Date: April 22, 2025
Author: Alex R. Morrison
The memories of that night have stuck with me like a bad stain. It’s a part of my life that I can’t quite shake off, no matter how many years pass. I was 16, a lost kid who had run away from my mother’s house after years of abuse. I ended up moving in with my dad, who, at the time, I believed could do no wrong. He was my escape from the chaos I had known. Sure, he had his flaws, but the way he would bash my mother always got under my skin. Still, I clung to him, believing he would be my savior.
But my dad had his own demons—he was an alcoholic. At first, it wasn’t a huge deal. His drinking was just something that became part of the background noise in my life. He would get drunk, be a nuisance, maybe say something stupid, or pass out on the couch, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. In my naive mind, I convinced myself that his flaws didn’t matter. He was my dad, after all.
But then, one night, things went too far. It started out like any other evening, but I could tell something was different. The tension in the air was thick, almost as if the night was holding its breath. He’d been drinking, more than usual, and when that happened, I could feel the shift. Suddenly, he wasn’t just my dad anymore—he was someone else. A stranger whose anger bubbled just below the surface.
We were in the living room, and I can still remember how he looked at me. It was like his eyes weren’t even his own. He started joking around, wrestling with me in a way that wasn’t playful at all. He pulled my hair, and I could feel his grip tightening around my throat. It was like everything I had grown up with—everything I thought I understood—was flipped upside down in an instant.
It’s hard to explain, but in that moment, I felt completely powerless. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I was terrified. I fought back, not out of anger, but out of sheer survival. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t believe what was happening. This wasn’t the dad I knew. This was someone else entirely.
I don’t know if he even realized what he was doing, or if he just didn’t care. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay there. I didn’t want to feel the weight of his hands around my throat anymore, the pressure that left me gasping for air. So I ran. I ran to my room and locked the door behind me, hoping it would stop. But it didn’t.
He didn’t come after me, but the rest of the night felt like a blur. I spent hours sitting on the floor, shaking, trying to figure out what just happened. I couldn’t make sense of it. How had it gone from bad to worse so quickly? How did the man I trusted the most become the man who scared me?
I never told anyone about that night. It wasn’t until years later, when I was sitting alone, trying to piece together the wreckage of my past, that I could admit how deeply that moment scarred me. The fear, the confusion, the helplessness—it still lingers, even though I’m older now. I left my dad’s house soon after that, but it didn’t change the fact that the damage had been done.
Even now, I can still feel that night in my bones. Sometimes, I catch myself remembering the way my dad looked at me before it all happened, and it haunts me. I wish I could erase it from my memory. I wish I could’ve said something, done something, but I was just a scared kid trying to survive.
So here I am, years later, still carrying that weight. The memory of his hands around my throat, the look in his eyes, the fear I felt. It’s something I can never forget, and I don’t know if I ever will.
