Tag: family pain

Alone in the Crowd

Alcohol, Alcoholism, Family, Marriage, Recovery By Matt Salis, MPS 1 Comment

Alone in the Crowd

If you think reading about the impact of alcohol and recovery is therapeutic, you should try writing about it.

 

If you are battling a compulsion to drink, or if you are the loved one of a heavy drinker, you are probably protecting a closely guarded secret. It is the kind of secret that will eat you up from the inside while the poison does mental and biological damage to you, the drinker or second-hand drinker. The erosion of self-esteem, relationships and capacity to manage are all universalisms, yet we protect our secrets like we are somehow unique in a nation with over 15 million alcoholics.

 

And we protect our secrets because we can’t find a safe place to let them out.

Alcoholic Denial

Alcohol, Alcoholism, Marriage By Matt Salis, MPS 2 Comments

Alcoholic Denial

If you’ve been lied to by an alcoholic, don’t take it personally. Denial is the cornerstone of the disease. And believe me, no one is getting lied to by an alcoholic more than the alcoholic himself. We don’t want to do it. It is not in our DNA. It is not a sign of spiritual deficiency. It isn’t a choice, either. In fact, when I was in active addiction, and expending massive amounts of energy hiding my predicament, I swore to my wife that I never lied, and that I was the most honest person in her life. And I believed that to my core.

 

Denial is a powerful tool. Sometimes, when we feel trapped and alone – out of options and staring the stark and bitter reality right in the face – denial is all we have left.

 

Sometimes, often really, denial is what keeps us drinking.

5 Times My Husband’s Substance Abuse Counselor Was Wrong (And 1 Time She Was Right)

Alcohol, Alcoholism, Marriage By Barbara 2 Comments

Relapse

When you need help, really need help, you’ll take it wherever you can get it.

 

It had been almost two months since our initial visit with the transplant team, when they’d unexpectedly advised us that a liver transplant was not just the next step, but the only remaining step available. John had subsequently, spectacularly, failed tox screens for both alcohol and pot. And instead of being fast-tracked for the transplant list, so I could be reviewed for donation, the team told us they wouldn’t do anything until he was seeing a substance abuse counselor. Steps vital to survival were suddenly, maddeningly, on hold.

 

He didn’t want to do it, to go to a counselor. He told me, standing there in our kitchen, that it would be easier to just let him die. He’d prefer it.

Fictional Characters

Alcohol, Alcoholism, Marriage By Barbara 2 Comments

Fictional Characters

We were talking about parts of my childhood when my therapist said, almost wistfully, “It sounds very lonely.”

 

There was a long quiet spot in the conversation while I thought about that. 

 

Lonely? Me? Surely she was mistaken. I had a family. I had friends. I liked being alone, even as a kid. And as an adult … man, I was born to quarantine. I’ve joked before about the moat I’m building. This feels especially conspicuous right now, with so many so excited that they’ll be getting back out there, seeing people, seeing friends, going to school, going to parties, laughing. 

 

Masks off.

 

I’m dreading that I’m so out of practice making up excuses as to why I can’t make it. 

 

Maybe I don’t understand what loneliness is. And not understanding it, how would I even recognize it?

 

But I was lucky, at the start. I’d found the perfect partner: someone who felt as good to be with as it felt to be alone. 

Our House of Scars

Alcohol, Alcoholism, Marriage By Barbara 4 Comments

Our House of Scars

“But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.” – Haruki Murakami

 

There’s light at the top of the stairs.

(It was never light before. His door was closed, his window shut, his blinds drawn against people, sun, wind and stars.

It was always dark at the top of the stairs.)

So we opened the blinds, opened the window, painted the wall facing it firefly yellow.

The Cost of a Perfect Wedding

Alcohol, Alcoholism, Family, Marriage By Barbara 4 Comments

Barbara on her Wedding Day

June 22, 2007, dawned beautiful, clear and bright in our corner of the Mid-Atlantic. A perfect day for a little bit of a sail. A perfect day for a little bit of a wedding.

 

John and I had been living together for most of a decade. We’d always made a big deal about the anniversary of our hooking up, I guess you’d call it, romantics that we were. In thinking of how to celebrate our 10th, getting married seemed like the obvious choice.

 

There was only ever one consideration for a venue. She was one of a gorgeous pair of 72-foot schooners, operating in town, berthing at night in the slips right outside our apartment complex.  Surprisingly affordable, she offered many things, including an organic constraint to the size of a wedding party, and extra conversational points for having been featured in a big-budget movie. Those are just minor details for flavor, though. All we really wanted was to get married on a boat, on the water, with plenty of booze.

The Prompt

Alcoholism, Marriage, Recovery By Barbara 9 Comments

The Prompt

Lately I’m seeing, from a social distance, conversations about our potentially post-pandemic summer that can be summed up as: It’s going to be Sodom and Gomorrah out there. If you can’t get laid this summer, just hang it up. Meanwhile, six months post-divorce, my reflexive gag is that not only am I not dating, not even looking, I’m building a moat.

 

It’s a joke. (Mostly. At least partly. A bit, anyway…) I think it’s funny. But here’s a great tip for free: never tell your good jokes to your therapist. They’ll wreck ‘em. They just can’t help it. I gave mine the whole moat bit with a nudge and a wink (or the Zoom equivalent), and she told me, rather seriously, “Barbara, you’re not keeping others out, you’re keeping yourself in.”

Hope, Recognized

Alcoholism, Marriage By Barbara 4 Comments

Hope, Recognized

Hope terrified me at the first sight of it. It froze me in my tracks, right there in the basement, the laundry basket on my hip.

 

I’d done everything I could to end it. I’d gotten the lawyer, gotten the agreements, and refinanced the house. I’d untethered phones, cable, and internet. I’d started in the tightest circle, telling the news, expanding it outward like a slow ripple. I’d packed everything I could from the parts of the house that were mine, the things that we’d agreed would be his, boxes stacked in neat rows as close to the front door as possible. Ready for him to take. Ready for him to go.

 

For his part, he had managed to get his own place. But he wasn’t leaving. Even with a literal key to his new, loudly-desired life in his hand, he sat, week after week, behind the closed door of his bedroom, drinking, not even hiding it anymore. Not taking. Not going. 

Suicides of Different Speeds

Alcoholism, Marriage By Barbara 8 Comments

Suicides of Different Speeds

It was early in June the day our friend Tom got out of bed, long before the sunrise, without disturbing his wife. He got dressed, went to the basement, and fed lettuce to his Russian tortoise Nadenka, as he did every morning. While she munched away in her pen, he wiped the hard drive on his desktop. Looking over his significant gun collection, a point of pride, he selected one of the pair of pearl-handled revolvers, loaded it, and pocketed it. He then stole silently up the stairs, grabbed his cell phone, his wallet, and his car keys, and left a note for his wife telling her where he would be.

 

He drove for a while that morning, about an hour, to a nature reserve that was one of his favorite spots. He parked along the side of the road, conspicuous, not in any parking spot. But it was still early, quiet. He’d have some time. He got out, left his cell phone and wallet on the dashboard and the keys in the ignition. He took the revolver.