In all of my life there has only ever been one thing that has made me so furious and depressed and bothered down to my core. That makes my body seize when faced with it. That torments and shakes up and tears the peace right from my soul and shreds it and burns it and destroys it in an instant. That has the power to ruin my perception of a person-- no matter their past, present, or future-- whom by this is affected. That can turn any person from an agreeable, personable human into something that cannot be reasoned with or tamed, and is not suitable to talk to for any other intelligent life form.

Alcohol.

For many people, a casual beer or glass of wine may be a way of unwinding at the end of the day. For many teenagers, alcohol is a way of rebelling and having fun.

For me, alcohol has ruined my family.

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I used to think my dad was the smartest person in the world. That he knew everything, because to a little kid, it seemed like he did. He taught me about fractions when I was 4, riding in the passenger seat of the pickup truck that I now drive right after a trip to Home Depot to get lumber for a fence he was building. He told me about cars and their engines and their models. He told me what to do when I got sick and what to do when I got hurt.

My parents got divorced when I was eight. They hated each other, so it never bothered me. People would tell me they were sorry, but I wasn't.  But the night my dad left wasn’t pretty-- there was a lot of blood and yelling involved on both ends. And through a lot of lies and deception, I didn't talk to my dad for almost a year, for no other reason than that I didn't want to. This was 2007.

Fast forward a few years: it's fall of 2012 and I just started eighth grade. My dad and I have been on good terms for years, and I spent at least three nights at his house every week. My dad had a few drinks a night, but didn't really overdo it. If anything, it made him easier to talk to. (At least, that's what it seemed like to thirteen year old me.) And by the time he woke up in the morning, all traces of the alcohol were gone. Things seemed good.

Fast forward again a few months, to the end of my eighth grade year. The recession began a few years before, but it only just hit my family. My grandma, my dad's mom, who had a great deal of money before, lost nearly all of it, causing a huge impact on my entire family, who all relied on her for monetary support. My dad hadn't had a job in years-- he had relied on money he saved up, but also on my grandma.

For a while, my dad refused to accept that there was a problem. He was smart: he understood what was going on, financially. But he wasn't smart enough to realize that he needed to do something about it on his end. He continued to live his life in the same way he had before things turned, but I constantly ragged on him to get a job. He wasn't the working type, he would say.

Over the course of the next few years was when I noticed him drinking more and more every night. Staying up later and later, with each hour passing meaning a few more cans of beer. Each morning, the garbage bag would be empty because each night, he would fill it up with beer cans and replace it with a fresh one. At first, it was okay. But as the weeks and months went by, talking to him became more difficult. The alcohol gave him this inability to take anything seriously, and with each drink it became worse.

Talking to him about things I took seriously was hard. I would come downstairs late at night and ask him to turn down the TV volume. I am taking the SAT tomorrow, I would say. But it didn't matter to him. I would argue and beg and plea, because "this test is important and can determine my college admissions," but he never heard any of it.

Talking to him about getting a job was harder. Sometimes all I would get was a mocking tone of my voice repeating my words back to me. Other times, I would get a lecture about how he worked hard his entire life and my mom took everything from him in the divorce. He liked to do that, blame stuff on her. But it didn't matter-- nothing ever got through.

There was something worse though. Something that trumped trying to talk to him about school or jobs or life decisions. Something that I couldn't even talk to him about in person.

A few weeks into my junior year, I'd had enough. I was beginning my most important year of high school and my dad wouldn’t even take me seriously. One day when I came back to my mom's house after a weekend with my dad, I broke down sobbing. She had always asked if my dad was drinking, and I had always felt the need to cover for him, but that day, I told my mom the extent to which my dad's problem had become my own. I begged her to not make me stay with him anymore. It hurt too much, but I didn't tell her that. And to my surprise, she complied.
But then I had to call my dad. I sat on my bed for hours, grasping at a way to say what I needed to:  that he was a drunk and I couldn't take it anymore. For a while, I didn't think I could or would do it.

He told me he would stop drinking if it bothered me. He didn’t realize it bothered me.

I had to remind myself how to breathe.

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It has been almost a year since I stopped visiting my dad regularly. I see him every other weekend now. He still drinks, but he is my dad, and I cannot cut him out of my life completely.

In a way he has saved me. I have never and will never touch alcohol. I cannot even fathom it. My family will never have to go through with me what I did with him.

But in so many ways, he has ruined me. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who drinks alcohol doesn't care about themselves, but especially not about the people around them. The people who have to put up with their drunkenness. I have been told that this is not true, but I cannot see it any other way. And now, whenever anyone I know drinks alcohol, I cannot help but despise them.

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I've only ever told one person about this, and she doesn't even know most of it. She briefly knows that my dad drinks a lot, but doesn't really understand what that means. Her parents never drink.

She tries to tell me that I'm lucky-- her dad moved out of the country many years ago and never came back. She barely talks to him. At least I can see my dad, even if he is drunk. But the person I see isn't my dad. I mean, not really.

I haven't seen my dad in years.