THE DRUNK BUM MY MOM DATED

By someone who survived it, rebuilt from it, and outgrew every one of them

There’s a moment in every kid’s life when the world flips. For me, it was the night my father — a real man, a provider, a worker, a fighter — died in my arms at 13. After that, everything changed. Not just at home. Inside me.

And then came Phil.

PHIL WAS ALWAYS DRUNK AND ONLY SAW HIMSELF AS SOME BIGSHOT HE WAS NOT

Not a man. Not a partner. Not a father figure. Just a walking cautionary tale with a pulse.

A 30‑year‑old habitual alcoholic with no goals, no future, no discipline, and no shame. A guy who wrecked the very cars I fixed just to keep my mother calm. A guy who acted like a child because, truthfully, he never grew past one.

He had:

• No savings

• No direction

• No backbone

• No respect

• No business being in our home

  
  

But he had one thing — my mother’s time, the one thing she should’ve protected.

This man was in and out of prison like it was a gym membership.He’d call me from bars in Oak Forest after getting beat up and robbed — Rolex gone, dignity gone, everything gone except the alcohol on his breath.

Meanwhile, I was the kid fixing the damage.The kid holding the house together.The kid she never visited in juvenile hall — but she visited him in prison.

Let that sink in.

He stole her golden years.He stole her attention.He stole the peace she should’ve given her son.And she waited for him.She stood by him.She visited him.

But not me.

And the worst part? I didn’t even understand how wrong it all was. I was too busy surviving it.

There were nights I wanted to stuff him in the trunk of his own Cadillac and send him to the bottom of Chevy Lake — the same lake where we parked the “borrowed” cars. Not because I’m violent. Because I was a kid drowning in chaos, watching a grown man destroy everything he touched.

Phil wasn’t just a drunk. He was a symbol — of everything broken, everything unfair, everything upside‑down in my life after my father died.

But here’s the twist:

I outgrew him. I outlived that era. I outbuilt every one of them. And the kid who was ignored, abandoned, and left to fend for himself became a man none of them could’ve imagined.

This isn’t about Phil. It’s about me. About surviving what should’ve crushed me. About becoming the man my father would’ve been proud of — and the man Phil could never be.