the bull

I can’t sleep. It’s Christmas Day. I will spend most of the day in the kitchen, chopping and arranging and washing and mixing. I don’t mind it. I would even go so far as to say I like it. Keeps me out of trouble, I guess. 

I’m not sure why I can’t sleep. Maybe it’s the white wine I had for dinner — sometimes coming down off a slur of drunkenness keeps me up. Maybe it’s not just the way the liquor feels as it creeps through my intestines. Maybe it’s the alcoholism that runs through my blood, intertwined with my chocolate brown eyes and dark hair, which governed my relationship to liquor long before my first sip. 

I realized recently that my father is an alcoholic. That’s a lie — I’ve known for longer than I’d like to admit. Denial is powerful like that. The truth of it has been staring me in the face since I was old enough to read social cues. Even at a young age, I understood that something about him was different from other adults. He’s functional; I’ll give him that much. He’s always been there, at least physically.

I put all the pieces together after a conversation with my sister, more than a year after I moved away from my childhood home. We sat in a Mexican restaurant and exchanged our childhood memories of him over a plate of enchiladas verdes: the drinking, the arguing, the violence, everything I thought I had forgotten because I had been just a kid. I went home that night and felt the puzzle pieces softly thudding together, knocking against the inside of my skull. Against my will, my brain began to piece together moments from my childhood that I thought I’d never have to think about again, the cycle of booze-scream-fight-sleep-repeat, a fixture in my early years. 

These incidents, if you can call them that, were — and are — not few and far between. A few New Year’s Eves ago, my father got so drunk with a family friend that he couldn’t get up the stairs. The kids — myself included — sat in front of the TV in our basement and watched Teen Titans Go as we waited for the ball to drop and the adults to stop drinking. When I think about it now, I’m not sure how anyone got up the stairs that night. My mother would know, but I won’t ask her about it.  A personal favorite memory I found when searching the cobwebbed corners of my psyche for the memories my subconscious had worked to protect me from was when my father — so drunk that he didn’t know who I was — mistook me for my mother when I was ushered into his room to say goodnight and made a grab for my tit. My mother stood in the doorway behind me. He woke up the next morning like nothing happened, and we never spoke about it. I’m not sure if he remembers. I’m not sure what my mother saw either, and I won’t ask her about it. 

My extended family has always had problems with alcohol. It runs in my dad’s family: his younger brother is afflicted, perpetually flitting in and out of rehab. The addiction rears its ugly head in my mom’s family, too, just a little more quietly. My aunt drinks to excess at every family gathering. When she and my dad team up, it never ends well. It’s an unspoken family rule: if either of those two have a glass in their hand, stay out of the way. 

I’m not sure when I started to drink with them. My father has been encouraging me to take sips of his drinks since I was twelve. I always refused; I didn’t want to do any drugs or drink any alcohol or smoke any cigarettes or do anything bad ever. Some sweet kid I was. All I remember is that one day I was working with my mother in the kitchen, and I had a small glass of wine next to me as I shaped dough into buttery rolls. I remember feeling grown up, but a wave of anxiety washed over me every time I took a sip. I could feel eyes on me, waiting for any sign of who I was when I was drunk, whatever animal decided to come out and play once my inhibitions were washed away. 

The animal that comes out when I’m drunk isn’t really an animal at all. It’s just me. I laugh. I smile. I talk a little more. I tell my friends I love them. I hug people often. I send stupid texts to people I love or care about or have a crush on. Sometimes it feels like floating. I sway to any music I hear. I’m more tree than animal, leaves and branches moving to and fro in the breeze created by colorful mood lighting and R&B pouring out of a speaker. If you catch me in a certain mood, this tree might even sing or dance, albeit badly. 

My father is an angry drunk; I am not. He is more like an agitated bull, anxious to pick a fight with anyone who stands in his way or has something to say about him. The bull has mellowed as he’s gotten on in years, but I still see flickers of that hard blackness, like a sharp flint, that gleams in his eyes sometimes when my mother points out how drunk he is. There are few things that I would say I’m truly afraid of; that look, that bull, makes my blood run cold.

Each time I come back from college, I grow increasingly aware of the reality that I am just my father in a different font. We both love music, old ’70s and ’80s rock, in the same way, and have for as long as I can remember. We’re both adventurous eaters, always looking to try a new cuisine or restaurant. We have similar tastes in movies — action with a soft spot for Sylvester Stallone — and binge watch every new show that we like. 

I find myself asking why I drink. I like the feeling, the way certain things taste as they go down my throat, the warmth that follows, heating my insides to a cozy temperature. I like the way it helps me loosen up sometimes. I like the camaraderie of it. I like pong. It’s a social activity sometimes, one I don’t hate. I don’t (think I) drink because I have to; I drink because I want to. 

Why do I feel so shitty about it right now, then? 

A few holidays ago, I had one glass of wine, maybe two. Today I drank half the bottle. At first it felt good. My father drank a full one. It hurt me to watch.

I think I feel so shitty about it now because I’m scared that the way I think about these substances may be how my father thinks about liquor. I’m afraid that my family will look at me the same way they look at him, the way that I now look at him. I am afraid of him when he drinks. I am afraid of the bull I grew up with, sharpening his horns and spearing them through my ribcage. I am afraid for my mother; I don’t know if he’s ever hit her and I don’t want to ask, but the stories I’ve heard have made me afraid of how violent he could be if provoked.

This is my dad. I love him. He means a lot to me. He has been and done so many things for me. He’s a functional alcoholic who sometimes drinks a lot and gets angry and is hurtful. 

This is my dad. I love him. I love the bull. I’m like him in many more ways than one. This love is complicated and a little fucked up and I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it, but this is my dad. I love him. And he loves me. 

Maybe the reason I have such a hard time sleeping is because coming back to earth is a painful reminder of who I come from. I am the child of an alcoholic. Addiction runs through me stronger and thicker than any drug I take to forget about it. Nothing can filter this toxin from my bloodstream, not as long as my dad’s blood runs through my veins.