Lucas was a dreamer, misunderstood he said. I knew enough to know he was more than that. He was a junkie. He was headed nowhere fast but I was willing to go with him. People have told me I was just young and stupid, but I knew what I was doing. There was a part of me that knew how it would end, but there was another part that was exceptionally hopeful. My mother warned me that he was just like my father and I should leave, but that was the same reason I wanted to stay.

My mom fell in love with my father when she was nineteen and they got married a year after, and six months after that I was born. My mother was always working, so I was left with my father. In my five year old eyes he had no flaws; he was my favorite person in the world. He filled my head with these wild ideas that we would take these magnificent adventures together. We would go to the jungle or deep into the ocean or even outer space. When mom was working we would go to these places and explore but when mom came home all the fun stopped. Some days she would scream at him, some days she would just cry and shake her head. She said he needed to stop drinking and he scoffed at her. I didn’t understand what was wrong with that, he always drank when he was home.

We didn’t have a lot of money and my mom demanded that my father find a job and he did; he found a lot of jobs, but he kept on getting fired, and Mom kept on crying and shaking her head.

We had to move from our house to an apartment on the other side of town. I wasn’t happy about moving away from my neighborhood friends but I was excited that Dad could stay home with me all day. He drank a lot more then, my mom worked a lot more and they both screamed an awful lot more. I enjoyed every second of being home with just my dad even though he hadn’t really been in the mood to take adventures with me for a while. I would just play on my own and he would sit on the couch and drink. I dreaded seeing my mother come home every day because I knew I would have to try to drown out their screams and cries.

After one of their particularly vicious fights my father came into my room and woke me up. He told me to be very quiet and get my shoes and jacket because he was taking me on an adventure, a real one. I did as he said, and we left without waking my mom. Once we got into the stairwell he laughed and said “We’re almost free.” I didn’t know what he meant but I laughed along with him. He staggered down the stairs, and once he got to the landing he picked me up and spun me around then we both fell down. He started laughing harder than before, but I still didn’t understand what was funny. By the time we got outside he was crying. I didn’t understand what was wrong with him. I knew he was drunk but I’d never seen him act like this. We finally got in the car and I was starting to get nervous. He was really starting to scare me, but I trusted him, I knew he would take me on a fun adventure. He pulled out of the parking lot and sped to the main road. He was going a lot faster than Mom would have. I got really nervous but he told me not to so I did as he said. I tried to have fun, because I really wanted to see him happy. He kept swerving all over the road and he started crying again. This time he was crying really hard. I didn’t understand; I wanted him to stop crying; I wanted him to laugh again.

I woke up in a hospital bed with my mother sitting next to me, she had her head in hands, her face was blotchy and her eyes were puffy. I asked what happened and she cried; I asked to see Daddy and cried when the she told me I couldn’t. After mom calmed down she told me that when I went out on that adventure with him he crashed the car and I got hurt but the doctors helped me and I would be all better, but dad got hurt really bad and the doctors couldn’t help him.

I blamed my mother for the whole thing. If she didn’t yell at him that night he wouldn’t have gotten drunk, and he wouldn’t have got in the car and he would still be alive. I didn’t forgive my mother until years after when I learned what really happened that night.

My father was an alcoholic who cared a lot more about himself than my mother and even me. He couldn’t stay sober enough to work so my mother had to. She was burnt out and finally she told him he could choose his alcohol or his family. He made it very clear that he had no intention of getting sober so my mother filed for divorce. My mother was going to make sure that she would get custody of me, because there was no way he could take care of me. The night he died he wrote a note explaining his intentions. He said if he couldn’t have me then he didn’t want to live, and he wanted to be sure that no one else could have me.

The person who I had loved the most was really a monster, my whole world was destroyed. I thought he loved me more than anything, but I realized he loved himself a lot more. If he loved me he wouldn’t have killed himself, he wouldn’t have put me in the car that night and he would’ve stopped drinking long before. My seven year old self was completely oblivious to his selfishness and recklessness. It took years of trying to figure out why he couldn’t be helped to realize no one knew the answer to that, but after all that I wanted to forgive him and I wanted him to be sorry because it just hurts so much to be so angry at him.

I found that out six years ago, and it still confuses me to no end. The reason why I am so hopeful with Lucas is because I think I want him to prove that he is capable of putting someone else in front of himself and his addiction and by doing that somehow righting my father’s wrongs.

Lucas was charming. He saw the world in a different light, and I liked that. I loved listening to him. He was a definitely dreamer, he was right about that, but he wasn’t a ‘doer.’ I encouraged him to make something of himself, to get sober and follow his dreams. He always said that it was too far out of reach for him, that maybe someday it would happen, but not for a while.

We were together for a little under a year when he was evicted from his apartment and moved into mine. He lost his job and wasn’t too keen on finding a new one. He said work wasn’t for him, but he would find another way to make money. He said he would only stay for a while until he got back on his feet. Despite my efforts, he was still getting high all the time while I had to pick up another shift to support the two of us. My mother pleaded with me to end it, and to find someone better, but I couldn’t, I needed to fix him.

I became obsessed with this idea of making him a better man. I sent him to rehabs and doctors and support groups and anything that I thought could help him. He didn’t take it seriously at first, but I was persistent. People told me that he could only get clean if he wanted to, and Lucas did not. After trying for a year and a half he agreed to go to rehab. He sobered up and got a job. It wasn’t long until we decided to get married.

Soon after that we had our first child, Charlie; he was named after my father. I was out of work taking care of the baby, so Lucas had to work full time. There was nothing Lucas hated more than his job. He hated being cooped up in a cubicle all day, he said he was supposed to be free. He was stressed all the time, and wasn’t making enough, so I had to pick up a night shift and leave Charlie with Lucas. Lucas wasn’t getting much sleep and the stress was catching up to him. He would only stay home if he needed to. He would come home late and he never told me where he went, and honestly, I didn’t want to know. He was starting to scare me; he was very withdrawn. His unhappiness was obvious and there was nothing I could do to help him this time.

Things soon spiraled out of control. He would be gone for days at a time, he lost his job and he starting using again. I had to leave Charlie with my mother while I worked. I didn’t know what would happen; I was beginning to burn out. I was working longer days than I ever had before and then I had to go home to a crying baby. Lucas was just another factor to my stress. I couldn’t handle it anymore.

I kicked him out of the apartment and filed for a divorce. He wanted nothing to do with our baby so I got full custody. After the divorce went through I didn’t hear a word from him. All ties were completely cut off and I had to start my life again.

No matter how hard I could’ve tried, I couldn’t change Lucas. He was the way he was and there’s absolutely nothing that could change that. If my father was alive longer I guess I would’ve figured that out before. You can’t save anyone from themselves.




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