What moment in your life fucked you up for a while?

I'm in one now. My father died from a heroin overdose almost two months ago, and was found the next day on my 27th birthday. He had been clean for years, but the loss of his wife last year threw him into a spiraling depression. I could tell in his voice over the last few months that he had been using again, but worried for my own recovery (three years clean this July), I distanced myself from him and reduced our visits/phone calls to holidays. He was a trucker, and would call me frequently from the road just to chit chat, and lately I'd just send those calls to voicemail.

In the days leading up to his death, I prepared myself for our obligatory birthday phone call and decided that it was time I stopped turning a blind eye and tell him how worried about him I was, and that this relapse had gone on too long. I never had that chance. Instead I woke up to hundreds of missed calls and texts from family, none of which were from him, and I knew in my gut what had happened before anyone had to tell me.

I lost my father once before. From the age of 10 until I was 22, he was missing from my life. But I always maintained an idealistic image of him, so when we reconnected I never addressed all of the pain that his absence had caused me in my youth, I basically gave him a free pass on all of that.

As a recovering addict, I know that there is no phone call in the world that could've stopped him from doing what he did. But the timing of his death is what tears me apart, and I can't help but think I contributed to his collapse by not being there for him as well as I could've been, and that the thought of my birthday sunk him down even lower.

So TL;DR what fucks me up is that my father was always in and out of my life, but now he's gone permanently, and I'll never get the chance to have an honest conversation with him. And the timing of his death on my birthday makes me feel like it wasn't accidental.

/r/AskReddit Thread