The greatest gift of sobriety - my son

I drank away my late teens and continued into my twenties and wasted over half my thirties on my destructive obsession. During this time all that was really important much of the time was feeding my addiction. People who came in contact with me rarely benefited from my arrival into their lives; many people suffered because of it. I was just too selfish and self-absorbed to be of any use to anybody really. I had given up any dream of starting a family early on in my drinking career; I saw it as a sad but necessary sacrifice.

Yet, here I am about to celebrate my son’s second birthday. My little boy is getting bigger and bigger. I am in the peculiar position of wanting to watch him grow, but wanting to freeze every precious second that we spend together. It is all happening so fast. People said it would, and I thought that I knew what they meant; I didn’t. He is growing right in front of my eyes and every day I notice changes. He is not the same boy he was last month.

I am my son’s world and he is mine; at least for the moment. He is continuing to grow though, and one day he will discover that he doesn’t need me as much as he does now. He will realise that I’m not perfect. That is probably the fear of all fathers. The fear that our child will one day not need us quite as much as they do now.

This time next year my son will have changed all over again; the boy he is now will have disappeared. Maybe his current Thomas the Tank Engine obsession will be replaced by something new. One day he won’t need me to set up his train track and read him bedtime stories about the Island of Sodor and the naughty trains. One day he won’t scream with excitement when one of these imaginary trains come of the rails and the fat controller gets angry. One day he will realise that trains are just trains. One day I will be left wishing that we could go back to these simple times.

My son makes me feel a bit unworthy sometimes. Why should somebody who wasted so much of their life deserve to be a father to such a special boy? I can’t answer that. All I know is that my son is my life and for the moment I am his.