Andrew Lawes recalls how his father made any hope of a “normal” childhood impossible.
One of the basic instincts as a child is the one of the infallible parent. At that age, you don’t question your parents, it is impossible to comprehend that they aren’t perfect. It is that unerring belief, that trust, that innocence, that defines the parent-child relationship.
I was 4 years old when my innocence was destroyed.
My dad was an alcoholic. He was never violent to me, but I saw his violence first-hand. I used to sit there, cowering on the stairs, watching it all. I was far too young to understand what was going on, but I knew one thing – when my baby brother tried to join me on the stairs, I had to get him back to bed. I couldn’t let him see. I had to protect him. I only wish I could have protected everybody else as well.
When my father no longer lived with me, I used to see him at weekends. I remember two incidents vividly, both involving my brother. One time, he refused to let us wear seatbelts in the car. Apparently “only babies wear seatbelts”. He then went driving around at 100 miles an hour. Aside from the blatant disregard for his sons’ safety, the speed itself was utterly terrifying to me as a child. Yet he didn’t care. Only babies wear seatbelts.
The second also involved my brother. We got in the car, and my brother said to my father “Daddy, I’m going to be a Newcastle fan”. My dad forced him to get out the car. He made him stand outside, in tears, and refused to let him back in until my brother swore to be a Sunderland supporter.
Watching a grown man bully a 3 year-old child, humiliating him, over something as irrelevant as a sporting team was disgusting. I was appalled by my father. Yet, I sat in the back, quiet. I was too scared to speak up to him. I was 6 at the time, an age where life should be about fun. But when I look back, all I feel is guilt. I’m ashamed I did nothing. I can rationalise it in my head, but deep down, I still believe I was a coward for not standing up to my father.
23 years later, I still haven’t come to terms with what went on. What I experienced defines me as a person. When a therapist told me that she believed I’ve had a mild-grade depression from a young age, she says it is what I saw on the stairs that instigated it. Maybe she’s right, I don’t know. But I do know that I blamed myself for my dad’s actions, and I can’t forgive myself for not standing up to him.
My father died when I was 12. I saw him a month before he passed. I don’t recall a lot of the meeting. I remember he gave me lemon squash. I remember he took me to my Grandma’s, and we ate garden peas by the back door. I remember getting home, and receiving a phone call a few days later. He asked if I would send a photograph of me and my brother. I told him I would, but then, life got in the way. “I’ll do it tomorrow” I told myself, only tomorrow never came.
I still feel monumentally guilty that I didn’t find the time to send him a photograph. I felt like he had given up living because I didn’t post a picture. It sounds irrational, and looking objectively, I can see it is. All he had to do was stop drinking, and he would have been able to see me. He would have had all the pictures he wanted. But the bastard chose drink over his own sons, and then he drank himself to death without ever holding his hands up, without ever apologising, and without ever absolving me from the guilt that coarses through every inch of my being.
The truth is, from the age of 4, I have blamed myself for my dad’s actions. If I had been a better son, he wouldn’t have felt the need to drink so much. If I had said something in the car, he would never have bullied my brother. If I had stepped off the stairs, I could have stopped his violence. But I didn’t, and I can’t forgive myself for that.
If you are a parent, please think about the impact your actions have on children. Don’t use the old maxim that “they’re too young to remember” because you can never know what will imprint on a childs mind. You are the example to your children. Your actions will define them as people, and the way you make them feel will affect every inter-personal relationship they have. Children don’t understand nuances; everything is black and white. Children may not understand why something is happening, and they probably won’t remember circumstances. But what they will always remember is the way you make them feel.
I’m extremely lucky; I had one parent who did everything she could for me, who tried every single day to make me feel loved, who devoted her life to giving me the best she could. I can never thank my Mam enough for loving me like she does; without my Mam, the truth is, I wouldn’t be here today. Sadly, I had one parent who I was terrified of; who has scarred my very soul, and has left wounds that will never fully heal. No child should ever be made to feel like I felt, not by their own father.
To those that have been through much worse experiences than me, I’m so sorry for what you have been through. Please know that it wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault. You were a child, and someone you loved should never have put you through what they did. My father should never have made me witness what I saw. Your parents should never have put you through what they did.
We should have been protected by our parents, not destroyed by them. It wasn’t our fault. We were innocents.
Photo—Ivan McClellan/Flickr
As someone who was deal a really shitty hand in the parents department, this article struck a chord. I cut off my parents entirely and even though it’s been almost a decade, I still have nightmares from time to time and feelings of anger and self-loathing. Thank you for writing this, that last sentence especially…it might seem so obvious but sometimes you still need to hear/read it.
Andrew, most people keep silent about these sorts of things and are consumed by them. By speaking about your experience, you are reclaiming your power. You are turning your life circumstances into a means of reaching out to people who have experienced similar atrocities. I respect and admire your bravery. Turning tragedy into a source of strength is difficult, but it shows that you’ve been able to rise above the heap using a method that is constructive. Certainly there is a lot of climbing left to do, but you ~are~ climbing and moving forward and up. Not sure if it… Read more »
My mother too was the biggest victim in the situation. I never blamed her for the choices she made because she had been so emotionally beat down that what little energy she had left was spend on me and my brother. After the divorce my father stopped drinking. after he had been sober for some time and had straightened his life and priorities back he told my mother that he wanted the other part of his life back, his family. They ended up remarrying and have been married for about 6 years now. I’m so proud of both of them… Read more »
Rick and Leia, I just want to say thank you for your kind words about my writing. Just Passing, I completely agree about how sometimes, parents staying together can be worse than a divorce. I think it’s important to remember, that when it comes to parental alcoholism and emotional abuse, as much as it impacts on the children, it also impacts terribly on the other parent, the one who is trying to keep everything together. They are as much a victim of the abusive person as the child is. Obviously, there are extreme situations where the other parent is complicit… Read more »
Your story is unforgettable…I, too, know what it is like to be in a car with an alcoholic who is driving recklessly…sometimes I wish I could go back and just tell myself to get out of the car and just take the train home by myself…over and over, I just want to kick myself…but your story reminds me that the fault lies with the alcoholic and that we were all just children…so true that kids find it so easy to blame themselves…such a terrible thing to feel helpless…
My father was an alcoholic, and the thing that gets me the most irked is when people say that divorce is bad for kids or that marriages should stay intact “for the kid’s sake”. This is what my mom did. She stayed. Not only because she had been fed this BS, but because she thought her kids were unaware of the goings on in the home. Are there really that many adults who don’t remember what it was like to be a child? Children are human beings with functioning brains. I remember what my father was like. I remember pretending… Read more »
This is a powerful essay that will resonate with any man who was bullied by his father as a child. It may also help a woman with such a man in her life understand him a bit better. Great work.