FEAR No. 044 – Hard Habits To Break

Being without you
Is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier
It’s the hardest thing to take
I’m addicted to you, babe
You’re a hard habit to break

–Chicago, Hard Habit To Break

Can I just say, before I get started, that I am a huge Peter Cetera fan? Can I also just say that I am probably the whitest black person I know? Because if using this lyric and loving this song and being a fan of Peter Cetera weren’t proof enough…

I’ve noticed, over my short life, that I have an addicting personality. This doesn’t mean people are drawn to me, or that they’re obsessed with my very being. Instead, it means – if I let it – I could become addicted to just about anything that wasn’t good for me. I guess everyone could at some point. Allowing it is the determining factor to making a guess become fact. I have people in my family that lived (and died) with this same problem. Few survived and overcame. The rest? Well.


My father was an alcoholic. His addiction kept us from being a family and, ultimately, is what killed him. Watching what it did to him was the best after-school special I could have ever grown up with. This is not to say I didn’t drink. I have. I do seldomly, and when I do it’s one glass. (I’m such a lightweight in my old age.) I’ve been a dumb, drunk kid. I’ve been hung over. In these experiences with drinking, the results were never because I had to have it. I was a kid and I wanted to experience the big deal everyone was talking about. Once I’d had my fun, I was done. I didn’t drink to escape. I didn’t drink to forget. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to continuously burn a hole in their insides on purpose. And the taste? I’m a whimpy drinker. Give me fruity. Give me mixes and cocktails. Give me any reason to think I’m drinking anything other than alcohol.

I’d never make it as a drunk.

Does this mean I get a special award? No. Even though alcohol was my father’s poison of choice, the bigger problem wasn’t his drinking. It was his addiction, his hard habit. It was his need for something – anything – to hide deeper and psychological issues, something he’d give up his life to run from. I have no degrees in this stuff, really. From time to time, I have my Freudian moments and it’s purely insight. But I don’t think I’m wrong.

My father will never be my dad – his addiction made this impossible – but he will always be my blood. And blood is a powerful thing. I know that, because of his blood, I am subject to an addictive personality and a lifetime of hard habits. I am always conscious of this. It doesn’t mean I don’t fall prey. I’m addicted to fear. I’m addicted to thinking very little of myself. I am no different from my father except in one, glaring respect: He took his time ending his life, and I had no patience for that.

Oh, we did both like a good pack of menthols. Ah, the smoking years. Hmm…

…and another hard habit. Crap.

Most of America was glued to their televisions last week, watching the monumental (so they called it) interview between Whitney Houston and the enemy of my enemy… Oprah. I loved Whitney as a kid. I wanted to be her like so many other little black girls. Whitney was our Barbie doll. She was our hero. Watching her date then marry Bobby Brown was like watching a trailer to a horror movie – you sort of knew what was going to happen. I’m not blaming anyone in the situation because who am I? I, like the rest of the world, have no idea what went on behind those closed doors. Things happen in a relationship that only God and those two people understand. But while listening to Whitney give her account of the past 14 years, the one thing she said that stuck out to me the most was the definition of her addiction. It wasn’t the marijuana. Wasn’t the “rock cocaine” (… which is kind of like crack, but different. I guess.) It was Bobby. A man. And not just any man, but a man who “could control [her]“. She said that, at her lowest, she asked God for one day of strength to leave her hard habit behind and, when she got it, she never looked back.

Deeper. Psychological. Issues. I can’t make this stuff up.

You look at your life and all that’s in it. You look at your family and you see Cousin Joe, and how he likes to gamble. Or Aunt Winkie and how she likes to eat. You look at Uncle Terry and how he loves the ladies. Everyone has an addiction – hard habits they can’t seem to break. Who’s to say they even see them as problems? And then there’s you. You’ll never be like Aunt Winkie because you know when to step away from the buffet. Never be Cousin Joe because hello? Gambling? In THIS economy? And never be Uncle Terry but you actually cut him some slack. He’s just a player who happens to be the life of the party. Nothin’ wrong with good ole Uncle Terry. And you hold that magnifying glass up to everyone else and you judge because you? You’re smarter than that. Right?

Right?

In the years my father battled alcoholism, I went from a child to an adult. I went from wanting a father, to just being glad if he came around for the holidays, to hating him, to feeling sorry for him, to understanding him. When he died, I remember the call telling me to come home. I remember instantly numbing myself when I was told. I remember throwing clothes in a bag, grabbing BFam and heading to Cleveland for the funeral. I don’t remember driving to get there. Maybe because I was too busy cursing him in my head: How could you do this to yourself? You’re so dumb. You totally wasted your life. I’ll never be you. Judging. I remember grabbing my mother by the hand and walking her to his open casket during the viewing because here, let’s look at what we overcame by leaving this poor, tortured man. And when I saw him, I saw me staring back at me. It didn’t help that we looked alike but, more importantly, I saw hurt. I saw pain. I saw years of running from demons and failing. I saw a lifetime of hard habits unbroken.

I saw fear.

Years lost between us to his hard habits, I felt out of place sitting with the family at his wake. I barely knew him; the memories few and faint. I was left with guilt instead. Maybe, if I came around more, I could have helped him. Maybe, if I fought it out with him, he’d still be here. Maybe… My paternal grandfather, seeing me lost in my maybes, grabbed me by the hand. Without words, he brought me up to sit with the family. Me, the last visual remembrance of his son. The mirror. When everything was over, I realized no guilt was greater felt than with my grandfather. He was the last person to see my father alive. The last person to care for him. The last person to give him the last drink before he died, an enabler to his son’s hard habit. Anything to help with the pain.

You’d think, with this experience under my belt, that I’d know better by now; that the fear would be easier to release. But that’s the ugliness of a hard habit. It holds onto you with its vice grip, telling you things to bind you – it’s hard for a reason. Finding strength to come out from under its hold is never easy. I know it. My father knew it. Whitney said it. But if you can have that one day of strength, ONE day…

What I wouldn’t give for that one day.