Originally Posted by Kitrail  If you have any tips, suggestions, or corrections(especially grammer) let me know. Thank you
I grew up in a small house on a small dirt road in a small town [remove commas for a smoother read]. However, on the inside, I held a big secret. My father was an alcoholic. From as far back as I can remember he was never “Daddy", just Chris. I used to tell my teachers and the kids at school that I did not have a father, and to some extent this was true. My mother taught me everything: how to play baseball, how to shoot a basketball, even how to ride a dirt bike. All why [?? All while OR All because] my father drank [was drinking] his life away.
My father always had the refrigerator stocked with Budweiser and pints of Jack Daniel's. When he was drunk, he scared me. When he was sober, he ignored me. I missed countless days of school because of my father's alcoholism. I would sit, curled up in my closet, with my hands covering my ears, as I cried . While my mother and father fought, for what seemed like all night, every night. When things became physical, we would move in with one of our family members. Then he would call, begging my mother to come back home, swearing he would change. Things would go well for a few weeks. Then what I used to call “the circle of life” would start up again. My mother, my brother and I would move out, then come back home again. It was a chain I thought would never break, and it never skipped a link.
Two days before Halloween, in the Fall of 2003, my father was arrested. My brother had smarted off to my father, who chased him around the yard, screaming profanities. My cousin, who I was sent to live with on several occasions, called 911. The police showed up not ten minutes later and took my father to jail. A week later my father returned. He did not speak to any of us for days, and he also did not drink. Finally, he told my mother what he had learned in that short week he spent in jail. He realized that at home he had a loving wife who he never took care of like he promised, and two young children that he never showed love to. He told my mother that he wanted our family to stay together and he did not want alcohol to get between him and his children. Like it did ["did" if grandfather still alive; "had" if grandfather not alive]between him and his own father.
My father has been changed ever since. He started going to church with my family, helping ["he helped" would be better here] with the household chores and he even started attending holiday dinners. However, my father is not perfect. There are still times when my father ["he" to avoid too much repetition of "my father"] will slip back into his old patterns, but they are rare. He says I love you now and buys me childish gifts, like dolls and stuffed animals. I cannot bare [bear] to tell him that I am too old for these kinds of things. He is trying and that is all that matters. In a way, I know he is trying his hardest to make up for lost time.
I remember the fist [first] time my father hugged me. I was eighteen and it was my graduation day. When I was younger, I never would have thought he would be up in the stands cheering me on as I walked across the stage. But there he was, sober , the daddy I always prayed for. |