Jellinek's Profound Truth

Somewhere in my preteens my father went to rehab.

He was an alcoholic. The kind of alcoholic who has a 'beer fridge' in the dining room, in the spot where nice families would have thought to put a china cabinet. The kind of alcoholic who drank pretty much non stop from Friday after work until Sunday at black out time.

He was a harmless drunk if you call emotionally tormenting your son and verbally abusing your spouse 'Harmless'. If you mean 'harmless' as in destroying your children's chance for a childhood free of adult problems and fear of the unexpected...then sure, he was 'harmless'.

Mostly I remember rehab as a lot of nuns everywhere and crosses all over the place. This was amusing to me at the time since my father hadn't had a haircut in months and he had this crazy hair that was way too long and way too curly and really he looked a little like Jesus.

Odd that I don't remember a lot of things like healing while my father was in rehab.

I do remember my jeans...my brand new Guess jeans. The ones with the zippers at the ankles. The ones that were so narrow I didn't have to do that freaky thing with the safety pins or the stupid tuck and roll technique. I remember the jeans because during the family therapy we attended I was fascinated with the zippers at my ankles. I'd stare at those zippers for the entire session and I was spellbound with the way the zipper went first up and then down. And then again...up and then down. Over and over.

I do remember the overweight and very touchy feely new age-y therapist in charge of our family sessions, the ones where I was absolutely mesmerized by my fancy jeans with the zippers at the ankles. I remember glancing at my little sister and trying so very hard not to laugh out loud at this Jackass tossing around big words like "Trust" and "Rebuilding Relationships". We had nicknames for him, the fat therapist. We called him Dr Feelgood. We called him Friar Tuck. We called him Jackass Who Has No Clue What The Fuck We've Been Through.

I remember 'Trust Exercises' meant to build trust between us and our father. We were supposed to let ourselves fall backwards into our father's arms and he was supposed to catch us before we hit the ground. It was a fairly predictable and entirely horrifying display of our loss of anything resembling trust towards our father.

In the hallway of this rehab hospital was an artistic representation of the Jellinek Chart. As my family strolled past on one visit, we all stopped to take a look.

My favorite and probably the most profound memory of my father's stay in rehab, besides my totally awesome jeans with the zippers at the ankles, is when my sister looked at that chart and thought it was a map of the hospital we were in.

Thinking we were lost (we were, just not in the halls of the hospital), she studied the 'map' and said earnestly, "I think we're in the vicious cycle."

The thing is, we totally were! We all laughed in that awkward way you laugh when you know someone's just said a really profound truth but you're really uncomfortable with it so you laugh and act like it's just really funny your 8 year old sister just said we're in the Vicious Cycle of the hospital.

"ha ha ha! Right! The Vicious Cycle! Wow! We're really lost! I hope next we end up in the 'Family Problems' Wing or the 'Sneaking Drinks' Corridor."

But really all the laughter is hiding the fact that this is horrible and it's one of the defining moments of your life being in the middle of a Catholic rehab hospital with your family and you all know that what your 8 year old sister just said is the absolute truth. You are all lost in the Vicious Cycle.

Your father is here, in rehab, but really he's never going to get better and this is just another part of the horrible ride you've been on for your entire life as you remember it. You know, your whole family knows, that we're in the Vicious Cycle and your father is never going to get out of it. He's going to get out of rehab and there are going to be more drunken nights of hell in that house and he's going to finally leave that house. But he'll never get out of that Vicious Cycle.

Then one day he will find his way out, only it won't be how everyone hoped it would be. You'll come home from school one day and there will be lots of cars at your house and why is your brother home from college and why is grandpa here at 3 o' clock on a Tuesday?

It will be because the only way your father could get out of the Vicious Cycle was to kill himself in a lonely hotel room just a few miles from where you live now.

I wish it felt more tragic to write that, but it doesn't. Somehow it seems like the only way my father could find peace with the life he was given and the choices he made and the man he was.