Smells Like Teen Spirit

Nora Povejsil

It’s a warm, sunny day in early June. I am nine years old. Riding in the back seat of my dad’s beat up beige sedan, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” comes on the radio, blasting through the scratchy sounding speakers. My brother, Bruno, is in the front seat, my other brother, Max, next to me. Our dad is driving us back to our mom’s house. When the chorus starts, the three of them start raucously singing:

“here we are now, entertain us/I feel stupid and contagious/here we are now, entertain us.”

I sing along with them, but with slightly different lyrics. I sing at the top of my lungs:

“mashed potatoes and some gravy it’s Thanksgiving, I love turkey.”

The boys and my dad turn around, look at me, start laughing, and join in using my lyrics. They add on verses about liking stuffing and green beans with some bacon. Max switches over to singing the guitar part like he always does and Bruno harmonizes with my dad and me as we scream sing our new song.

I love that memory. I think part of it has to do with the music. I’ve always loved Nirvana and my brothers’ angsty adolescent music taste in general. I fell in love with their favorite bands, from Metallica to Cloud Cult, to Radiohead to Muse, to The Flaming Lips to Cake. But more importantly, it’s one of the clearest memories I have of me, my brothers, and my dad hanging out without any of the ever-present tension that comes along with having an unstable parent.

From a young age, I always knew that my dad was different from my friends’ parents.

He picked me up from school wearing leather jackets while other dads wore sweater vests and khakis. My dad smelled like cigarettes and coffee instead of Downy detergent or oaky cologne. I never got nervous when I saw my friends’ parents drink a glass of wine or crack open a beer, but when my dad did the same things, an anxious feeling I couldn’t explain settled in the bottom of my stomach.

At the time I didn’t know about all of the issues that my dad had with alcohol or drugs. I just knew that he was my dad and that he didn’t roll the way other dads did.

As I got older, though, I started to put the pieces together. The picture I ended up with isn’t pretty. Now I know about the alcohol, the oxycodone, the fentanyl, the heroin, the trips to the emergency room, the pancreatitis at twenty-two, the surgeries, the rehab, the benders around the country, the drug dealer girlfriend, the promises, the relapses, the lies, the overdose.

It was June 23rd, 2012, when my dad overdosed on a lethal drug cocktail containing primarily heroin and fentanyl. His body was found three days later on June 26th.

It’s been six years, but at times it still feels like six months. Thoughts still keep me awake at night about how my dad won’t walk me down the aisle at my wedding, meet his grandchildren, see me graduate college, or the most painful right now, see me graduate high school this June. I think a lot about if we’d be close if he were still alive. I think we would.

Even though it would be difficult, and I would constantly be disappointed by him and his actions, sometimes the only person you can talk to is your dad. All his mistakes don’t make me miss him any less.

A couple weeks before I started writing this speech I read a book called Beautiful Boy. It’s a memoir chronicling the life of a father through his son’s traumatic experience with meth addiction. Shortly after I read the book I saw the movie, starring Steve Carell and the love of my life, Timothée Chalamet. It hit me hard. It brought back feelings and memories I had suppressed for so long about what it’s like to feel completely hopeless, to feel angry, sad, and afraid, but to still be driven by an intense, unconditional love.

How can someone go twenty years sober and then repeatedly relapse during the course of his baby girl’s life?

How can my dad throw everything he loved away and leave me?

But at the same time, how do I continue to miss him, continue to love him, continue to defend him?

There’s a line in Beautiful Boy where the father says, “he has a disease, but addiction is the most baffling of all diseases, unique in the blame, shame, and humiliation that accompany it. It’s not Nic’s fault he has a disease, but it is his fault that he relapses since he is the only one who can do the work necessary to prevent relapse. Whether or not it’s his fault, he must be held accountable.” Replace the name “Nic” with “my dad” and you have the story of my father’s life and what it’s like to think about his addiction and alcoholism.

I want all of you to know why I’m giving this speech. It’s because I feel embarrassed when I talk about the fact that my dad was an alcoholic and an addict. I feel like that automatically makes people assume that he was a bad father, or that his death was somehow less impactful because it was his “choice.”

I decided to bite the bullet today and let everyone here know that I’m tired of the narrative around addiction. I need you all to know my family’s story so that the fact that overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 means something to you. So that the fact that 130 people in the U.S. will die from opioid overdoses today will have some impact. So that you know that rehabs are rarely based on hard science because the government barely funds research on hard drugs and that rehab is too expensive, and that rehab oftentimes isn’t covered by insurance. So that we all understand and recognize that addiction is an epidemic and that this story is not unique. So that you stop talking about addicts like they’re inherently bad people, that they’re untrustworthy, that it’s their fault. So that anyone with a loved one going through addiction or alcoholism or going through it themselves in this auditorium knows that they don’t have to hide underneath the weight of the stigma. I’m here, and I’m willing to talk about it for hours.

I’m here for you.

If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that family is the best, most important thing in this world. Bruno is the emotional rock of my family. He is kind, gentle, insanely smart, and he gives the best hugs. I see my dad in Bruno in all of these ways. Max is the funniest person I have ever met, he is musically talented, and skilled at arguing. It’s easy to draw comparisons between Max and my dad. My mom is literally the strongest person I will ever know.

She kept our lives normal in the most chaotic situations imaginable, had the self-respect to stand up for herself and her kids, and worked past her own heartbreak and loss in order to be there for us. She is hilarious, a true fashion icon, and the most loving mother I could have ever asked for. As Big Sean says, “my mama’s the man of the house.”

And finally, I want to thank you, papa. Thank you for teaching me how to do the bridge when I shuffle cards, that there is indeed a correct way to make grilled cheese, that life without art is boring, that french toast requires french bread, and that making friends wherever you go is essential. Thank you for teaching me street smarts and grit. Thank you for making fun of Max for only listening to metal and Bruno for only listening to, like, three indie bands. They’ve come a long way since then. I love you more than I ever got to express to you.