The Understanding

Part 2: The Understanding 

I realised the below when I fell out a window. 

It was a ground floor window, but it could've been a skyscrapers 100th floor I was that mangled.

I bounced, it was funny to people there, but something clicked and I started thinking as to how dangerous it was and why I was here. 

Here in the situation as an addict and why was I like this? 

Where did I go wrong and why was wrong the right feeling?

Here goes: I didn't come from a broken home. I came from a rearranged one.

You know the one where everything technically still exists, but nothing quite sits where it used to. Like someone’s moved all the furniture overnight and just assumed you’d figure it out in the dark.

My parents divorced when I was young. My dad dealt with it the only way he really knew how, he worked. Constantly. Relentlessly. If work were an Olympic sport, he’d have brought home gold and still stayed late to clean the stadium. Providing was his love language, and to be fair to him, he never missed a payment, but he did miss moments.

He was also an alcoholic; a dry drunk (off it 6 years before I was born), but I'll cover that again when I feel stronger to discuss it.

My mum loved deeply, I’ve no doubt about that. But love and emotional availability aren’t always the same thing. She didn’t quite have the tools to meet me in the ways I needed. Not because she didn’t care, just because she didn’t know how.

And here’s the important part, I don’t blame them.

They were human. Limited. Doing their best with what they had. Same as I was.

But when you’re a kid, you don’t have that kind of perspective. You’re not sitting there thinking, “Ah aye, intergenerational emotional patterns at play here.” You’re just feeling things. Big things. Confusing things. And when those feelings don’t have somewhere to land, they don’t disappear, they settle in the gaps.

So that’s where I grew up.

In the cracks.

Not neglected. Not unloved. Just in between. In the quiet spaces where nobody quite notices what’s forming inside you. And in those spaces, you learn to adapt. You learn to entertain yourself, to self soothe, to escape.

And escapism became my speciality.

At the beginning, it’s innocent enough. Daydreaming. Zoning out. Finding ways to not feel what you don’t understand. But then, at around 15, I found something that felt like the answer to everything I didn’t even know how to ask.

Bubbles.

That first rush. That warmth. That sudden sense that everythings easier. People are easier. Conversations flow. You’re funnier, more relaxed, more you, or at least a version of you that feels better than the one you’ve been carrying around.

And just like that, I made the connection.

Bubbles meant people.

Bubbles meant belonging.

Bubbles meant I was alright, safe.

It wasn’t just a drink, it was a shortcut. A fast pass to the life I thought everyone else had naturally.

And here’s where it gets ropey.

I didn’t just enjoy it, I attached meaning to it. I started to believe that this was the version of me people liked. That this was what friendship felt like. That success, connection, confidence, they all lived on the other side of a few drinks.

Looking back now, it’s almost impressive how quickly I built that association. Like my brain went, “Right wee man, we’ve cracked it, this is the formula, the passport we're looking for!”

Except it wasn’t a formula.

It was a workaround.

Because what I was really doing was borrowing a version of myself I didn’t yet know how to access sober. I was leasing confidence. Renting connection. And the thing about rentals is, they’re never really yours.

The bill always lands.

And it came in ways I didn’t recognise at first. Subtle at the beginning. A dependency on the feeling. A belief that without it, I wasn’t quite enough. That the “real me” needed a bit of help to be accepted.

But the truth is, I wasn’t chasing alcohol.

I was chasing understanding and belonging.

I was trying to fill emotional gaps with something immediate. Something reliable. Something that didn’t require me to sit still long enough to ask, “What actually hurt here?”

Because that’s the bit we avoid, right?

The sitting.

The quiet.

The honesty.

Hurt doesn’t disappear just because you’ve found a way around it. It waits. Patiently. In the background. Revealing itself in habits, in patterns, in the choices you make without even realising why.

Understanding, that’s different.

Understanding asks something of you. It asks you to look back without flinching. To acknowledge that things affected you, even if nobody meant for them to. To hold two truths at the same time:

My parents did their best.

And I still had gaps.

That’s a hard thing to accept, because part of you feels disloyal even saying it. But it’s not blame, it’s clarity.

And clarity is where change starts.

I can see it now in a way I couldn’t back then. I wasn’t a problem kid. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t “too much” or “not enough.”

I was a young fella trying to make sense of feelings he didn’t have the language for, in an environment that didn’t always translate them.

So I found my own way.

It just wasn’t a sustainable or suitable one.

But here’s the thing, none of that defines me now.

It shaped me, 100%. It influenced the roads I went down and the choices I made. But it doesn’t get to write the rest of the story.

Because understanding changes things.

It softens the past without erasing it. It lets you look at your younger self with a bit of compassion instead of criticism. It helps you realise that you weren’t broken, you were adapting.

Maybe you started in the cracks also?

But you don’t have to stay there, you can chose a new version of yourself and work on it. It's hard, it's emotional, it's rewarding, it's numbing, it's real, but it's something you deserve. 

Next time you're here, I'll look at the 18+ years and how amazingly destructive they were while absorbing fake peace and belonging...

Take care out there!