30 Days – Day 14 – “Fallen Idol”

A hero that has let you down.

My cousin I suppose. He never did anything wrong to me and we were never exactly close, what with him being a lot older, but I looked up to him when I was a kid and it’s sad to see what’s become of him. Growing up he was what I wanted to be: he was fit and strong, a champion boxer, easy to talk to and really funny. I never heard one person talk bad about him (though I was a child, that may be why) and when he was at family get togethers they were always more fun. I didn’t see him day in, day out, or really idolise him, I guess it’s because he’s fallen furthest out of everyone that it hurts the most. I don’t have many big cousins, and only two guys that were “grown ups” when I was little and who lived anywhere near me so they were the ones I looked up to.

His big problem was with drinking, it started off as just that: a problem, but now it’s pretty much full-blown alcoholism. Were he a nasty violent drunk it might be easier, it feels worse to see him slowly killing his mind and body with a smile on his face. The first I heard of this it was from my mum, and I thought she was just making a big deal out of nothing until she said he’d been so drunk when he was down in Manchester that two guys had mugged him. That sounds fair enough for most people, but he is (was) a brilliant boxer, if he’d been physically capable of throwing a punch it wouldn’t have happened. Christ, I was told by one of my uncles that he used to spar tanked up and nobody knew about it. The orange flavoured water he’d be drinking while he trained was mixed with vodka. Over time he stopped turning up to parties, his name stopped being mentioned as much and when it was it was never with particularly happy news.

Right now I think he’s serving a couple of months for getting into a fight in a shop, I don’t know the details and I don’t want to know to be honest. Maybe it’ll be a wake-up call for him, maybe he’ll get cleaned up and get things back on track. Maybe he’s been out for ages and is drinking again, I’ll hear of it in passing conversation somewhere down the line.