Plan B

I'm a twelve stepper.

I grew up with alcoholism and later married it. It felt like going home because it was so familiar but actually it was no more than sickness calling to sickness. About ten years in, I was weary, used up, broken and desperate. I couldn't see a way out or a way to stay and I was too afraid to run. The man I'd married had turned into a stranger who had three personalities - drunk, getting over being drunk, or getting ready to get drunk. I'd protected and covered for him so long that it was second nature but the money was gone and the promises were stale. Everything was at risk. The next lie, I told myself, will be the last.

Plan B was Al Anon. I was so ashamed to be there and so scared that it was all I could do to get out my name. I listened though and I learned two vital things - I wasn't alone in this insanity, that in itself was like setting down a knapsack of bricks - and I wasn't losing my mind. I didn't much like most of what I heard because no one seemed to be offering me a plan to cure him. They seemed to be suggesting that I would have to be the one to change.

I hated change. I hated looking inward for solutions. And I went back the next week because when I left, I felt the slightest stirring of something that might've been hope.

He went through rehab twice but it never took. We had a few superficially good months during which time I ignored my instincts and refused to listen to that nagging little voice that kept saying "You're being had again." The end came when I opened a little used cabinet and came across a paper bag of empty beer cans. At first I mercifully went into mild shock. Then I broke down and completely unraveled. Then and only then, I got angry but it was a cold kind of rage, a sort of purposeful fury than lends itself well to the gathering of strength and resolve.

It wasn't an amicable ending. There were restraining orders and changed locks, police came and went, and I spent far too many sleepless nights. It was a painful and hateful time, far too reminiscent of childhood. Memories of my family intruded into my dreams at night and haunted me during the days. Healing came slowly and even now those old wounds can still be opened if I don't pay attention.

It's often hard to let go. Detachment can feel like abandonment and bring on guilt. Depair is so much easier to embrace than hope. In a way, we become the choices we make, so........... resent or forgive? Accuse or understand? Control or let go? Suffer or celebrate?

Sometimes it's as simple as getting out of your own way.