I was raised in an addict’s home. We never spoke about it much. Some nights, I could hear them, their hushed voices drifting down the hall. Poker. Raceways. Money, but never liquor. When you learn about addiction in middle school health, they never talk about what it’s like to live with a gambler.
I could see it in his eyes; they carried a heaviness whenever the gambling was bad. As far as I can remember, his eyes were dark more often than not. I was thirteen the first time he was arrested. I remember sprinting down the sidewalk toward my house and seeing police as I turned the corner. My pace slowed and one of the officers ushered me inside. They had taken my father into the station so they could ask him some questions. Everything would be fine, I just needed to trust them. It wasn’t until last year that I found out how much he had stolen. He had gambled away most of our family’s savings and needed money to keep us going. When the police finally caught him, he had roughly $5,000 of stolen goods from Kmart thrown into the bed of his pick-up truck.
Three years later, in a fit of mania, he smashed his laptop with a sledgehammer and set it out on the curb in an attempt to halt his online gambling. Somewhere in it all, there were sparks, and the fire they produced nearly engulfed my car in flames. Another six years have passed since, and he is still a gambler.
In high school, I made a promise to myself that I’d never become an addict. I’d never let something wash away so much of me that I lost myself in the undertow. Now, though, I can't help but wonder if it's even possible. Addiction is so painfully human. My father and I rarely speak these days even though we still live in the same home. He is often more mania or depression than he is himself. I have only caught glimpses of him, that strange man beneath the churning seas, but I know he is there. He is drowning in himself. As much as he has hurt me, I know he is a victim, too.