Worse day and some thoughts

So I figure it's only fair that I share my own worst day. All you folk in the class who did this earlier, you may say it doesn't take courage to do so, but to me, from where I'm coming from, it looks a whole hell of a lot like strength. So here it goes. Here's mine...

About two years ago my mother and I were eating dinner when my mom looked up from her food. Staring at her glass of water, she said, "You know, Tai, your dad was a real shithead."

At first I was taken aback by this, however, after a few minutes of thinking I replied, "yeah, yeah he was, wasn't he?"

And then after that we told stories about him and laughed and cried and did all the things that people in mourning do. That was a Saturday during the summer after my sophomore year in college.

My mom's house is built from my old life. There's a beauty cabinet in her living room that was given to her after her wedding. In the basement is a set of shelves that can't be replicated, and on top of that shelf is a portrait of a man with a grey beard standing next to a short, pudgy Asian kid wearing over-sized hiking boots.

Growing up, I lived in a bigger house with two parents and a cat. The old house was filled with the oak and plastic furnishings that my parents had collected as they built a life for themselves through the seventies and eighties. In the corner of my parent's room was an old mirror that my dad had constructed in college when he was studying to become an engineer. Along with this, a plethora of chests and shelves and the like sat around the house, all sharing the workman's print of my father.

He studied to become an engineer but became a science teacher instead. I'm not sure why; I never really asked. From the time I was a kid though, that's what he was to me, my science teacher dad. He would always have great stories of yelling at idiots at one of the local high schools. I always wanted to have him as a school teacher, but he told me that this would never happen. The cost of impartiality, I suppose.

In third grade I was beaten up for being Asian by a group of older guys. In response to this my parents signed me up for Taekwondo. I studied Taekwondo until my sophomore year in high school.

One of my all-time bad days occurred after Taekwondo right before I received my driver's license. My dad had told me he was going to pick me up when my class ended at 6. Around the time 7 rolled around, my mother showed up (note this is before cell phones so staying in contact at this point was a matter of luck and smoke signals, holy crap, I'm only 22). Someone in my class had called my mom to tell her that I had been waiting outside the dojo for an hour and so she swung by to pick me up after work. As we drove home in silence, she wondered what had happened. Panic crossed her voice as she ran through the possibilities. As we pulled in to the driveway she rushed from the car into the house.

I wasn't worried. I knew what was happening. Since sometime in middle school, I noticed that my dad had a tendency of falling asleep on the couch. My mom attributed this to fatigue from long days at work. I knew the real reason though. Once, when I was 13, While I was poking around our basement for my dad's porn stash, I uncovered a cache of wine bottles and boxes. Dad had been secretly drinking wine in unknown amounts. He wasn't fatigued from work during those nights on the couch: he was plastered, he was wasted, he was drunk.

When we entered the kitchen connected to the garage, a think haze of smoke had settled over the drawers and sinks. The house smelled of burnt potatoes and on the stove was a smoldering mess of an incomplete dinner. On the couch, my dad snored, bathed in the light of sitcom reruns. My mom quickly stirred him awake and asked him what was happening. She grabbed the phone, figuring that he had suffered a stroke or a heart attack or something. I told her to put away the phone. I told her that I knew what was happening. Having said that, I started towards the basement.

As I brought up each box of wine or empty bottle of vodka, I watched my mom's face turn from confusion to fear to anger. After I had cleared the basement, there were six boxes of wine, two bottles of vodka, and a collection of beer boxes sitting in our living room.

My mom asked my dad what was happening. She asked him for an explanation. She cried and yelled. He told her to stop being a bitch and then she hit him. After that, I went to my room, zoned out, and played computer games until I had school the next day where I got yelled at for being inattentive. My peers kept asking me where my dad was. This was a really terrible way to spend a few days.

Over the next months we bounced Dad in and out of rehabs where he would tell us that he would change. Turns out alcoholics are great at breaking promises. My mom divorced my dad during my sophomore year in high school and he spiraled into a drunken nightmare. I played second fiddle to his masterwork of dickery and there are all sorts of stories of him and I being abusive to each other, but this isn't about those. Three years later he would be dead, my mom would be in therapy, I will have taken up a regular drug regimen, and my cat will have decided to hate me. As the late great KV said, "So it goes."

I figure as far as realized apocalypses go, destroying your family is a great place to find it. Of course, I say this knowing full well my Blythe tone, however, that moment when I decided to bring up those wine boxes is an unveiling point in my life. From when life was about girls and cars and homework to when it became a litany of disappointment. I have plenty of illusions and regrets from that time, but that moment, when I revealed to my mom and, in a sense, to my self the extent of corruption that had permeated my family is not one. It is when I truly became aware of just how weird and horrible things could feel.

This is not a feeling you shake off. You either forget it or live with it. One of those, I think, turns you into a better person, one of those kills. I'm still not entirely sure which one is which. Both make me want to smoke cigarettes and shoot at things. Either way, this kind of metaphysical planning is good for me. It makes it not about my dad or my fuckups along the way, it's about the lessons, no not that- not lessons; it's about the poetry that one finds along the way.

This class has not been therapeutic for me in respect to this event. It's been almost seven years since the unveiling. I've been living with this for a while. However, it has given me greater understanding about how people handle pain and trauma, about how we are presented with models of how to handle pain and suffering. It has also given me something that isn't therapeutic, more useful, more like a translation device for this event. It has given me a contextual awareness of my past and past actions within the context of a society whose morals and expectations are built upon this text, or, sometimes, at least the idea of this text.

So when Johnny Beaver Clever's mother told me to have the patience of Job when my dad relapsed for a second time, and I told her under my breathe to go to hell, I now understand what she meant. I understand the prudentiality of the statement. I understand that under the cliche is a greater metaphor that demands my thought and meditation. The existence of this allegory suggests that this kind of thing is an irrevocable part of that human existence thing we talked about. That I am a minuscule but concrete part of that story. That my understanding of suffering is only prudential until I realize the whole story.

Musing aside, on a more practical note, this class has also taught me to talk to the dead. Now I know that when my mom and I call my dad a shithead that he is listening. Not because of some afterlife or spiritual realm filled with angel farts and rapture (also, my dad was an atheist and based on this kind of dualistic afterlife he is most definitely in hell and I don't think hell has many shortwave radios, if you catch my drift). He is listening because these words exist only in the context of my story, and this is my story. And, goddammit, my dad can hear my insults in my story because he needs to be reminded that his carelessness stopped him from seeing me graduate, fixing my car, or showing me how to do either. But, I know while I write this, as did my mom when she said that, that we aren't really talking about or to Dad when we say those things, we don't really know who we're talking to. I think forgiveness or reconciliation or de-fracturing or whatnot is located in that grey ether.

And that's it, that's the end. No real answers, only a bunch of stuff floating around in an infinite space and a bunch of fleshy meat bags wandering to and fro, wondering what stars taste like or if Lucille Ball actually talked like that. And then, every once in a while, something actually happens.