Coming To Terms

One of my grandmother's most oft repeated sayings had to do with learning lessons.  Ain't no education in the second kick of a mule, she liked to tell me with a wry smile, and that's the gospel truth, child.  Even at a young age, I could see there was clearly no argument to be made against this particular bit of wisdom. The first time I heard her say it, she was referring to my mother's most recent pledge of sobriety but it was an all occasion phrase, as applicable to a cat having a second litter of unwanted kittens as the remorse of a hangover or having faith in the Red Sox.  You learned from life's lessons or you didn't - it was as simple as that.

For the most part, we managed to pass as an intact and ordinary family - middle class, public schools, two cars, church on Sundays, a white two story house with black shutters and a maple tree in the back yard.  Nothing about the way we lived was remarkable or special or noteworthy, nothing we did provoked attention, at least not in the early years.  The grass was kept neatly cut, the trash barrels set out every Monday, my daddy came and went to work each day and supper was on the table at six.  The brawls were private family business, carefully contained and hidden from the outside world, my mother's regular falling down drunkenness was a secret well kept by us all for years.  No one asked to look inside and we instinctively knew to keep people out, fearful that someone would uncover the free floating shame that guided and ruled our lives, although if anyone had asked, I doubt we'd have been able to articulate it.  Live with a sense of undefined wrongness long enough, I discovered, and it begins to feel normal and right - secrecy is the very heart of shame, neither can flourish without the other.  There was help to be had but it would've required exposure and no one in our family or in many others wanted or was brave enough to break with tradition.  Even Nana, who had lived with a drunken husband for more years than I'd been alive, dismissed alcoholism as a matter of weak will, no self control, and a sad lack of moral fiber.  


Some years ago I began wondering why we resist the concept of addiction as a disease - for myself, I think it's because we're so damaged and shamed and bruised that we can't help but fight back.  Drunks lie, steal, cheat,
manipulate and promise anything as effortlessly and as naturally as the rest of draw breath - it's impossible to separate their behavior from their real selves - and when they lash out it's at the closest and most vulnerable target.  We see it as willful abuse and intentional cruelty, a character defect we should've noticed but didn't.
We see a choice where there is none, we see symptoms as attacks on us, we eventually come to think that we share the blame and responsibility.  When a drunk husband tells his wife she's the crazy one and she believes him, the world stops making sense.  


Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.


In war, in life, in relationships, with every step in every journey, we have to come to terms.  There truly is no education in the second kick of a mule.