Where to start about my father hmmm
Like NihilSlayer I come from a family with a history of depression, SA and bipolarity on both my mothers and fathers side. It seems I was destined to follow the family tradition so to speak, and I have ended up suffering from all these afflictions. While I have learned to live with my SA (for the most part), I still have huge issues with my self-esteem and bipolar disorder which is messing up everything in my life.
Now back to my father. My dad is not a bad man, quite on the contrary he's one of the kindest most harmless souls I know, but he has a history of alcohol and substance abuse since he was 12 years old, all stemming from his upbringing with abuse, both sexual and physical. When I was young I didn't understand why my father had different personalities. When he was sober he barely spoke and was kind and responsible, but when he drank he was gone for long periods, brought strangers to our house and neglected his parental duties as well as his work. Needless to say my mother couldn't live with this for long, so when I was seven my parents split up.
I got to visit my dad every other weekend and I far preferred to stay with him instead of my mother. While I was visiting dad there never was any rules. I could do whatever I wanted to and stay up for as long as I wished. It was when I was around 9 or 10 I started to notice my fathers peculiar behavior (later revealed to have come from drug abuse).
Usually i slept in the same bed as my dad, and one time I remember waking up and there was my dad peeing all over the nightstand. he would sometimes turn the electricity on and off without any reason and leave me and my sister alone for days at a time. He brought home all kinds of strange people, some of them violent.
At the age of twelve I had seen my dad been threatened with an axe, beaten to a pulp and visiting him in the hospital after he was almost stabbed to death. One time he disappeared for three months and no one knew were he was. My family called the police and filed a missing persons report. It was even on the front page of some of the bigger newspapers. Suddenly he returned as if nothing had happened. He had lived in Denmark for a while with some of his drug buddies.
After that I didn't see my dad for several months, my mother didn't allow me to. As I grew older i started to take advantage of my fathers substance abuse. I made him give me money in his drug-addled state. I stole alcohol and drugs for him and held wild parties with my friends, several who were much older than me.
I got in trouble with the police a couple of times, but at that time I didn't give a crap about anything. I would skip school to go visit my father and I generally did whatever I wanted to. i was in fact living a dual life. When I was with my mother I was a shy, outcast teenager with almost no friends, but when I was with my dad I was the coolest kid on the block. Hanging out with kids several years older than me and got a reputation for hosting the best parties in town.
When I turned 15, right after I had graduated from Junior high, I decided to move in with my dad full-time. My girlfriend lived in the next town where my father lived, and all my friends lived in the same town as my father. The next two years was spent partying and not much else. I tried to go to school for a while, but I ended up not going. This was when my SA started to kick in for real.
Most of my friends moved away or I just lost contact with them. I realized most of them wasn't real friends anyway, and they had just exploited me because of my access to alcohol and drugs. I rarely saw my girlfriend anymore because I shut myself in for the most part and got more and more reluctant to go outside.
When I was seventeen my mother had had enough of my frivolous behavior and recruited me to the army. I spent half-a-year in the Norwegian equivalent of the National guard, as far North in the country as you can get. During this period my dad had a heart attack, but the officers refused to let me go home to visit him even after several complaints. I was forced to sit there waiting for updates on my fathers health on the phone, very well knowing that he might die at any moment.
Due to some miracle my dad made it and the shock of almost dying made him quit drugs and alcohol all together. When i returned from the army, my father was a different man. For once I got to be with my real dad, and all was well for the next two years. Then one day my dad went out and didn't return before the next day, drunk and high he stumbled into my bedroom the next morning covered in blood. He had been in a fight and someone had hit him in the head with a hammer. I quickly put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding and called an ambulance.This was the end of my fathers sober days, after that the situation would just continue in a downward spiral.
i lived with him for a short time thereafter, until i decided to move for myself. I got a job and an apartment, but even this didn't help my SA much, which had taken a turn for the worse after my fathers recession. During this period I didn't have much contact with my dad, even though we lived in the same town.
At some point my grandfather moved in with my dad. My grandfather was a cruel and violent man who had been beating the crap out of my dad when he was younger. He was also bipolar with extreme mania and OCD. My grandfather brought the most violent and criminal people in the entire county home to my dad, and his apartment became infamous as a gathering point for the worst scum in the city.
My fathers drug abuse took a turn for the worse. Up until now he hadn't done any hard drugs since he was a teenager, but my grandfather changed all that and soon my dad was shooting needles and smoking crack. It was around this point I lost my job and therefore also my apartment. I lived with friends for a while, but I soon overstayed my welcome and was forced to move back in with my dad and my grandad.
The following years was a nightmare I would rather forget. I was threatened daily with violence, and my grandad would sometimes come and beat me up for no reason. Luckily I somehow managed to get out of it and I moved in with some friends again. I got a new job and things actually started to look good again.
My grandads health suddenly took a turn for the worse. He suffered from alcohol induced dementia and could no longer take care of himself. He moved to his own apartment in the neighboring town, and while my dad still kept his old apartment he was rarely home, choosing to stay with my grandad, while he lent his apartment to any junkie that needed a place to stay. My grandad died within a year.
After this I briefly went to live with my dad, going back to the same hell as before. Now my dad has lost his old apartment. he has moved into the worst crack-house in town and gets beaten almost weekly. I still talk to him on the phone but I rarely visit anymore. After all the years of substance abuse and violence its a miracle he's still alive. I still love my dad, but he has, in some part, ruined my life.
Edit: Sorry for the wall of text
