He was unsteady on his feet, slurring his words, bleary eyed, two hours late and not able to manage fitting his house key into the lock. I listened with a growing sense of despair – this most recent bout with sobriety was clearly over. I didn't feel up to the inevitable battle and snatching up my purse and keys, slipped out the back door. By the time he finally got inside, I was well on my way although I had no certain destination in mind. I wanted no more than to put some serious distance between me and this latest broken promise.
It was, fortunately, a Friday night and no work the next day. I drove aimlessly for an hour or so, completely confident that he wouldn't lift a finger to try and look for me, and finally checked in to a modest hotel off the turnpike, ate in their shabby little restaurant and went to bed. Sleep was elusive and I spent more time restless and awake than sleeping. Should I go home or should I run? As long as he had beer money, I doubted he'd care one way or another but in the end – as had happened countless other times – it was my animals that brought me back. I didn't think he'd harm them intentionally but leaving them in the care of a drunk was risky. He worked, slept, ate and drove drunk – who knew when he might plow into a tree or black out or fall asleep with a cigarette and set fire to the whole house.
God knows, I'd wished for all of that at one time or another, if only briefly. Feeling dismal, hopeless and broken, I headed for home to my beloved cats and dogs. I knew nothing else would be salvageable.
It turned into one more cold war. We lived under the same roof but slept apart, kept our distance, came and went as if everything were perfectly fine, and didn't speak except for the occasional lashing out or snarl. He would sometimes leave me nasty notes about one thing or the other and I would respond in kind. The language was ugly and accusatory and hateful and hurtful on both sides. Each day I prayed he would tire of this venomous game and just leave and I suspect he thought the same thing about me. But addiction had us both and we were like animals caught in a bloody steel jaw trap – the only way to freedom was to gnaw off a limb or simply die.
After several months of this peculiar isolation and rage, we got past it. Funny, but I don't remember who initiated the peace or why. I had discovered AlAnon by then and went to regular meetings several times a week, even after I learned that these new friends were not going to teach me how to make him stop drinking. I learned the Serenity Prayer, magic words if ever there were ones, and began to listen to suggestions like detachment and self care, patience, how to avoid the quicksand of a quarrel and how not to make threats I couldn't possibly have followed through on. Small rules but enormously important – instead of “The next time you drink I'm filing for divorce” became “If you drink, I will not ride with you.” Mostly I learned to shut up and not compete with the Budweiser. I imagined a shouting match with a can of beer and finally saw the futility of it. Addiction is a disease, I reminded myself constantly, not a bad habit. And you don't have to drink or drug your own self to catch it. Sometimes you marry it because, simply put, sickness calls to sickness.
Somehow we managed to survive the next several years, move to Maine and get new jobs, and finally move to Louisiana and more new jobs. This was where after a number of bad years, I came to the end. Disease or not, I'd had enough and one day after a particular violent argument, I told him I was done, finally, positively, irrevocably and for all time, done. I would not spend one more second watching him self-destruct, not tell one more lie to cover for him, not figure out one more enabling strategy. I reported all my credit cards stolen and took his name off the mortgage, the life insurance and all the bank accounts. I called an attorney, packed his every belonging into trash bags, and had the locks changed.
I can't remember a time I was ever more terrified or more calm. A few months later, the divorce was finalized and I walked away from the courthouse on my own and alone for the first time in over 24 years. In no time at all he had remarried, been arrested for domestic abuse, lost his job and his new wife and finally left Louisiana for good. A few years after that, the alcohol finally won out and he was dead from cirrhosis of the liver. It wasn't a pretty ending and I had a moment of sorrow, then one of bitterness, then one hoping he'd finally come to peace.
“What brings us to tears will lead us to grace. Our pain is never wasted.” Bob Goff
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