In the general excitement I had stood up too, as if I was going to start the looking process. Almost as immediately as I stood, I realized my participation in this part of the weekend was not needed. I wasn’t going to find my dad there. It has been 4 or 5 years by now since the last time I saw him and I have no memories of him before that. He and my mom had split when I was too young to have known him and he had made no effort to keep in touch with us; save the time I remember my mom showing me some clothes he had sent to me, I think when I was about 7 years old.

They are now looking at me with the widest of smiles, arm-in-arm and slowly making their way back to me. I was floored. The moment overwhelmed me. My eyes filled with tears. I stood their dumbfounded for what I as witnessing. If gratitude were a blanket, I now had it wrapped around me, bringing with it comfort in a way I had never felt before.

My requests for quiet keep disappearing into the voices. It’s pointless. The only way I can think to describe it is like this…when I was a kid playing in the pool I’d lay my hand on the surface of the water and with all my might push down as hard as I could. For a millisecond my handprint was there only to be consumed as the water rushed back and replaced itself. My words in this space are met the same way. I speak, and my words disappear instantly into the noise around me. This is not working.

But here’s where it gets interesting. At 46, the guy in my brain that has been working so diligently is faced with a problem. He now stands at the base of what has become an unwieldly birds nest of wires, like an open-faced fishing reel that has just spun its line into a mass of knots that cannot be undone. In a “horror inducing” moment he (me) realizes that all the work, to this point, to make these connections was wrong!

I just spent twenty minutes in my car driving with the windows down, the sun roof open, enjoying the heck out of a gorgeous day while rehearsing my mother’s eulogy. She’s not dead. Not even close. As of yesterday, at about 9AM she seems to be in pretty good health for a woman in her early 70’s. It was totally spontaneous, I didn’t plan it. I liken it to having a “Wheel of Random Thoughts” that my brain was in the process of spinning and as it clicked to a stop the small sliver that read “Mom’s Eulogy” came to rest as the winner.

I’m TERRIFIED. What am I going to do? How am I going to get through this? What if my boss finds out I am an alcoholic? Am I going to lose my job? What is my wife going to say? Are they going to fire me! My wife is going to leave me! My boys will never know their father!!!!

6AM, the alarm goes off. I hit the snooze and start my 9 times-tables routine: 6:09, 6:18, 6:27, 6:36. My wife has already been up for an hour, but she leaves at 6:30 every morning which means I oversee getting my boys off to school. I hate mornings. The drinks I had the night before punctuated my disdain for the early morning and it didn’t leave me very chipper come sunrise. The prospect of getting out of bed was the worst thing I could imagine.

It was four words that sent me into a tailspin. Nothing big, just four words…”Dad, you’re annoying me.” That was it. That was all. It came from the mouth of my 14-year-old son, and while it doesn’t seem like much at all it carried the weight of school bus when it hit me.

The voices in my head towards the end of my addiction were loud. The repetitive “You’re not good enough! You don’t deserve this life! You’re a terrible person!” was the echo chamber from which I could not escape. So, I did the only thing I could do. I listened to the people I started to meet.

God???? Seriously????Grace???? WTF is wrong with you? This is a joke, right? You don’t really believe this crap, do you? I mean COME ON! 27 years man! 27 years of case building, of educating yourself out of this God BS. How can you look yourself in the mirror with a straight face and start thinking that GODS GRACE is the reason you are here?