DAD, I THINK I’M FINALLY SOBER
Dad, I think I’m finally sober.
I am sensitive: I feel everything, I want to heal everyone.
A man caught between two words:
I forgive you, or I hate you. The alcohol boiled
my blood, it set me on fire from within,
turned my chest red. I wanted to purge
those last phrases you said:
“Son, you disappoint me.” It disappointed me to hear them.
I murdered someone three nights ago:
I buried my ego amidst broken glass.
Everything blurs and then I breathe,
I inhale, and as I return to my body,
I am sober once again.
Where is that faith you wanted me to have?
I never believed much in anything, not even myself.
I’d wake up at dawn, take the bus
exhaling dark smoke, seeking help.
I’d go far for work, come home, and drink.
I am close to the transformation;
it only cost me being close to death.
Three months ago, I drove and crashed,
numb to the impact because of the alcohol.
Today, Dad, I’m calling you because I’m sober.
I don’t know what I was looking for:
your company, your forgiveness, or a goodbye.
I know you try, I try too, but
it’s hard for me to show what I feel.
We’ve both made mistakes.
It’s time to wake up, back to a past
of pancakes and bacon in the kitchen,
where there is only alcohol now.
Dad, I’d like to be someone else.
Today I walked for twenty minutes
to slow my heart down,
to feel nature manufacturing life inside of me.
I ended up on a bench in a downtown park.
A homeless man sat beside me and spoke.
A bottle in one hand, a bag in the other
that he called home.
They judge him for being an addict,
not knowing that addiction is sometimes the only thing
capable of making you feel alive
while pulsing alone in your room.
We should not be judged by our addictions;
we are so much more than that.
We all have addictions.
We all can break.
Dad, I hate you for no precise reason.
I wish I understood what happens to me
when you are near, even when you're absent.
You watched me suffer and did nothing;
you left, and I had to care for everyone.
I think I am sober of thoughts now,
sober of emotion. Sometimes I loathe life,
sometimes I adore it.
I look in the mirror and see my face.
I see photographs from that Christmas:
a family in another part of the world.
Dad, you must be addicted to feeling miserable,
because people say I look like you.
And I hate every part of me.
If you seek to maintain that sadness and the calm of the rum,
this is the way: to think you are the most useless being alive.
But I want to change.
Does a human being still remain behind all this conformity?
Does it make them better to be "correct" and without sins?
Every person on this earth has done harm.
Perhaps our addiction is living,
and we are all looking for how to overcome it.
I don't want this miserable reality; I want my dream.
Dad, I’m finally sober;
at least I can write this to you.
I free myself from my own greed,
from my own grief, from my own hate.
I seek an answer, Father who art in heaven.
I didn't believe in you; I still don't,
but here I am staining my notebook.
I strip away the weight and the guilt.
I am going to find the way
to make this my destiny.
I will heal,
and I will call this:
transformations in progress.
Something far from our legacy,
just the bond of a mute son and a deaf father.
Trying to follow each other's steps
until we can finally utter
peace of mind.
As I called it, clarity.
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DAD, I THINK I’M FINALLY SOBER
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