My parents divorced because of my father’s alcoholism and violent temper. Dad and I had a difficult relationship while I was growing up, but by the time I was old enough to get a job and support myself, we’d come a long way. I told myself he’d been confused and depressed and hadn’t meant the things he’d yelled in his drunken rages.

One afternoon I decided to test him on the subject of abuse. I told him about a co-worker who had an alcoholic boyfriend who hit her sometimes. I wondered aloud why she would stay with a guy like that. “The girl is probably the source of the guy’s problem,” Dad said.

I was stunned. When I asked him to elaborate, he wouldn’t reply.

Staring at this stubborn old man who wouldn’t meet my eye, I finally saw him clearly. All those times he’d gotten drunk and hit Mom, he had rationalized that it was her fault.

Years later my father and I discussed his violence and reached an unsteady peace. But that afternoon I got my first insight into his real character.

Cindy H.
Acworth, Georgia

In college I shared a crowded old house with many roommates. I made my bedroom in an attic crawl space — a triangular, three-foot-high tunnel that stretched the length of the house. It was a cozy cocoon where I hid from the world, lulled to sleep by the sound of rain hitting the roof just above my head.

Two months before graduation, I became seriously depressed and suicidal. A couple of years earlier I’d gone through a similar depression and had devised a plan for killing myself: I tricked a doctor into giving me a prescription for twenty-four sleeping pills by lying and telling him I had insomnia. Life got better, though, and I didn’t use the pills. But I didn’t throw them away either.

Now I bought a bottle of vodka, dug out the pills, put my favorite CD on REPEAT, and began taking the pills two at a time in my tunnel-like room. I remember getting to twelve pills before I lost consciousness.

When I woke up twenty hours later, my first thought was that I was late for work. I tried to get out of bed, but my head was so heavy I could barely lift it. As I waited for my strength to return, I looked for the twelve remaining pills but found only one. Had I taken them in my sleep? Had someone discovered me there and thrown them away to protect me from myself? I never found out.

That afternoon I dragged myself to a photography workshop, then came home and ate dinner with one of my roommates. As we ate, I thought, Start here, with this roommate and this spaghetti. No joy or regret, just an observation of fact: I will live.

Rachel Wakefield
Farmington, New Hampshire

It wasn't until the day before I left home in 1961 that I saw my younger brother Paul as a real person. We’d worked side by side on the farm and attended the same school since we were small, but he’d barely figured into my life. Now nineteen and about to be married to a boy I loved, I was leaving home. Paul came into my bedroom, sat on the bed, and told me he wanted me to be happy. I could tell his words were heartfelt.

I saw my brother as a person from then on, but I still didn’t know him. When our father became ill and was hospitalized, Paul worked on the farm after school until midnight. His grades slipped, and eventually he joined the army, the way so many poor boys in the rural South do when they are searching for a better life.

I had very little contact with Paul in the years that followed. He was stationed with NATO forces in France. In the one letter he sent me, he said he was homesick. After he was discharged, he came by bus to see me. He seemed disoriented and was drinking more than I thought healthy.

Paul returned home, fell in love, got married, and bought a house near the factory where he worked. He was a devoted husband and a good father to his daughter, but his wife left him, leaving behind the daughter. Paul remarried and divorced again, drinking now more than ever.

After a third marriage he got sober, and one Christmas Eve he told me that, when he was a child, he’d secretly suffered from constant fear and anxiety. He’d started drinking to ease the fear. Now, with the help of Jesus Christ, he’d stopped drinking and had gotten treatment for his anxiety. He could talk freely and without shame for the first time in his life. I vowed never to let go of this new relationship with my brother.

Paul and I talk frequently now. I admire his courage and take every opportunity to tell him how much I look up to him. He wants me to join his church because he’s afraid my Unitarian faith won’t be good enough to get me into heaven. I tell him we must agree to disagree about religion, but I am profoundly touched by his concern for me. I wish I had his ability to love.

Name Withheld

I was sixteen and sleeping in after a night of drinking with friends. About 11 A.M. I awoke to my father’s loud voice from downstairs. He usually came home between 2 and 6 A.M., banged open doors, turned on lights, and screamed at my mother, who responded in quiet tones. On this particular morning, however, my father was yelling at my older brother Michael, whose response wasn’t so quiet. “Motherfucker!” my brother yelled. I heard my father wailing in rage, followed by the sound of a chair hitting the floor and heavy footsteps running down the hall. I peered downstairs to see my red-faced father running out of the master bedroom with a shotgun in his hands.

“Michael, get out!” my mom pleaded. Michael did get away, but a few months later he was driving, and his car hit a utility pole at sixty miles per hour. At the time, my mother was at the hospital visiting my grandmother, who was in a coma. That night my grandmother sat bolt upright in bed and said, “Michael? What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here.” Then she lay back down and never again came out of her coma. Michael died in the accident.

Lisa B.
Austin, Texas

I was part of a Lutheran service trip to Bosnia. Each morning our group played with children at an elementary school, and I marveled at the beauty of their young faces. On the walls of the school were signs instructing students on how to identify land mines. The hillsides were covered in graves. While walking around the town we saw a bulletridden home where, an interpreter told us, soldiers had evicted a family to use the house as a barracks. When the soldiers moved on, they left a live bomb in the flowerpot for the family to find when they returned. We heard many stories like this. Some people in the group cried. I just felt numb.

One night I was walking down the sidewalk past what was left of the Olympic center when I stepped in a hole and tripped. I bent down to examine the hole and could tell it had been made by a shell. This physical encounter with the effects of war finally awakened me and brought me to my knees on that Sarajevo street. I thought of the Bosnian children we played with each morning and their beautiful faces, which seemed even more beautiful to me now, because they could still smile.

Lori Lepelletier
Blairstown, New Jersey

After I got out of prison, I wasn't sure how I would find work. I worried that when potential employers found out I was a sex offender, they wouldn’t hire me.

I signed on with a day-labor contractor and was sent to work as a dishwasher in a large restaurant. I did a good job, and the restaurant asked that I be sent back. A month later the manager, Big Bill, asked me to work there permanently. A clause in the day-labor contract stipulated that I couldn’t be hired by a company where I’d worked as a day laborer, but Bill said he would figure something out.

Then I dropped the bomb. I told him I was a registered sex offender out on probation, but I was in counseling and wanted to spend the rest of my life as a decent human being.

“I can live with that,” he said.

A month later Bill was promoted, and Valerie became my manager. Bill had been easygoing, but Valerie was all business. Within a month she laid off three people who didn’t like working with her. By law, I had to notify my new manager of my probation status and crimes. I put it off as long as I could. Finally one day I sat down with Valerie and began to tell my story. Before I could finish, she stopped me. “If your probation officer calls, I’ll tell him you told me everything,” she said.

For two weeks Valerie didn’t talk to me. I figured my past would always haunt me, and I prepared to be fired. Then one day Valerie said, “John is out today, so I need you to prep.” She smiled and punched me in the arm. I knew then that things would be all right.

My next manager, Steve, took it all in stride. He knew that I had been there a year and had learned to take care of the kitchen and the serving line. That was enough for him. I worked hard and felt comfortable and safe. I was laid off a few months later. Now I had to start over, but I felt confident that I could get a job based on my skills and experience.

That was two months ago, and I am still unemployed. I am beginning to think that my previous job was a fluke. I sometimes wonder when I will wake up and realize that my past is inescapable; that I will forever have to rely on luck, fate, and other people’s pity.

I still look for work and try to have faith. I have not yet woken up to the certainty of my failure.

David Wood
St. Petersburg, Florida

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