I would like to tell you that it didn’t affect me, that the words said in the heat of the moment didn’t mean anything. But I already had an open wound in my heart from her neglect all those years, and every time it got bigger. It hurt so much, that I don’t even have words to explain. Just a few people could get to me like my mom and dad. Every time something like this would happen, my eyes stung trying to hold back my tears, in vain.
After calming down, I regretted it. I shouldn’t have done that to her. Always, after I messed up, I would try to apologize and would feel the guilt for hours to come. I wasn’t able to be good at anything. My mom hated me, I didn’t have any patience with my brother, I couldn’t even keep enough friends around me. The only one who was never disappointed in me was Koda. Yeah, he was great, always wagging his tail at me, even with all my flaws.
I think this temper comes from my family. I don’t look like my family at all, but I got all their problematic emotionality, especially from my father, Lars Bloom.
He is the typical Swede, blond, tall, handsome, the only thing that didn’t fit was his eye color - brown. He works as a machine operator on the city’s energy chimneys. He’s been working there since we moved to the city. He treats his car Volvo, bought last year like a baby. He was always a man with highs and lows, sometimes both on the same day. When he was on a good day he was great, we could talk about his favorite hockey team, about what we could do for vacation, or how his week had been with his Norwegian boss around. But when he had a bad day, I couldn’t even be near him. I grew up with this wall built between me and my parents, and this emptiness became a scar. After a few years I didn’t bother anymore, I got used to it, but I confess to still feeling the sting sometimes. Not that I’m saying they were bad people, it wasn’t that. Most of the days they were ‘normal’ people.
He always asked how my day had been and how my grades were, but it was always shallow talk. I felt guilty for hating them sometimes.
A few times he saw me crying in a corner, I saw how he averted his eyes, running away clearly. I saw in his brown eyes a hint of sadness every time he looked at me, different from my mom who looked at me with more like rage. I never felt the courage to ask her why, she didn’t give me a chance to do it. I was almost sure her pregnancy with me wasn’t expected, that explained why they treated me like that. Besides all that, I knew deep down they liked me, in their own way.
My father almost never spoke about the past. Sometimes during a meal, trying to make conversation, I asked about his teenage years or to see some pictures, but he always would answer vaguely that he didn’t like to take pictures when was younger (I only saw a few pictures of his family, only from the time when he was a baby on my grandmother’s lap and a few of my aunt when she was little, and the quality was from a hundred years ago). Maybe he didn’t want to remember this time of his life. After some time, I stopped trying to connect. Even though, these were pleasant days, peaceful days compared to the others. Other days I just hated him. He had a serious issue which made all the family suffer. He was an alcoholic and the cigars came as a plus.
I grew up around the smoke, his tobacco smell annoyed me. I only felt the difference of a breath of fresh air when I was outside. Even when smoking, he was still the same Lars. But alcohol had the power to transform him into two different people - one that made me want to disappear and another that made me feel guilty for it.
He never admitted that this was an addiction, his favorite phrase was, “I can stop when I feel like it,” but this day never came. It was sad to see, even worse to live with. The environment got even cloudier when we saw him by the door, getting in with hard steps. Even his breath would change, it was heavy, we could hear it.
The moods swings don’t happen only to the people with the addiction, it spreads to everyone around, we all suffered the consequences with him. Maybe the price we paid was even bigger. Worrying, nervousness, fear. My knees used to shake at those times.
His face would transform, even though not changing anything. His stare was cold, out of focus. From far away we could tell who was there - the man of the house or the addicted man. Those times I wanted to vanish, run away from that living hell that had become our house. That shows how I was handling everyday life, growing up in that heavy and apprehensive environment. I didn’t even know how toxic it was to me. They shouted, slammed the doors and discussed so loud it made me cover my ears. It all happened within minutes. Alcohol would knock him down in less than an hour.
At the beginning it was only on the weekends, after a while it starts happening on Fridays too. We never knew how he would get home. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, and I kept hoping someday it would end with the best possible outcome. My mom used to tell us to try to understand what was happening to him, because he had a hard past. Not even she had the courage to ask about this time of his life, no one would open that wound. I saw her crying after those horrible scenes, I tried to get close and offer my support, but she kept me at a distance as if his drinking problem was my fault.
I didn’t know about his pain or the reasons he had to do that. But I knew no one at our house was to blame for that. It could be something between him and my grandfather, who had died without them speaking to each other. Well, he should have worked that out before my grandfather passed.
As I grew up, my feelings changed from incomprehension to anger, bitterness, loneliness and finally into this scar.
But all was ‘forgotten’ when he was sober. And I would feel guilty for hating him, because in the end he was a nice guy. I knew that would be a harmonious day, when I could wake up smelling fresh-made bread that he had bought earlier. We could see the smile shining back on my mom’s face. We were back to be an ordinary family for that breakfast. He didn’t even have the decency to have a bad hangover, it looked like he had spent the last night drinking water. If it wasn’t for that acid smell that never leaves (a mix of alcohol and smoke), we could have said he was in perfect shape. There is no shower, though, that can hide the smell that comes from inside.
That must be the reason I hated breakfast. I turned my face on, faking a good mood which I didn’t have any of at that time of the day, all to keep the peace. I tried to swallow forcefully my father’s scene from the night before as if it was a nice sip of black coffee, smiling. Occasionally, I tried to bring up some conversation to lighten the mood. But on the inside, I couldn’t wait for the time to leave that place and get rid of the theater.
My life went upside down because of one of those breakfasts. I arrived late at an already done table, Rodrigo was shaking his nursing bottle at Koda, and the dog kept licking all the milk on the floor. Dad was hiding behind his newspaper while my mom put coffee in my mug making a face that said, “smile, be nice.” So I blended in, saying something between one sip and another.
“Yesterday I noticed that Gustav looked exactly like his mom. I don’t look anything like any of you two, I guess I’m adopted!”
I laughed and almost choked in my coffee. My father, who was sitting right in front of me, put the newspaper down very slowly, searching for my mom’s eyes for a minute, and both started to laugh.
“Hahahaha! Not everyone looks like their parents, Lola! Talking about myself, I didn’t look like either one of mine. It is just like that,” explained my mother, laughing out loud, maybe too loud for seven o’clock in the morning.