I Was There, But
(written in May 2026)

A guy asked me last week
what the worst part of being an addict was.
They expected the obvious ghosts.
The war stories. The shakes. The cravings.
The sick mathematics of need.
How want can drag a grown man by the throat
through every promise he ever made
and meant.

I didn’t tell him any of that though.
I didn’t even tell him about how I almost died.
Instead I told him about almost living.
About running through the world with the windows painted shut.
About knowing where everyone stood
but not what anybody said.
About remembering that one time when my kid turned towards me
with something happening all over his face,
and I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what it was.

My body,
this old house I set fire to and then begged for shelter from,
kept trying to tell me: you’re missing it,
while I kept climbing up on a kitchen chair to rip the battery out,
like the smoke alarm’s problem was the noise.

But it’s true. I was missing it.
All those small miracles that only play once.
The first steps,
his hands held out in front of him
like he was carrying something the rest of us couldn’t see.
The handlebars wobbling like prayer.
The kid turning back to see if I was watching—
and I was,
but only in the way you watch rain take the pencil off the page.

I was there the way a ghost is there:
a shape in the room.
a love with bad reception.

That was the worst part.
It’s not the wreckage people can see.
It’s not the apologies stacked like unpaid bills.
It’s not the body becoming a country
you no longer have a passport to.
The worst part is the film reel of your most holy days
coming back scratched.

And still, there was love.
Even there.
Even through all that, I knew enough to ache.

Somewhere inside the blur
I knew I was being given what I would later beg for back.

I wanted to be there.
Wanting isn’t being there. I know that.
But some part of me was reaching up
from the bottom of the bottle,
from the ash,
from the basement of that burned-out house, saying:

I know this is sacred.
I know this is my life.
Please, Keeper, let me find my way back home.

When I first got sober,
the present got sharper,
and I mistook that for a promise about the past.

I thought I would hear what he said before we laughed.
See the expression that started in his eyes
before it reached his mouth.
I was doing the work and saving the man who could watch it.
I just never got around to saving the film to show it.

That’s still hard to write, but I’ve accepted it.
I understand now that healing isn’t getting every memory back.
Healing is learning to stand in the doorway of what burned
without running back in for the photo albums.

I don’t get to go back and be the dad who remembers everything.
But I do get to become the dad who remembers this:

the blur was only a scene and not the whole story.
The story is still holding out its hand.
The kid is still pedaling ahead.
He still turns back to see if I’m watching.

And more than ever, I am.

I don’t get every afternoon back.
I get the strange mercy of another afternoon
that has no idea what I have done with the others.

For this good gift, I am grateful.

“I Was There, But”
24×24 Oil and Acrylic on Canvas