A gamble

Almost 1am, and like usual trying to recollect my thoughts and experiences of the day just before going to sleep. Dad came through the door, back from his nightly visit to the casino.

It’s one of his terrible habits, a thing I absolutely loathe about him. In all the years he was working here since I was around 8 or so, he probably spent more time at Black Jack tables than at home. I remember one scene very vividly many many years back… My dad had come home for dinner, and after dinner rushed me upstairs to do my homework. But I heard the car door slam shut moments later. I ran toward the window, and saw the car pull away… Another time, I was perhaps just ten or so, he came home at two or three in the morning with the taxi. He had no money to pay for it, and rang the doorbell. I was the only one to go open it, because mum was of course upset… I was the one who dug into the piggy bank to pay for the taxi fare…

I got extremely upset a few years ago when he came to visit me while I was still in high school, and sarcastically I asked him: "Are you here to see me, or see the people at the casino?" He didn’t say anything. But after that he never visited for several years.

That was a few years ago. And though people change, circumstances change, old habits die hard. Before he arrived, I had the feeling that he would soon get back into his old habit again, but I still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. But like always, dad only disappointments. After arriving a few days ago, the very next day he just disappeared again. At least it was better than the last time he visited, when he ‘disappeared’ within hours of arriving.

Of course everyone knows where he goes. But like always he’d come home late with stupid excuses like he didn’t bring his glasses and so caught the wrong bus. I’d always ask him how his day has been and where he’d been when he comes home, and every time it’s vague answers like "just here and there" or "just out and about". Two days ago he made the most lamest lie that he went to Amsterdam to see his old office. But the public transport ticket he put on the table clearly revealed where he did go, and it was no where near Amsterdam, but more like Casinoland. Even on my birthday, after a quick lunch which seemed more like a formality than a real desire to be there, he stretched his arms and said he’d like to ‘go walk around a bit’ to walk off the full stomach. The rest of us wanted to go into the countryside, but dad said we could just drop him off in front of the casino. That night, he didn’t even come home for dinner, and wasn’t even there when I blew out the candles on my cake… Disappointment and hurting, time and again.

I think the lies and attempts to ‘cover up’ his trail hurts most. If he wants to go, just say so, but why hide and lie and pretend as if nobody knows and as if nobody should know, when in fact everyone knows!? It’s an addiction, and he doesn’t realise it. Worse still, I am concerned for his health and wellbeing when he spends all this time there. In his very fragile state of health, he really can’t get too tired and have too little sleep… but he doesn’t seem to care, doesn’t seem to give a damn about himself or what other people think.

He is a good dad, in the sense he provided and continues to provide me (us) with everything I (we) could ever need, and more. He never hit me, or overly scolded me or got angry at me, at least not compared to the clashes he and my brother have been having since as long as I can remember. But dad is a lousy father-figure, and even worse of a husband, for he is never around and knows only to share his presence and concern for the rest of the family with money and more money. Dad doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to care about the details of our lives, much less about how we feel and how we’ve been hurt so often by his lies and absence. And in the last few years he has become more and more distant, like a stranger who just happens to live at home, but gets into arguments with almost everyone about the most trivial and petty things. I am the only one he can talk to, and I am the only one who listens, and who he listens to… but more and more I feel this unbearable strain on my mind when I have to try placate his temperaments and distrust toward the rest of us, and try to step in every single time when an argument is about to explode.

I’m not sure how much longer I can take this, before I explode.