Dead Eyes

Her fall from grace has been swift with as many ups and downs as any high class roller coaster ride.  After her husband's desertion, she slipped effortlessly into an abusive relationship - ended it and found another with an old high school sweetheart.  She remarried within weeks and has been paying the price ever since - her children are now estranged from her, her sister refuses to listen any longer, she's at war with her mother, and her job hangs by the thinnest of threads.  It's tragic and painful to watch.


Might as well talk to the wall, the doctor says wearily after his latest closed door chat with her, At least the wall hears me.


She emerges from his office dry eyed and blank looking, seemingly untouched and unmoved by the session.  She no longer meets your eyes when she speaks, she shuffles about the office like a robot, smiling less and never laughing.  She's there and yet not - the chaos of her personal life has overwhelmed her and she's simply shut down.  Because it has to be done, her sister and I pick up the slack, finishing her tasks and double checking her paperwork - any ability to be accurate is long gone and she's far too distracted to follow through on even the smallest of details.  Her cell phone hums incessantly and she ducks into an exam room to text her answers, leaving her work untended and patients waiting.  When the doctor catches her, she accepts the reprimand with dead eyes and no defense.  I doubt she even hears it. 


The atmosphere in the office is tense and suspicious, seething with gradually building resentment and wrapped in a transparent layer of anger.  We're weary of the drama, the closed door meetings, the threats and distrust and the escalating stress.  She's rejected all offers of help and turned silently defiant, certain that we don't understand her, and more, that we're all against her.  I can't help but suspect that a part of her knows the truth about the man she married so hastily, knew it at the time and chose to bury it.  And now, having traded her children and family and self respect for his company, she has no protection save her denial.  


How do you know that? the doctor asks me.


I don't just know, I tell him with more honesty than I once thought I'd ever have, I remember.


Alcoholism isn't a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play ~ Joyce Rebeta-Burditt