Innocence Lost

This past week my roommate tried to talk things out with his father. For those now aware of his situation, his Father is an abusive alcoholic and that is the reason he is now living with me.

But you only get one Father in this life and now that he has been out of his Fathers house for a few weeks he thought he could talk to him and maybe work something out. Maybe his Father missed him enough to be willing to seek help for his drinking and things could be different between them.

Earlier this week he invited his Father to come over for dinner. My guy and I hung around for a little bit to make sure everything was OK. When his Father arrived, both seemed nervous, but everything seemed to be going OK. So my guy and I decided to go do some errands and leave them to talk.

At the first stop we had to make my guy realized he left his wallet back at my place. So we ran back to get it and I am so glad we did. It was like a guardian angel took that wallet to allow us to come back in time. When we got back we heard shouting from the flat all the way outside. Now, I had hurt me ankle and was not able to move as fast as me guy. By the time I got to the door I had to step to the side as his father was falling out backwards and landing on his arse with my man right behind him. His father got up holding his jaw, cussing. But when my guy took a couple steps towards him, he quickly turned and ran to his car. I had never seen my guy angry before, but I soon realized he had given his Father a clatter in the jaw.

I went inside to check my roommate and he was standing there with tears running down his face, a new black eye appearing around his swollen eye. I found out that when he refused his father a glass of whiskey, saying he wanted to talk to him sober, his father got enraged and punched him in the face. We happened to get back just a little too late to save another black eye, but in time before his Father did any more damage to his son.

That night, each of us learned a lesson. My roommate learned that just because someone provides the sperm for your birth, doesn't make them qualified to be a Father. I learned that my guy throws a mean right handed punch and he learned that its better for your hand to punch someone in the nose rather than on their hard cheek bones.

As each of us gets older, life has a way of taken more and more of the innocence of our youth away from us. There are many lessons we will learn in our lives. We just have to realize that life isn't always perfect, people aren't always perfect. Yet, we can't let the negative parts of life consume us and make us bitter. My roommate realizes now that he can never go back to the place he once called home, but as time goes by he will find his place in this world, the place where he is meant to be and that will be the place he will truly know as home.