In the shadow of an alcoholic
Growing up in the shadow of my father’s alcoholism caused me untold pain. Now, I’m trying to make peace with my past
Exclusive | 4 min read | Children of Alcoholics Week
My name is Kiran and my dad is an alcoholic. These words clank around in the real world, trying to find a place to hide, but I don’t want them to. Even if I did, such big words seldom find shelter. It’s taken me a lifetime to admit that my father is a lost cause. That the person who was supposed to look after me was the inflictor of my greatest pain.
Being the child of an alcoholic meant I spent my childhood gazing through the net curtains of other people’s families and wishing mine was as happy as theirs.
My father spoiled family parties by getting too drunk. Guests or not, the house never felt safe. It was a ticking time bomb of raw emotions waiting to detonate; my father’s drunken antics, my mother’s broken heart and my disappointment at being let down again.
I learnt at a young age crushed hope has a sound - one that could be heard in my heart - as time and time again my dreams crumpled because of something my dad did.
Alcohol statistics
*In England, there are an estimated 586,780 dependent drinkers, of whom, 82% are not accessing treatment
*Alcohol misuse is the biggest risk factor for death, ill-health and disability among 15-49 year-olds in the UK, and the fifth biggest risk factor across all ages.
Source: Alcohol Change
My father continually failed us, choosing drink instead of the right decisions. He chose drink over light-hearted laughter and his family’s right to peace and serenity. He unashamedly threw his addiction in our faces. Like a well-compacted snowball, it bit into us like daggers.
For years, I was reluctant to tell people of my family’s not-so-secret-secret. Not because I was ashamed, though I was a little, but because I never wanted to be ‘put in a box’ and treated like a statistic.
When you’re the child of a parent who is an alcoholic, everyone suddenly becomes a psychiatrist. They suddenly ‘understand’ why you do certain things, they measure you up and throw you in an ill-fitting stereotype of what they expect the child of an addict to be.
Sometimes, people have wrongly assumed I blame myself for my father’s drinking. But why would I? It wasn’t me who was drunk, embarrassing and spoiling things for everyone. Instead, I learned from a young age that grown-ups aren’t always right, and some of the ones closest to us do bad things. At eight, I realised just because a person is a grown-up, it doesn’t make them grown-up.
Another myth I’ve found myself shaking off is that daughters of alcoholic fathers go on to have bad relationships. Though some do - according to my therapist - I went the opposite way. I knew my worth and only entered relationships where I was treated well. I’m happy to have made good choices in my life, in spite of the toxic scenes and dynamics I witnessed growing up.
Kiran's parents in happier times. Photo: Kiran Sidhu
My dad’s drinking didn’t hurt any less as an adult myself, though. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 at the age of 61, my father sought his favourite crutch. As his drinking worsened, his behaviour became disruptive, unpredictable and repugnant.
There was so much to do - organise all my mother’s appointments, extensive research about her treatments - and instead of helping, my father was hindering.
Dad’s world had always been one-dimensional and myopic; he wanted a drink, so he had one; my mother’s diagnosis frightened him, so drank. Whatever the feeling, good or bad, he carried on drinking.
I confronted him and instead of talking to me, Dad banned me from his house. For a year, when my mother needed me most, I was no longer allowed to visit her at our family home. My mother was resigned to the situation, and had no fight left in her. My father’s drunken behaviour became so intolerable, my mother was forced to leave her home, moving to my gran’s house 10 minutes away, to literally die in peace.
I was shocked and angry that all the energy I should have spent on my mother was wasted on being angry at my dad. He’d made what was already a horrendous situation far worse.
After Mum passed, I still visited Dad twice a week to cook and clean for him because I felt sorry for him. He was plagued by his demons and very lonely. My husband and I stayed with him for a while between house moves to keep him company. It broke my heart to seeing him spiralling into a deep depression.
Kiran’s mum during cancer treatment. Photo: Kiran Sidhu
But old patterns quickly resurfaced. Dad often stashed his whisky, forgot where and accused me of hiding it. He had mood swings, wallowed in self-pity - telling me he drank because he’d lost his wife. Something, he said, I couldn’t understand because my husband was still alive. He never acknowledged that I had suffered a huge loss too; that of my mother. This failure to see pain outside of himself wasn’t new.
As always, he didn’t acknowledge the emotional debris that existed between us. Even after the damage he’d inflicted on his relationships, he still refused to acknowledge that he drank to excess.
On a bottle of whiskey a day, he was no longer a functioning alcoholic. He didn’t remember to pay his bills, do the shopping or put the rubbish out. The house became a shrine to my mother and like a ghost, he wandered around in the middle of the night unable to sleep; ethereal, tormented like Lady Macbeth.
Talking to my dad was like speaking to a hologram. As he refused to admit he had a drinking problem, I was left to take over the administration of his life, and his daily welfare.
A friend of mine asked me why I did it all. How did I manage to still care for a father who was toxic, had done unforgivable things and remained without remorse?
Kiran now. Photo: Kiran Sidhu
But the answer was simple. I’d forgiven my dad because I could see how ill, broken and flawed he was. Usually, there isn’t room to forgive our parents their wrongdoings if we only see them as just parents because society says parents aren’t allowed to make mistakes. Parents are meant to look after us; take life’s vicious blows for us and cradle us when life spits us out.
Our parents are our first concept of God; nurturing, faithful, guiding and protecting. They are our deities. But as long as we see them this way, we can’t forgive them. It is a sign of maturity to accept things the way they are and not how we wish them to be.
I no longer see my father as just my father. Before being my dad, he is many things including flawed and just as fucked-up as the rest of us. Only, he’s allowed alcohol to be his master.
He is also a complicated man that never received any slivers of recognition for the good qualities he did have; being an avid reader whose influence lead me to read philosophy at university, because of all the negative things that came as a result of his alcohol addiction.
It’s sad that I don’t really know my father, just some glimmers of what he could’ve been when in the rarer periods of sobriety when he didn’t drink and was a good dad. In those times, he was funny, intelligent and insightful. I even felt proud of him.
Still, the years he’d spent as a functioning alcoholic damaged our relationship too far for me to continue living with him, and he was too unwell to continue without professional help. Now, my dad lives in a residential home after being diagnosed with dementia brought on by his alcoholism.
Kiran relaxing at home. Photo: Kiran Sidhu
I’m Indian and it’s rare that any of our elders spend the last years of their lives in a home. I feel guilty that my father is, but I must remember there, he has no access to alcohol and he is well looked after.
He never accepted my love and care when I tried, so knowing he is safe and cared for from afar is all I can hope for.
I share the intricacies of my difficult journey because I want readers to know that people like me who have grown-up with an abusive, alcoholic parent are not all damaged victims.
Some of us are victors who’ve had an insightful, albeit, painful experience into the complexities of humanity. We’re empathetic and strong.
Life is a complicated mesh of things we dredge-up from the oceanic pits of our souls, with many things remaining unsolved or unknown.
If you’re one of the lucky ones, you’ll hear life’s harmonies, like a Monet painting; all softened edges, pastel-coloured and dream-like. But if you’re REALLY lucky, you’ll hear life’s dissonance, because it’s here that all acceptance begins.
Follow Kiran on Twitter
For information about alcoholism, visit NHS. For support and help, visit Alcohol Change. For a simple test to see if your drinking has reached dangerous levels, visit gov.uk (a file will download to your desktop)
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