I don’t know how to be a father. I lost that lesson to a bottle of vodka my father preferred over family life. I wasn’t a good husband either, for that same reason, I guess, although I can’t really blame him for my short temper and lack of patience; that’s all on me. Being the child of an alcoholic scars you for life. Drunken screams, chairs flying across the living room, a military belt marking your buttocks for the slightest offence, no money—the list could go on and on. There were no birthday parties, and what’s more, my friends, and there were only a few of them, couldn’t even visit me. No wonder I grew up locked in my room like a hermit, escaping from reality into the world of books. It certainly didn’t help me develop my social skills. But after all of that, I should have known better, but, what a surprise, I started drinking myself. I remember one evening in my dorm room, when I was sitting on the windowsill with a bottle of vodka, drinking straight from the bottle. My friend came, and when he saw me, he didn’t say a word; he just went to the wall, took down the mirror hanging on it, put it on my lap, and left. It was only a few years later, when, after emptying a bottle of vodka in the cinema during the opening credits, I blacked out and the next thing I remembered was walking on all fours like a dog down the main street of the city on the way back home, that I realised it was time to end it. Vodka eventually killed my father—he died of cancer. I survived sober for almost twenty-five years. But I will never be normal, whatever that means.
hidden pilcrow 