From Ring to Spectacles
The things we do for those we can’t save
One of the hardest parts of growing up with unstable parents - whether due to narcissism or alcoholism - is simply coming home.
I remember when, in grade one, on the last day before the autumn holidays, I was clinging to my teacher’s leg, crying because I didn’t want to leave.
Returning from school or spending the long days of school holidays at home wasn’t about relaxation but survival. I had to sense the emotional temperature of the house at all times and watch out for sudden and subtle changes, shifts in body language, tone, or the all-too-familiar, hostile silence, where I would feel a knot in my stomach tighten and panic set in. What had I done wrong? What punishment, often accompanied by violent outbursts, was coming my way?
I walked on eggshells constantly, fine-tuning my behaviour to avoid conflict. I tried to predict needs before they were voiced, offer help before it was asked for, and stay invisible when needed. I fawned, appeased, and obeyed. It was the closest way to stay out of harm’s way.
The unpredictability was exhausting.
1995. I was 14. As I entered our flat, holding my keys in one hand and my shoes in the other, I was holding my breath to assess the situation. I could hear loud bangs. And music. My dad was at home. I had been hoping he’d be drinking on the garden plot, but here he was, making our 77 sqm flat a minefield.
I put my shoes down in the passage and my school bag next to my desk in my room. Then I proceeded to the kitchen. Next to his cheese sandwich and a bottle of Warsteiner, my dad’s wedding ring was on the table.
I watched as he lifted the hammer again, bringing it down with a dull metallic clink. Again. And again. But the ring wouldn't break. He mumbled something under his breath, but I couldn’t hear the words. I stood there, completely still, afraid that the fury might find a new direction when he looked up.
My mom had finally filed for divorce.
When he did look up, his eyes were burning with something furious and sad. He put down the hammer, grabbed his beer and the sandwich, and stormed out, slamming the lounge door behind him, turning the music up. I hate Everything But the Girl with my entire being.
The ring was still on the table - crushed into a mess of twisted gold, deformed, like a tiny, golden pile of bowels, unrecognisable from what it once was. Like Bilbo Baggins, I took it and slipped it into my pocket.
A few years later – my dad had moved back to Poland, and I had moved out to study in Kiel/northern Germany – he needed new glasses. The fear I once felt as a child, watching him drink himself into danger like a reckless teenager, had shifted. Now, it was a different kind of worry: watching him struggle financially from afar, knowing I couldn’t step in and make things better.
Until I woke up one day and remembered I still had the ring:
My then-boyfriend’s mother ran her own optician’s shop, and his uncle was a goldsmith.
It felt strange, almost like a betrayal, when I dropped the ring into the uncle’s open palm, quietly thanking it for its service before letting it go.
The money covered two pairs of glasses.