My Father’s Eyes: My View-His View-The Big Picture

What I Saw

If you're lucky, your father is your first childhood hero. I was fortunate to have mine around during my early years. He taught me valuable lessons. He was my first role model—the first person I wanted to emulate, the first person I wanted to make proud.

As kids, we don't fully grasp the complexity of life. There are layers of nuance and hard truths that we’re just not equipped to understand. Even when adults try to explain things, sometimes the only real teacher is experience.

Addiction was one of those raw truths for me.

My father struggled with alcohol and heroin throughout my childhood. It was an intense habit to witness at such a young age. Trying to wrap my head around that kind of darkness took me years.

At times, he tried to explain. He’d tell me about growing up rough—how he fell in with the wrong crowd, how the streets raised him more than his parents did. Drugs were always around, and in a strange way, I’ve come to understand that maybe they gave him a kind of stability. They were always there—through the highs and lows, the good days and bad.

But when things got bad, they got real. He’d steal from his own home to feed his addiction. My video games, VHS tapes, small appliances—gone. Sold for a fix. Sometimes he’d say he was going to the store to buy groceries and disappear for days. As a kid, you know groceries don’t take that long. So I’d go to the store myself, pick up what we needed—because I knew the money meant for food had gone straight into his arm.

Then there were the run-ins with the law. I still remember my first visit to see him at Rikers Island. That place has cycled through generations of inmates, including more than a few from my family. The metal detectors, pat-downs, checkpoint after checkpoint—all that just to sit across from my father for ten minutes in a cold visitation room. Seeing him in that orange jumpsuit with numbers on his back—it shook me. I didn’t want that for my life.

It was a lot to process. And all while I was still just a kid—still overweight, still trying to keep up in school. My mom eventually brought me to a nutritionist. That’s when it hit me. If a doctor needed to help me manage my food, I was no longer just the jolly big kid—I was now a child with a health problem.

I broke down in that office.

“I just don’t understand why he keeps doing drugs.”

The tears came fast. I hadn’t planned to let them. But I had spent so much energy trying to be strong—for my mom, for my sisters—that something in me snapped. That was the first time I let it out.

I tried to keep up in school. But sometimes it was hard to focus. My dad would be in jail. Or in rehab. Or just gone. As a boy, you think your father is supposed to be a superhero—someone who protects you from the world. But when your hero is battling demons of his own, you want to help him. You want to save him. But I was just a kid. There was only so much I could do.

Still, I never stopped loving him. I gave him every chance to be the father I needed. Sometimes he promised to pick me up from school—and never showed. He’d go get high instead. Sometimes he bought me a new game—and sold it days later. Sometimes he took me to a movie—and other times he was too sick from withdrawal to leave the couch.

But there were good moments too.

There were days when he did pick us up. When we did go get ice cream. When we didn’t have to worry. Those moments mattered. And they stuck. But I always wondered—how long would it last? How long until I had to step up again and hold things together for my little sisters?

I was afraid to admit it then, but I was scared. Scared he might not come home one day. Scared of overdose. Scared he’d get locked up for good. I didn’t understand all the details, but I knew enough. Drugs killed people. Drugs took them away for years.

My mom taught me what strength really looks like. She took my father back, time after time. Even when they fought—screaming, breaking appliances—she stayed. Her love for him ran deep. And she knew how deeply we loved him, too.

When those late-night arguments broke out, I’d snap into big brother mode. I’d sit close to my sisters, just so they wouldn’t feel alone. It wasn’t easy. But I never saw myself as a victim. I saw it as something I had to go through. Something I had to learn from.

Maybe that’s why I held onto this quiet belief—that the pain wouldn’t last forever. That there was a reason my life wasn’t like those picture-perfect families on TV. And maybe, just maybe, those raw and painful moments were shaping me. Teaching me something I’d need later.

What He Saw

Everyone has their own perception of a drug addict. From the outside looking in, it’s easy to judge someone’s choices.

“They’re just low-lives.”
“They have no self-control.”
“They’re street trash.”

But watching my dad struggle with his demons, I never thought that way. I didn’t see a criminal or a junkie. I saw a man I loved who was lost. I saw someone who wanted to stop but didn’t know how. I saw pain, and I just wanted to understand it.

I think my dad knew I loved him. He just couldn’t always find the best way to express his pain. It’s hard to tell your child the truth about the things that haunt you—especially when you’ve spent their whole life trying to shield them. There’s guilt in exposing innocence. And that guilt can turn into regret.

The trap is that addiction often becomes the escape from dealing with that regret. I believe there were moments when looking at me triggered him—not because he didn’t love me, but because he did. In the moments when I asked hard questions or gave him a look full of love and confusion, I think it made the mirror too hard to face. Running back to the familiar high was easier than sitting with the pain.

“Don’t be like me. Be better.”
He used to say that to me often.
“You’re smart, son. Smarter than I ever was. Do something great with your life.”

I think he saw me as a chance. A shot at a different life. One he never got to live. He knew his addiction had taken so much from him, and he wanted me to be the one who broke the cycle.

When he was in jail, I’d write him letters. I even wrote him short stories so he could pass the time while locked up. He would always write back and tell me how much he enjoyed them—how good of a writer I was. It meant something to me. Maybe more than I ever let on. He planted that early seed of possibility—that maybe writing could be something I’d pursue someday. Life had its own plans, but those moments stuck.

My dad had this uncanny gift of landing back on his feet. No matter how many times he got locked up or ended up in rehab, he’d get out and find work—fast. That was the hustler in him. That old-school charisma. He knew how to talk to people. He could walk into a room with nothing and leave with opportunity. He wanted me to have that gift too.

He used to tell me,
“You can’t be quiet all the time. Life ain’t gonna hand you anything. You gotta speak up. You gotta go get what you want.”

But as a father, you know your child. He knew I was introverted. Shy. I kept things inside. I let things roll off my back. I think he saw the goodness in that, but he also feared the world would eat me alive if I didn’t learn to use my voice.

He tried to nurture that strength in me. He encouraged me. But my fear of ridicule and rejection had a tight grip on me back then. I appreciated his words, but I didn’t always know how to carry them out.

My mom helped me process what I couldn’t understand. She reminded me, “Your father is sick. But he’s still your father.”
She told me to love and respect him.
To never forget that no matter what he was going through, he would always be my dad.

That truth stayed with me my whole life. It shaped how I loved him. And it shaped how I showed up for others.

Even in his darkest moments, my dad still tried to help people. He would take young addicts under his wing in recovery. He’d share what he learned in the program—12 steps, NA, AA. He even passed some of that on to me. Not because he thought I needed it, but because he believed in the power of truth-telling.

“Always be real about who you are,” he told me once.
“When people trust you, life is a little bit easier.”

Those were the moments I felt most like his son. Not just a boy watching from the sidelines, but a student—someone he could pass his wisdom down to. A torchbearer.

I wanted to be a light.

But when your soul is consumed by pain, even the faintest glimmer of light can feel like too much. I saw that often in my father. That deep pull to retreat, to hide. He was suffering. He was hurting. But he still believed in me. He believed my future would be bright—even if his was uncertain

The Big Picture

There is no shield for pain.
The hammer of life swings too hard for any armor to absorb its blows. What we think protects us often cracks under pressure—and addiction can be one of those false shields. It convinces you that you're safe from the pain life throws your way. That you're insulated. Untouchable. But it’s a lie. I watched my father reach for that armor over and over again, hoping for relief. But instead of healing, it brought more pain—to himself, to my mother, and to us, his children.

As a child, your emotions are fragile and confusing. You’re not sure if how you feel is how you're supposed to feel. You don’t fully understand responsibility yet. You’re focused on school, trying to please your parents, and looking up to the people who are supposed to hold your world together. But what happens when they start to fall apart?

The world shifts.
Naïveté gives way to raw truth.

When you visit your father in a state jail, or sit in the waiting room of a rehab facility, you see life from a new angle. You see what happens when pain wins. You witness the consequences of choices—how quickly one decision can rewrite everything. The duality of the human experience presents itself to you in full color: the man who tucks you in at night is also the man in an orange jumpsuit.

In the midst of that confusion, you reach for comfort in the ways you know best:
Action figures.
Cartoons.
Video games.
Martial arts flicks.
A plate of home-cooked Puerto Rican food.
Anything that brings back that feeling of safety and simplicity.

And still, in all that chaos, something beautiful happens:
You learn how to love.

Not surface-level love. Not birthday-card love. But real, unconditional love—the kind that persists through disappointment and mistrust. The kind that doesn’t flinch in the face of pain. When you can still look at someone who’s hurt you, who’s let you down, and say, “I love you anyway”—that’s a love deeper than words.

That’s a father-and-son kind of love.

And despite everything, my father and I always had that. Even when life showed us its rawest face.