Untitled

When I was younger I wanted to be just like my Dad. He was so vibrant and full of energy, most of the time. We always had people round, had parties with everyone laughing and singing, my Dad the centre of it. Everyone wanted to be around him. I’m the youngest, with four older sisters and I used to love it when Dad would sling his arm around me and tell me us boys had to stick together. I’d fizz with pride if anyone said I was like my dad.
The man of my memories is not the man sitting a government restricted amount of space away from me now. I stare in shock at something I’ve been looking at everyday but never really seen. He was always so big; big personality, big stature, big booming voice. Now he’s depleted, sunken into himself. He’s so thin, how did I not see it? His face is a skull with just thin a thin layer of papery skin stretched over it. His hands shake as he lights a cigarette, he runs them through his greasy hair trying to hide it. His eyes skitter in their sockets, god knows what he is seeing.

“Your Dad’s been arrested for drugs,” Mum announced it as though she was telling me what was on the TV. She was sitting on the sofa, cup of tea in one hand cigarette in the other.
“Drug possession, drug dealing, being a bloody drug addict.” She was speaking in a falsely cheery sing song voice. “You’re sixteen now, not a child anymore, I can’t hide it from you any longer.” Her voice broke and she slumped face forwards as something she’d been ignoring for thirty years slammed into her consciousness.
The realisation, the shock, yet the feeling of having known all along. Everything slotted into place. I remember him being the centre of all the parties, but I also remember him passing out in the early hours, or in his own vomit, which became a more frequent occurrence. I remember the first time I found him, I must have been about six, I went to tell Mum.
“Dad’s just got a tummy upset, you go downstairs, I’ll clean him up and put him to bed.” I remember she said it in the same sing song voice.
The next day my dad was sitting on the sofa, blankly staring at the TV. I brought him a hot water bottle, because that’s what I liked when I was ill. He stared at the water bottle, my thomas the tank engine one that I loved, and tears gathered in his eyes. I didn’t understand, I thought I’d done something wrong. But he grabbed me and hugged to his chest, muttering things into my hair that I couldn’t quite hear.
As I got older there were fewer parties, but more strange people came to the house to see my Dad. Then there were the disappearances, he’d turn up days later, sketchy about where he’d been.
“Just around.”
And then only a few months ago the police came to our house. Dad wasn’t there. I heard their muted voices as they spoke to Mum.
“It was just a mix up,” she told me later, same sing song voice. Of course, I believed her.
Dad clutches my hand, the fingers are just bone.
“You know I never done it right?” His pupils stop skidding and look directly into my eyes, making me believe what he said, making himself believe it. “It was a mistake, they were just some stuff for a friend.” I look at him in disbelief. I don’t want to look at him, to see the reality but I can’t look away, I feel disgusted, sick.
He see’s it.
His face collapses, his body folds up into a ball, the one claw like hand still clutching mine.
“I’m just a weak man,” A voice that is strangled, holding itself back from braking. I stare at this creature that is my Dad. I squeeze his hand tightly, then I get up and run out.
I run and keep running, so fast, not thinking, not feeling.
I can’t face it, I can’t bare to look at it, think about it. I arrive on my street. Am I just a cliché? Living in a council house, Dad in prison for drugs. I feel boxed in, suffocated. This life is too small for me.
I’ve lost someone I never had.
I used to love it when people said I was just like my Dad.
I’m at the park, I came here without even realising, it’s Friday night. My mates are hanging out, drinking tinnies and smoking, the same thing we do every Friday night. I go over and down a beer, then grab another. I listen but don’t listen to them talk. I don’t want to be in real life, I don’t want to be with people but I don’t want to be alone.
“Oi Steve!”
“What?” My friend Greg is waving his hands in front of my face.
“You were miles away mate,” I make a noncommittal noise. He looks around at the others who are a little way off then leans in close to me.
“I’ve got some pills if you’re interested,” he whispers excitedly. “Poppers, make you feel fucking amazing, take you right off the face of this planet.”
He opens his palm, I stare at the little white pills. Such small, innocent looking things. They’d take me away, so I don’t have to think. I can block it all out, not see the living corpse in front of me. It’s inevitable, I have to do something to get out of here, out of my head.
I stare at them and remember back to the day when I brought dad the water bottle. I remember what he was saying. I didn’t hear it, I felt the words vibrate through his chest. Next to his heart, where my head was pressed.
“Don’t be like me, don’t be like me, don’t be like me.”
Maybe he had a moment like this, the start of it all. He chose to take it. I chose not to.
“Nah mate, I’m not up for it,” Greg shrugs.
“Alright, you’re missing out.”
No I’m not.
I get up and walk slowly away.
I am not my Dad.
Victoria richman