This is why I Drank.

Sabrina Vallis
2 min readFeb 12, 2024

My Daddy was Murdered 21 years ago today, by his son.

And his wife, my mother.

Life became the scream.
Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash

I only found out last year, though I had been going mad in the meantime.

He killed him, albeit dying of cancer, on a hospital ward at 4 am.

He, (my brother kept telling me to go away).

He had form, either he or his wife had done the same four months earlier, to her father.

I became the pariah of the family.

Unsought, unwanted, and hated.

I did not kill my father.

I did not start to drink then, but as the accumulated guilt crept up on me grew.

“A mercy killing,” said the Irish Nun.

My father had said to me a day previous: “What price Brideshead?” after converting to the religion he loathed with a passion, Roman Catholicism.

“Why, did you allow it Daddy, or is my cry to be unnoticed in the darkness.”

Daddy, oh, my daddy.

The bottle seemed the only answer; I was dispossessed in one single stroke: death. And my only ally.

We won a major championship together. An Olympic class and then our destinies were set in stone. They hated us.

I loved my father. And they hated me for it.

Olypimic class sailing takes nerve and quick thinking.
Photo by Ludomił Sawicki on Unsplash

© Sabrina Vallis 2024 All Rights Reserved.

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Sabrina Vallis

Sobriety writer. NLP Master Practitioner and Nutritionist. Current research: Addiction and the Brain: Ways to Heal. Neuroscience helps us quit.