Which word could stop the hurricane of addiction? I thought there was one.

Via Chiang Henry

The letter was long.


In my memory, there are lines and lines of my chicken scratch handwriting on an ordinary notebook page. Why did I resolve to write it to him then? Maybe he had stolen my car, or grandma’s again.


Maybe it was just the look of him, although Dad kept weight on him no matter how deep he was in addiction. It showed up not in weight loss but erratic behavior – disappearing for days, sneaking keys from coat pockets and taking cars in the middle of night, then returning 3 or 4 days later wordlessly, no explanation, the gas tank empty, the driver’s side door handle broken, the passenger seat off track, an unrecognizable shirt in the backseat, ashtray full of cigarettes although I didn’t smoke or allow smoking in it.


I'm sure Grandma peppered him with questions, and I did the same, and still there wasn’t an answer – just an annoyed scowl on his face at the fact that we were questioning him. “I didn’t steal your car,” He said, matter-of-factly, like it was impossible for one relative to take what another had to give, as if our sleeping silence and ignorance were permission when he took off with the car.


Anyway, on the night I wrote the letter, I wanted to break through to him. He was home, on the couch sleeping. I looked through the photo album for a picture to go with the letter, one from when I was 14 – the last time he was heavy in his addiction. I found one, and I can’t remember what I looked like in it, but I wrote about the sadness in that 14 year old girl’s eyes, and how I refused to look or feel that way again. Now I was 20, and I warned that he would lose me for good, this time. I left the picture and note on grandma’s coffee table beside the couch where he slept and went back to my room, in the den. He didn’t acknowledge the letter the next day or ever, but he was shivering on the couch in the next few days.


“Detox!” I thought. I did it! I got through! I was going to end this addiction once and for all. I thought. The al-anon podcast I listen to now, 20 some years later says “Do you think you could convince someone not to have the flu?” Addiction is a disease that can’t be reasoned away from. And what an incredible burden to even try, at 14, to think I needed to find the right emotional appeal or argument to stop the hurricane of addiction from sweeping him up again.

Via Domenica Basantes

Not that I wrote to him out of compassion. I was angry. When I found the car gone,  my sister Danielle was in town and the two of us angrily rode out to where Dad’s girlfriend lived to get ideas for where he could be with my car. His girlfriend gave us some coordinates and we were foolhardy enough to follow them, to turn down those shady blocks and corners where he might be holed up, high, looking in every driveway for my car. I didn’t plan to confront him, just to jump in the little red Corolla and take it home with me.



When he finally showed back up at Grandma’s, I brandished the returned keys in my hand and asked “Can I put these back in my coat pocket? Are you done stealing cars??” Of course, I had no plans of ever keeping my keys in my coat, on the living room coat rack where he could find them again. I hid them in my room instead, staying vigilant and half-asleep so I’d notice if he crept into my room during the night.


What an exhausting way to live.

Grandma for her part refused to alter her routine in any way and kept the keys in her coat pocket where she could easily find them and be ready to walk out the door. It was her custom. Her favorite phrase was “I’m not accustomed to (living like) this,” in response to the break down of her house under Uncle Ron’s careless treatment of it, or Dad’s thefts. But accustomed, she was.


We were caught in the hurricane of addiction, whether we wanted to be or not. Whether we admitted it or not.