When I was a kid, I used to watch my father drink. He wasn’t what you’d call an everyday drinker no, he was more of a “weekend warrior.”
Monday to Thursday, not a drop would pass his lips. He’d be focused, hard working, calm, even predictable. But come Friday night? The air would shift. It was like the weekend whispered in his ear and reminded him that restraint had an expiry date.
Friday was foreplay , a few drinks, a light buzz, a small laugh that turned into a loud one.
Saturday was the main event ; the full-on, burn-it-all-down kind of night where everything came spilling out: the thoughts, the frustrations, the unspoken truths. He’d come home in the early hours of the morning, sometimes soft and merry, other times angry and unrecognizable , an irritating stranger who wore my father’s face but didn’t speak his language.
There was one night that etched itself into my brain. He came home with a friend, both of them swaying slightly, eyes glassy, laughter too loud, singing out of tune. After more drinks, his friend needed a lift home about ten kilometers away. My father woke me up, said, “Let’s go,” like it was the most normal thing in the world. I remember thinking, Surely this isn’t safe, but I went anyway. Because when you’re young, your parent’s decisions feel like the laws of nature. You don’t question gravity; you just obey it.
The drive there was fine quiet, dark, uneventful.
The drive back was something else. I was half-asleep, staring out at the blur of streetlights when I felt the car gently drift across the white line. I looked over and he looked right back at me, eyes wide, confused, like he was wondering why the world was tilting.
I turned forward again, holding my breath. The car steadied. Then it happened again. The slow drift. The wtf calm. The strange silence. This time, I didn’t look until I had to. Because now we were facing oncoming traffic.
I screamed. Pushed. Shouted “PAPA” like it was an emergency flare.
He woke up, blinking, then looked at me as if I was the one losing it. As if my fear was an overreaction to a small inconvenience. The headlights faded. We were safe again. But something in me cracked open that night.
That was the moment I decided:
I will never, ever drink alcohol.
Because alcohol made you crazy. It made you unpredictable. It turned my father my hero into someone I didn’t recognize.
Fast forward to today.
As I’m writing this, I have a glass of something in front of me.
Just a little something to “unwind” after the week.
Friday, of course.
And yes Saturday too.
I don’t drink as heavily as he did, and I tell myself it’s different. I don’t black out. I don’t drive after drinking. I don’t say the things he said. But if I’m honest, I also say, “I deserve this.”
And sometimes, when I catch my reflection mid-laugh with friends, or hear the volume of my voice climb a little higher, I see it the flicker of something familiar. The joke’s on me.
It’s funny how the things we swear we’ll never do somehow find their way back into our lives, just wearing different clothes.
Maybe it’s because we never truly escape what shapes us , we just remix it, give it new rules, and call it control.
When I was a kid, I didn’t understand why my father drank. Now, I think I do.
It wasn’t about the alcohol. It was about pause. About wanting the noise in his head to dim, even for a few hours.
Life has a way of grinding you down, and when you find something that lets you breathe even briefly you hold onto it. Some people pray. Some run. Some scroll endlessly. Some pour a drink.
We all find our escape hatch.
We just choose different doors.
Still, it’s unsettling when the mirror talks back. When you realize that the traits you judged so harshly in your parents the anger, the tone, the coping habits live quietly inside you. Waiting. Watching. Sometimes even defending themselves:
“I’m not like him.”
“It’s just one drink.”
“I’m in control.”
But maybe that’s the point of growing up realizing that you don’t magically become different; you just become more aware of how much of them you carry.
And awareness, if we’re lucky, becomes choice.
The ability to pause before the drift starts. To wake yourself up before someone has to scream your name.
I think about that night sometimes the headlights, the panic, the way my heart slammed against my ribs. It reminds me that fear can shape vows, but reflection shapes understanding.
I don’t drink to forget anymore. I drink to remember not him, exactly, but the complicated man behind the bottle. The one who was probably fighting battles I was too young to see.
And maybe that’s my soft spot for him now. I see him in me, and I forgive him in pieces.
So, maybe the real question isn’t “Will I ever do that when I grow up?”
Maybe it’s “Why do we end up doing it anyway?”
Because sometimes, the very things we reject are the ones that taught us what survival looked like.
Now, your turn.
What’s something you swore you’d never do when you grew up but somehow, here you are, doing it anyway?
Maybe it’s yelling like your mom did.
Maybe it’s working the job you said you’d never take.
Maybe it’s staying in on a Friday night and actually enjoying it.
Drop a comment below not for confession, but connection.
Because the truth is, most of us are just grown-up kids trying to make peace with the promises we broke along the way