My father has probably single-handedly kept the Post-it Note company in business.
One of the most tragic parts of my dad’s alcohol dependency is that he was once a very bright man. He graduated from college, worked his way up through a Fortune 500 company and made a six-figure salary. Beyond being smart, he could fix anything. Literally anything. From the construction a dollhouse from scratch to rebuilding the engine of a 944 Porsche, there didn’t seem to be anything he didn’t know how to do. Some of my fondest early childhood memories were spent in his shop, watching him fix something with epoxy or create something on his table saw. Every single one of my friends were treated to a demonstration of his compressor (and they were obviously SO impressed…what 13 year old girl wouldn’t be, right?)
But over the years, something started happening to my father’s brain. He developed a weird OCD-type complex where everything had to be written down. His product of choice: the Post-it Note. For the last years I lived in my parent’s home, every day the kitchen counter was littered with post-it notes in my dad’s ALL CAPITALIZED handwriting (isn’t that a sign of a serial killer?) He seemed to be especially fascinated with noting every aspect of his day, from taking out the garbage to feeding the cats to phone calls he made. As if that wasn’t strange enough, he also demanded that anything we needed to tell him would be in writing. I am not sure if this was due to an underlying mental illness or just the effect of alcohol on his brain, but it was very annoying.
Now that I do not live with him, he has moved on to his new favorite forum: email. He sends at least one email every day. It got to the point where I had to create a new email address just for him. In the first year alone, he sent over 550 emails. I can probably write 10 blogs on just his emails alone. But you kind of have to see them to believe them, and there’s a lot more to talk about before I can even scratch the surface of his emails!!
Anxious ACOA 