never cry for my father's death. I was thankful for his death...
Until the nightmares began.
Ever since then, I have had nightmares of what he did to me, almost every night. Some nights I'll have nightmares of him whipping my mother as she cries into the carpet.
Josh has tried to help me. He woke me up one night because he had heard me crying out 'stop!'. He begged me to tell him what was wrong, but I wouldn't. No one would ever understand the pain and stress that 'man' put me and my mom through. I could never even put it into words.
To this day Josh never gives up trying to help me. When he is forced to wake me up from a nightmare, he'll let me lean against him as I pant for breath, telling myself that it's over now. Then he'll sit with me until I fall back to sleep. Once I woke up screaming, and when he finally managed to get me to quiet down he began humming a song, and gently stroked my hair as I cried silently.
Without Josh I would probably drown in my hatred, until it became unbearable to live.
I know I should thank him for sticking with me for so long. I have done nothing to deserve his love. Someday I will.
Someday I will tell my brother exactly what happened in my past. I'll tell him exactly why I hate the man I was forced to call father.