09/02/1999

Dream: Great Balls of Fire

-outside at night
-some planets look very close to the earth. They’re glowing like coals in a fire
-one small planet falls to earth as if it had been thrown. It doesn’t hit the ground very close to where I am
-soon enough, a larger planet comes.
-my mother and some other people are now outside with me
-a medium-sized planet falls and hits mum in the knee
-as it hits the ground, it recoils in billions of tiny pieces of burning ash
-some lady takes mum to a woman around the corner. We go into the woman’s garage, wherein an ambulance has been blocked. She fixes mum’s knee and we walk back to our house
-a planet the size of Jupiter is on the horizon, but I wonder if these could possibly be planets from other galaxies
-a very large planet is hurled in our direction

Some people are blessed with fathers who cherish them, and other people are blessed with fathers who do not. My father could not handle the responsibility that comes along with being a parent. In order to abandon that responsibility, he drank.

This is something I always accepted—perhaps even enabled—without question. I pose myself this question now:

Why?

I think he drank because he felt trapped in a life with which he was unhappy; he didn’t want to be a white collar worker with a wife, a bunch of kids and a mortgage. He didn’t want to be a grown-up. He wanted to hang out all night with his friends, drinking and writing songs. He abandoned his responsibility to us in glass after glass of rum and coke. He left us to raise ourselves while he spent every night in the intoxicated world he had created for himself.

His freedom came only when he was released from the confines of family life. He is now free to do as he pleases; his children are no longer a concern to him. He has now been presented with the opportunity to lead a life free from any kind of responsibility. He doesn’t have to work, to support anyone, to associate with his children, or even to associate with his own family.

But my theory must be flawed, because even without us kids in his life, my father still drinks.

Giselle