He held the glass containing the
amber color liquid in the air examining its contents, it was ritualistic in
nature and Sandy had seen him do it so many times before that there was an
almost indignant familiarity to it. It
reminded her of her years in Catholic School, the Priest at Mass holding up the
chalice as homage to Jesus Christ. But
the symbolism at church was so much different, it was reverent and wholesome
and what Josh, her husband of over twenty years, was doing was simply
destructive.
Josh was also anything but reverent
and wholesome, and his consumption of amber color liquids of one sort or
another had been going on for as long as she had known him. At first she thought it to be a folly of
youth, something that he would grow out of, that as they got older and had a
family that he would slow down or stop the drinking. It never happened, even though she had begged
and pleaded with him on so many occasions that she had lost count early on in
their relationship. It was never one
drink, or even two and it was always an everyday thing. She often thought it normal; after all, her
own father had been a drinker as was his family. She grew up around people that drank too
much, men and women alike and it was for that very reason she herself had drank
very little in her lifetime.
Sandy never truly understood the
reasons that people drank so much, a social drink was fine in her mind but
after that there was no real reason to continue and she had children, someone
had to be responsible, able to care for them at night if they were ill. Her children were her responsibility and she
knew that too, for it became an unwritten rule around her house. It was never openly addressed, it just was
and she accepted it rather than to fight it.
Now, years later, she understood more than she had ever imagined. Sandy knew by accepting things without
fighting them that she had condoned them, she had allowed a certain amount of
selfishness in her partner that she would never have allowed from herself.
What Sandy hadn’t known then was that
she hurt the people she loved the most in allowing the drinking to continue at
the level that it did, for she allowed not only selfishness, but also a form of
isolationism in Josh. He could hide from
the world through the use of alcohol, and whatever else he was into at the
time. He didn’t have to face the world,
nor his responsibility as a parent. She
knew now that her children were the ones that had suffered the most, just as
she had as a child, with little interaction or involvement from their father
her children would always long for that, feel like something was missing or
that they were not good enough for him to spend time with them doing the things
they enjoyed.
Sandy sees that now and it hurts her,
the fact that her children aren’t close to Josh makes her sad, but not nearly
as sad as how it all ended, for it didn’t need to be like that. There were a lot of years vested in the
relationship, a lot of years of trying to make Josh happy, but in the end she
knew that she would never be able to do that.
Josh’s happiness was his to own and not her responsibility to
create. But, as they say; “It is always
darkest before the dawn.”, and that was clearly the case in Sandy’s life and
through Josh’s actions.
The darkness arrived one night early
in the spring time, when things should have been getting brighter and lusher,
but the darkness was overwhelming and it nearly caused Josh to lose his
life. Things had been strained for some
time, months and months of push and pull, broken promises and outright
lies. He said he would stop the
drinking, taking the pills that he had been consuming and Josh had assured
Sandy he could do it on his own. That
didn’t happen and Josh thought that Sandy didn’t see him drinking in the middle
of the day or at night but she had and it hurt her to know that the alcohol
that he was so ritualistic about was more important to him than she was. It was the first spring that she wouldn’t
feel refreshed, that she wouldn’t look forward to daylight savings time ending
and the blossoming of the flowers in her garden.
That spring things were as dark as
they had ever been for it was then that Josh overdosed on prescription pain
medications and alcohol, that he was hospitalized and nearly died. Sandy remembered how angry she was at him for
what he had done, for his own self-destructive acts and the destruction of her
family. So many pills in such a short
time and clinging to life as he laid in the hospital bed, unaware of his surroundings,
the names of his children or where he was.
He laid there restrained to the bed in a diaper; unable to control his
own bodily functions and she thought maybe if only he could see himself now,
maybe then he would understand. But
Sandy knew, she knew in her heart that even that wouldn’t change him, what he
had done, for he would do like he had always done and find a way to make
excuses, to blame his actions or choices on someone else or some external
force. That was just Josh and that was
what he had always done, every time he lost a job or a friend it was because of
some other reason, he was never responsible for his own actions. And those loses would just be another reason
to be angry, to drown the anger at the bottom of a bottle. This spring was so different from all the
ones that Sandy had looked forward to in the past for there was heaviness in
the air that only comes with a deep winter freeze.
The days turned to weeks and every
day, despite her anger and embarrassment, Sandy trekked the twenty-five miles
each way to the hospital. She sat there
in that hospital room with Josh quietly, for she couldn’t talk to him, she
didn’t know what to say and even if she did, she knew he couldn’t understand or
absorb any of it. He was someplace far
away from reality, in a world that was only available to those in Josh’s state
of mental incapacity, where reality was twisted and things aren’t real. Every once in a while he would speak, for the
most part the words were unintelligible, but when Sandy could understand the
words that Josh spoke it was as if she was listening to a character from “Alice In Wonderland”, and Josh was
clearly the “Mad Hatter”. For he insisted that he had been in a log
cabin in the woods hanging out with a heavy metal band smoking crack. Obviously he hadn’t gone anywhere, he was in
restraints and besides, Sandy doubted that a heavy metal band would hang out
with a guy that was in diapers. It was
then that Sandy knew that her life, or at least the one that she had created in
her mind, the one that was safe and perfect, was nothing more than one huge lie
and it was one that she could no longer live in.
Sandy left the hospital that day and
as she walked out into the open air outside the building it hit her, the heat
and the sunshine, they were there and it was her spring. The cold dampness that she had felt that
morning as she entered the building to sit by Josh was gone; the sweater that
she had worn to keep her warm was suddenly as oppressive as the relationship
that she had stayed in for her family.
Sandy knew in that instant that there would be a change, things would be
different in her life; and she knew that it didn’t matter anymore if Josh
wanted to change his own life. Sandy
knew that she had to change her life that she had to make the choice to live
without the burden of alcoholism in it.
If Josh could not change himself neither could she, but she could be
free of carrying his burdens of hiding his secrets from the world and allowing
him to make excuses. There would be an
ultimatum, a time limit and if Josh did come out of this he would have to rise
to the challenge. If he didn’t, that was
alright too, for Sandy knew and understood now that which for so many years she
had not.
“Life is not to be lived in the
shadows, for the shadows you cast are forever evolving, changing positions. The
things which we try to conceal within the shadows will soon be uncovered as the
sunshine resurfaces in your life.” (me 2013)
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