People recount their childhoods with words like carefree, happy, and innocent. They reminisce about times of pure ecstasy – camping trips and Disneyland and bike riding. I speak of my childhood with words like neglected, nonexistent, and irresponsible. My mother hates camping, I’ve never been to Disneyland, and my older brother didn’t learn to ride a bike until he was 12 with the help of a father who wasn’t even ours. I was an honorary member of Alcoholics Anonymous by association before I even knew what addiction was.

My father had been an alcoholic since before I was born. He’s a recovered alcoholic of approximately six years now, but he will explain, “It doesn’t matter if you no longer drink, you still refer to yourself as an alcoholic.” If you know anything about AA, you have probably heard that there are meetings that one is supposed to attend in order to successfully recover. At some meetings, there is a speaker, a member of AA who is supposed to tell their experience with addiction in its entirety – from when it first began to the present day. One March day a few years ago, it was my father’s turn to be the speaker. This was the day I learned who my father truly was.

I remember looking up at St. Joseph’s hospital as it loomed over me, squinting to see the top because it was up there with the sun. The white paint was curling and peeling. I felt a bit like that paint, with pieces of me slowly being torn away and thinking that today would be the day the truth sitting under my exterior would finally be revealed. It was the time of year when nothing is beautiful – the sky was gray, the trees were bare, and the snow was muddy. I didn’t know then, but Mother Nature had created a perfect setting for what was about to unravel.

We entered the meeting room, and as I would in any crowded room, I took a back row seat. The confessions began. I watched as one half of my DNA stood at the front of a room where the walls were too clean and the air too thick. I listened as he spoke in a tone I had never heard. I listened as his voice pierced through the 27 other people in the room as though he was speaking only to me about his lifelong struggles with anxiety, depression, drugs, alcohol, and gambling.

I recall looking him up and down, thinking that there must be a mistake. This man could not be my father; I didn’t know him. Secret after secret poured from the mouth that had kissed me good night since before I could remember. He continued, no matter how desperately I hoped it would end.

I listened to my father list chronologically the days that he had tried to end his life, and I found myself remembering those days as I had experienced them and realizing that I had only known half the story. Back then, I knew that my brothers and I took impromptu trips to my aunt’s because Daddy was “sick in the hospital.” I knew that sometimes my mother got really upset and cried inconsolably with neighbors and people I didn’t even know.

My father told the story of one day that I remembered perfectly. I was about 9. I had been home from school for a couple hours, and my father was talking to my mother on the phone downstairs. Suddenly, he exploded, ripping the phone off the cord and smashing it on the floor. I cowered on the couch as he gathered his belongings and drove away – something he did often. That’s where the story had always ended for me. But my father stood at the front of that room and revealed, “I had taken all the alcohol in the house, and I was going to kill myself.” With that sentence, I felt like I had been shot. My father was going to end his life that day, and I wouldn’t know until years later.

But still he wasn’t finished. He spoke of another time when he had come home and downed a bottle of antidepressants. My mom had found him unconscious, took him to the hospital, and he was in a coma for two days. As he continued with his story, I blamed myself. How had I not even realized one of my parents was in a coma? He kept talking about how he didn’t have any happiness in his life, and that hit me like a freight train. Why hadn’t I been able to make him happy? Why wasn’t being my father enough to stop him from longing for death? If I’d known then maybe I could have prevented it. I felt guilty because I’d blamed him for so much, and he had a world of problems I never knew about. He was trying his best, and none of this could have possibly rested on my adolescent shoulders.

I walked out of that room that afternoon and the daylight was blinding. I felt like a light had been turned on in every inch of my mind after hearing what my father had shared. Although it hadn’t left his mouth quite like this, what he truly said to me was, “It’s okay that you feel the way you do sometimes. It’s time for you to put the pieces together.”

I finally realized that weekly trips to the psych ward to visit your dad is not usual for families. I realized why my dad would often nap for hours at a time: sleeping is a lot like being dead without the commitment. I understood why my mom worked extra hours and where that extra money was going. I knew then why my mom often asked me if I felt depressed or thought about suicide. The answer was yes, although I never told her that; how could I? I understood now why she hated that I read Bukowski and listened to The Smiths; two of my father’s favorites when he was lost in the abyss of depression.

Everything made sense to me now. When I swallowed enough liquid courage to wander blindly into oncoming traffic that one summer night, I knew why I felt so hopeless. When I was 14, I discovered that dragging a razor across the insides of my arms and thighs felt a lot better than sitting in my room and listening to my mom forcing my father to throw up or crying that she couldn’t afford groceries or screaming mercilessly because my father had almost gambled our house away.

It had all fallen into place. I felt these things because it was in my genes. My chromosomes were tarnished with depression and anxiety and addiction – they still are – and it’s a hard battle to fight when it would be so much easier to just give up and say, “There’s no use. This is just who I am.” But it isn’t who I am. I am my father’s daughter, but I am not him. I do not have to drink or gamble the way he did or hate myself the way he did. He made those mistakes so I don’t have to.

My father spoke to me after that speech, and his normal voice had returned – monotonous, nonchalant voice that others have said I have. He stopped me before I got into the car and asked what I thought about what he had said. I saw fear looking back at me, and I knew then why my father had kept these secrets from me for so long. In his eyes, I saw years of tension and exhaustion. I examined the bags under his eyes and the permanent furrow in his brow, and I knew that my father had been afraid I would see him differently if I knew these horrendous realities about his life.

To be honest, I did see him differently, but not as a coward or a failure like he feared. My father and I communicate mostly in grunts and incomplete sentences, so I responded simply, “I had no idea.” I left it at that, but my mind had much more to say. I slumped in the seat, looked out the window, and thought that I had never been more proud of anyone in my entire life. I was honored to be in the presence of a person who had been through so much and survived to tell the tale. I was amazed by my father’s strength.

We sat like that for a few minutes, going neither forwards nor backwards, and I felt a sad sort of comfort knowing that somewhere I possess his strength within me.