Viewing my dead father. Clean time 8 months and 27 days
I ’m Rick and I’m an addict.
I again would like to welcome Logan to our family and remind anyone who is an addict that I will be happy to give you access to write as well. Just email me directly at Rick@reconstructingrick.com
There is this overwhelming memory that keeps coming back up in my head and I have to share about it. I can’t say this is going to help you in your recovery at all. I just know that the secrets we hold inside that make us feel bad is the very poison that flows through our veins keeping our addiction alive. It’s my plan to lay every single secret I have out there for the world to know and thereby starve my addiction to death. The worse the secret, the more it feeds.
If you read my blog at all, you know about what happened between my father and myself. I have a lot of reasons to hate him and I have a lot of reasons to hate myself. I won’t go into that again for now, but I will start at the part where the memory take me…. New Years Eve, a few years ago. I owned this casino. Actually it was a game room but in Texas, these “8 liners” (as they are called) is really a legal version of slot machines in non legal states. I dressed up for the big New Years bash that I was holding. It was icy outside but we still had a good number of people show up.
Right after midnight the police came to the casino and asked for me. I expected that someone at the party did something, or that maybe someone tipped off the police that I had drugs on me. Neither was the case. The cop said that someone was trying to reach me and gave me a number and they said it was urgent. I called and it was a friend of my brother. He said my father was very sick in the hospital and if I could call my brother or sister because they could not find me.
I called my brother and he told me my mother was taken to the hospital in Vegas along with my father. She was suffering from a chest infection and he had a tumor on his brain stem and was going through surgeries but it doesn’t look good. He told me that I needed to come to Vegas right away.
Well screw him I thought. Hopefully the bastard will die but more importantly I won’t have to be there and waste my money on him. Then I thought I better do it because I would never hear the end of it from my sisters and brother. I didn’t want to fly to Vegas as I knew I could not get away with bringing the amount of drugs with me that I wanted to bring. I decided to drive and make a fun trip out of it. After discussing this with my friend (fellow user), he decided we should both go and as incredible as this sounds, leave the business to a customer to run. A casino that was pulling in thousands of dollars a day… just leave it to this guy until we got back. Wow. Multiple insane thoughts in rapid order!
The next day I went and rented a SUV and there we drove, in no rush whatsoever, to get to my father who was just clinging on to every minute of life. We stopped along the way of course to look at souvenirs and eat. We took the more scenic route, not the faster route. We got blasted every step of the way and then when we got to Vegas, I was sick, exhausted and worried that I would have to drive back sober.
When we pulled into Vegas, I still was in no rush to get to the hospital. I stopped at a pay phone to ask for directions but after getting them, I decided that I needed to go to the store first to go shopping. I wanted a new pair of jeans but nixed the idea at the last minute when I decided that if I could just get the hospital stuff over fast, I could spend that money on gambling and getting drunk.
When I made it to the hospital, my friend suggested we stop at the gift shop and buy something for my mother who was in the same hospital but on another floor. I bought her a card while he got her a big teddy bear. It was nice of him I thought but I didn’t want to waste more money.
I figured everyone was seeing my father first so I decided to knock that out. I went to intensive care but I didn’t see anyone. I went to the nurse and told her my name and she asked who I was. I told her and she said that she was sorry, but my father died just 10 minutes ago and they had the room closed while they cleaned him up for viewing. I waited, a little pissed that I could not just get it over, but mostly because that meant that I would not be able to leave right away.
Finally the nurse said I could go in but my sister was walking down that hall. I told her and she broke up crying. I told her to go see my mother upstairs and I would be up in a minute.
I then entered the room and there he was. Dead. Lying there not moving. I stood about 4 feet away and just looked. I paced around the bed. I looked again. Still dead. I thought that this was my chance. Maybe he could still hear me somehow. I swore at him. Then I leaned against the a table and said, “see what you have done?”. I started to have a few tears. “See what you did? You ruined my life and then you left. Look at me!”. Nothing. “Look! Because of you my whole life has been one piece of shit after the next and this is what is left”. I thought about the fact that he said one time when he was abusing me that I would be happy when he was dead and piss on his grave. I was mad because I didn’t have it in me and if I did piss on him right then, he would see my private junk again and I was too embarrassed, even if he was dead.
When I thought of this, I thought how insane I was and how much of a wreck I was. I thought about how much I hated him yet I also thought about how little other emotions I had for him. I looked at his chest again to see if he was breathing. He wasn’t. I thought about poking him. I thought about touching his hand. I just couldn’t bring myself to it.
I headed for the door. Before I left, I turned around and said again, “now what? now what am I suppose to do with my life. Are you proud of me now? I’m a drug addict, a mental case and I’m all alone and I just don’t know why you ruined my life and now I will never know. I’m glad you’re dead”, and I walked out the room. No tears.
I went upstairs and everyone was in my mothers room. They we’re all in shock over the news that he is dead and she was just told. She was on so much medication she was only a little bit understanding that her husband was dead. Over the next few hours, I managed to put up a good front of playing like I cared about any of this but in reality I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
After I left, we went to the casino and hotel. The next couple days was more crap. Dealing with everyone. I eventually left Vegas but my friend said his brother lived in California and if we wanted to drive there before heading back we could score some great drugs. We did and we scored big. I was back to feeling good because I was high again. No guilt. No sadness. Just more lost than I have ever been in my life.
We drove for 28 hours until we were home. There is more to the story of what happened next but I will leave that for another time. What I will say is that from that point, in no more than 3 months later, I took 72 pills and overdosed in a very serious suicide attempt. It appears I answered the question that nothing was left. Nothing at all.
From that point forward I should have died. I didn’t. In my heart I did. My soul was dead but my body lived on. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing. No-one. I knew that there was no reason to live and that you could get away from everything by simply dying.
When I came to NA, after yet another attempt to end my life after the intentional screwing up and hurting others for a few years more, I came to NA. What is the amazing part is that I spent my whole life feeling like I should not exist. I always felt like God simply didn’t like me. I felt that I was like my father; visually there but dead inside. I spent the period of my fathers death to my coming in the doors of NA as a journey to find out how many bad things I could do to justify my own death. It’s another form of suicide. Since I could not do it successfully myself, then I would need others to take the life out of the living corpse.
When I came to NA I thought there was no-one who could understand. I was beyond loving. I was beyond being liked. If I did my job right, at this point, people will want me dead and I would finally end the misery of my life. I didn’t want to be hugged. I was not worth it.
NA showed me that I am not unique. That others feel this way too. That my addictions have caused me to act in ways that is not normal. That no matter how much I feel that I was beyond hope, that maybe there was.
My addictions are killing me. Now I have to answer myself that question I asked my dead father. “Now what. Now what am I to do with my life. Am I proud of me?”. Believe it or not, I think I may be able to answer that question for the first time in my entire life. Not yet, but if I keep coming back to the meetings, I may be able to do it soon.
With that, I’ll keep coming back.
