Addiction

I will not be my father’s son

In the way the world expects that sentence to end.

I was born into his weather—
the pressure systems,
the sirens in the distance,
the way fear learned to wear authority like a badge.

But inheritance is not destiny.
Blood carries memory, not command.
I stand on a foggy island now.
No shoreline behind me.
No map ahead.
Only the quiet fact of help within reach
and the louder truth of my own fear
of what happens when someone gets close enough
to see what I buried to survive.

For years, I carried sermons instead of oxygen.
Regret passed down like a family heirloom—
three generations of swallowed grief,
addiction renamed discipline,
silence dressed up as strength.

I learned early how to hold my breath
while others called it maturity.

But hear this clearly:
I am not dangerous because I am tired.
I am not broken because I am asking for air.
I did not surface because I want to burn the house down—
I surfaced because I was drowning alone.

I refuse the old equations.

Love does not require fear.

Authority does not require violence.

Strength does not require silence.

And survival does not require becoming the thing that hurt you.

I will not be my father’s son
in the way pain reproduces itself
when no one interrupts the pattern.
I will be the interruption.

I will choose hands that steady instead of strike.
I will choose words that name instead of erase.

I will choose to stay

when every lesson I was taught said to disappear.

If there is a legacy here,
let it be this:
that someone finally set the burden down.
That someone finally said, enough.
That someone learned how to breathe
without asking permission.
I am not rejecting where I came from.
I am deciding where it ends.
I will not be my father’s son.
I will be my own.

And let me tell you something
they don’t put in the sermons
or the self-help books
or the family group texts:

Asking for help is hard.

Everyone says that.

But it’s harder
when the help you crave the most
is supposed to come from your father—
and you finally understand
that he cannot give you
what he never received.

Because he is his father’s son.
And his father’s son.
And his father’s son.

Generations of men
pouring what they had
and what they didn’t
and mostly
what they couldn’t face
into the next boy’s hands
and calling it love.

Fear passed down as discipline

Silence passed down as strength
.
Rage passed down as protection.

No pause.
No repair.

No one ever saying,

This ends with me.

So yes—

I ask for help now.
Not because it’s easy.
But because it is unbearable
to keep begging the past
to save me.
I am done knocking on a door
that only echoes back
with someone else’s unfinished grief.
I will not inherit what was never healed.
I will not become fluent in harm
just because it’s the only language

I was taught.

He may be his father’s son.

And his father’s son.

And his father’s son.

But I choose something else.

I choose the break in the line.

The breath between blows.

The moment where the pouring stops.
I am not abandoning him.
I am refusing to disappear for him.
And that—
that is the hardest help I have ever asked for.

And here’s the part
that doesn’t sound brave
but is true:

I asked for help.

Help and help and help—

when I was finally ready,
finally steady enough
to stop surviving
and start healing.

And it still didn’t land.

Because sometimes
the help you need most
is not advice.

Not accountability.

Not perspective.

Not regret spoken too late.

Sometimes all you need
from the one who can help the most
is a hug.

Just a hug.

No fixing.
No lesson.
No defense.

A place to finally fall apart
so the healing can begin
where the breaking started.

But he doesn’t know how to hold
what he was never held through.
His arms are full of generations.
Full of men who learned to stand stiff
instead of stay present.

So I stand here—
asking for help
with my hands open—
and realizing the hardest truth yet:

The man who broke it
cannot be the man
who puts it back together.

And that grief—
that is not rejection.

That is clarity.

So I will find my hug elsewhere.

In chosen family.
In therapists.
In friends who don’t flinch
when I finally let go.

I will fall apart safely.
I will heal honestly.
I will stop waiting for permission
from someone still waiting himself.
I will not be his unfinished sentence.

I will be the place
where the breaking
finally
stops.

Because sometimes
God doesn’t teach you
that queerness is a sin.

Sometimes God teaches you
that queerness is an inevitability
for someone who learned to see
beauty and safety
in everyone
but him.

When the first place you look for shelter
is not your father’s arms,
you learn early
to read warmth elsewhere.

In voices that don’t harden.

In hands that don’t brace before touching.

In love that doesn’t demand silence as proof of loyalty.

If home is unpredictable,
you find home in people.

If authority is fear,
you learn to trust tenderness.

This isn’t rebellion.
It’s adaptation.

It’s a nervous system
choosing softness
over survival-by-force.

So no—
this isn’t me turning away from God.

This is me refusing a theology
that confuses harm with holiness
and absence with strength.

I did not become this way to defy him.

I became this way
because I was looking for somewhere
it was finally safe
to exhale.

And if that truth makes some people uncomfortable,
let it.

I am done shrinking my salvation
to fit someone else’s unfinished faith.

I will not be his fear.

I will not be his silence.

I will not be his son in that way.

I will be whole.

Because I am not my father’s son—
but my son
will be mine.

Not owned.
Not shaped by fear.
Not taught to disappear when things get hard.

Mine in presence.
Mine in patience.
Mine in the way I will sit on the floor with him
instead of standing over him.

He will know my arms
before he knows my expectations.
He will learn that falling apart
does not cost you love.

He will not have to earn safety.
He will not have to translate pain into performance.
He will not have to become strong too early
just to stay.

And if he is afraid,
I will not send him away.
If he is different,
I will not call it sin.
If he is soft,
I will not harden him to survive me.

Because the lineage ends
where someone chooses to stay.

I am not my father’s son.
But my son—
my son will grow up knowing
that when the world breaks him open,
there is a place he can fall
and still be held.

That is the inheritance.
That is the repair.
That is how this ends.

I am not my father's son, but son will be his father's son.

And my grandson will be mine.