Stepmother and son begin a new life, The house was eerily silent. Even at 10pm, I generally expected some noise, despite the events of the past few days. Dad and Andrea had been fighting constantly lately, only changed up by his epic snoring and the very rare round of make-up sex they had. My kid sister Chloe was at the grandparents for a few weeks during the summer, as I think my folks hadn’t wanted to expose her to their fighting and whatever was going on over these weeks. They were in counseling, but honestly, it seemed like divorce was going to be inevitable. I stayed around because summer session was in full swing, and I needed the extra credits and prep work in my last couple of terms. My master’s program, I was told, was a lock, and I’d likely be staying at Colorado State (unless one of my two dark horse candidates came through), but I still didn’t want to slow down or not be fully prepped come winter term. Plus, not that I enjoyed enabling him, but when Dad passed out drunk somewhere—which was most nights—he needed help to steer to the bed or couch. Andrea was too small to maneuver his short and chubby frame.
Me, I’m Alex, 23, and a student in the Linguistics program at CSU. My dad, Jim, had married my stepmom Andrea when I was 12, so I’d grown up with her as a fixture in my life. My natural mom died when I was three, and I barely remember her. She drove home from the bar way too shitfaced to even walk one night, and went off the side of a mountain pass. Apparently dad and Linda, my mom, had a real messed up, sick alcoholic relationship, but, when she passed, dad got his act together real quick, went to rehab, and stopped drinking. I remember how once my grandma had asked me if I understood that dad went to AA and what that was, and I lied and said yes, but I was 10 and had no real clue. I just knew he didn’t drink. Most of my life had been pretty standard, with a family that occupied a little cute house with an actual picket fence, and two cars in the garage. Dad was decently successful attorney that worked for the county, Andrea a nurse, and when I was 18, Chloe came into the world, and I adored her more than anything. Throw our three dogs into the mix, and life was pretty much idyllic.
Then, one day, three years ago, dad cracked open a beer at a summer BBQ. If only we had known just how bad it would get, I would have ran screaming to knock it out of his hands. For a few months, he was fine, but soon his drinking escalated. It became daily, then in the morning, and now he routinely got sick in various places and had driven my poor stepmom ill with worry and angst. After several stints in detox and rehab, his job had unceremoniously booted him—quite an accomplishment for a public worker. He hadn’t worked in over a year, and he had put on 60 pounds from the normally health-conscious guy I grew up admiring. He was angry and belligerent much of the time, and was getting down near impossible to deal with. All he did, it seemed, was sit in silence, watching TV, drinking, and smoking cigarettes. He had moved into the smallest room downstairs, and it wasn’t uncommon to not see him for long stretches of hours or more. I had seriously considered moving many times, but had only stayed because Andrea had basically begged that she needed reinforcements. I had stopped bringing friends over a year ago, and I had begun to seriously detest my own father. I saw a therapist and even sought out a support group, and they all told me the same thing, “Separate with love.” Basically, don’t enable too much, and let them run their course, since you can’t change it anyway. We had taken certain precautions, including tucking away all their retirement and large savings away, canceling his credit cards, and only giving him access to a regular checking account with a relatively small amount of money in it, but still, it didn’t change much except the size of the damage he was capable of doing.