Alcohol won’t beat me

And it didn’t.

I began this post in October 2022. It’s June 23rd, 2024. I no longer need fire water.

Two years have passed. It’s May 23rd, 2026. I wound my way through the labyrinth of familial mental illness. I came out dry and proud.

A Native American ancestry was revealed: a government policy of American Indian assimilation caused the loss of my family’s 20th century. 

Alcohol devised the demise of my father, brother, sister, innumerable ancestors unnamed. My life was spared—or I spared my own life—to strike the chains of generational trauma and defeat this insidious, legal inebriant. Fire water set my family ablaze and made ashes of our century. 

When my elders are slain; when the treaties are broken; when the young adults lead the tribe, the young ones must rise. 

I am no longer young, but I must rise. I am the age of Chief Joseph when he challenged the Congress in his aged father’s stead.

I challenge history in my aged father’s stead. I rise. I warn my young ones, age seven and nine: it’s now the time for us to save our family’s 21st century. Listen carefully to me. I am our family’s last storyteller.