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Challenge of the Week LXXIX
"When the Great Library burned, the last 10,000 years of stories were reduced to ash. But those stories never really perished. They became a new story - the story of the fire itself. A man's urge to take a thing of beauty and... strike the match." - Dr. Robert Ford, HBO's Westworld. Write a story about rebirth, destruction, or whatever this quote inspires.
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Mvhubbard
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April 26th, 2018

On April 26th, 2018...I got the call I've always dreaded...My sister called to tell me that our dad was in the hospital again. This was the day that I finally chose my dad over my drug addiction. On April 26th, I got sober.

For the past 7 years, I always avoided my dad's phone calls because I was just too high to talk to him...too high to fake it. I could tell from the sound of his voice and from how short the phone call was that he knew I was high. He always said he had to go...but I knew what that meant. At a certain point in my addiction, I just stopped answering his phone calls because I was too ashamed to answer and have him know how fucked up I was everyday. I couldn't hear that sound in his voice, the sound of disappointment. I couldn't talk to him about it because I was supposed to be the stable one, the golden child, the one who was responsible... I would always tell myself, "I'll call him back when I sober up a little bit...", but that rarely happened. I always had some excuse to not call: work, another bowl, another roll, another pill, sex, etc. The real truth is that I just couldn't let him know how depressed and suicidal I was... I wanted to continue with the facade that "everything is fine, dad."

My dad and I always had a good relationship, better than most of the relationships in my life. He was and always will be the only person I could really rely on. So now, seeing him in that hospital bed, day after day...I see him wasting away, losing so much weight, his color changing and his eyes full of fear and worry. Sometimes, I feel like I just can't take it. I used to tell myself that if I ever lost my dad, I'd off myself. The thoughts crossed my mind, especially when I go to his apartment and smell that familiar Marlboro cigarette smell.

I made my dad two promises since I moved back home from San Francisco: to stay sober and to never commit suicide. The one thing that keeps me going through this is something that my dad always told me: "just show up, even if you're going to be late." He's been waiting for me to move back home for 4 years now, I just hope that he knows that I finally moved back home and I did it for him.

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