hypocritepoet

My mother is an alcoholic. I HATE saying this. I hate saying the words, instead of saying 'my mom USED to be an alcoholic, or used to drink too much'. I would much prefer to describe my mom this way. But, they teach you that once you are an alcoholic you always are. To confront it, to own it is to take away its power. I often try to lessen the blow of that statement by adding the modifier 'recovering' but, honestly, sometimes it feels like that just adds insult to injury. It is a disease, not an act of cowardice or abandonment. Saying my mother has cancer though, doesn't have the same character-assassinating tone. I need to adjust my thinking. At least I have a little pride in the fact that both she and I turned into fairly useful human beings.

Among my earliest childhood memories is attending Al-Anon. It's a support group for family members affected by an alcoholic parent. Or parents. I seem to recall it helped. Or they said it did. I was SO young. I don't know how young, but I guess 7-10. This is probably a question I can ask my parents, but we don't talk about those dark days long, long ago. Even though they clearly still impact my life as an allegedly mature adult. I do have a very specific memory of me and my sisters sitting in darkened room around a table for 8. There is a single lamp over the table, a coned lamp shade splashes the light to the ceiling or onto the table, leaving the walls mostly un-illuminated. The room is smokey and in the shadows is my father. Everyone is here for a conversation for us children. I am asked how I feel about my mom's drinking. Does it make me happy, or sad, or angry? What would I like her to do differently? Are there any specific moments that I want to talk about. I don't know what I said.

I do carry a few VERY visceral memories of events with an alcoholic mother. One involves looking for clean socks. I have a thing with socks. A specific order they must be put on (left then right) and that they must be the FIRST garment. It must be a weird foot thing. IDK. Anyway, when I was very small and getting ready for school, I didn't have any clean socks. So I did what you do when you need clean clothes: you go look through the dryer and hope like hell that someone did some laundry. Only in this moment, the dryer is empty and I'm forced to dig through the dirty laundry looking for socks.

Now, if you have a methodology for sock-wearing, you can imagine how important CLEAN socks are. I was so angry, wrapped in my tiny towel and in tears as 6 year old me can't understand why mom can't keep the laundry clean. The washer and dryer tower over me as I stand in the little back room of our house on bare plywood floors while the morning sun shines in the east windows. My dad has replaced the floor (the home-was a fixer-upper) and so it never felt clean, even though it probably was. Eventually, I found the cleanest pair of dirty socks I could and accepted it was either that or bare feet. I recall feeling filthy all day long.

Another also involves laundry. I am a year or two older and it is winter time. I want to wear my favorite shirt to school, but it never made it into the dryer. So mom brings it to the living room and hangs it on the mantel of the fireplace to dry. We warmed our old two story house with the fireplace. My dad had manufactured a wood rack upon which the wood burned that had a blower and it shot warm air through the bottom rooms of the house.

After 15m or so, mom realized it was taking too long and that we would be late. I insisted on wearing my black, yellow and red striped shirt so she proposed laying it for a moment on the space heater. It was the metal kind that didn't shut off when it tipped over. It would be the SAME heater that would burn my house down in a couple of years. But today's tragedy involved a nice toasty and dry shirt in short order. I would learn about half-way through the morning that the heater had melted the polyester fibers just enough that with a little stress, the shirt began to tear into ribbons across my back. I spent the day with the kids asking my why I had four wide tears. It was humiliating and my favorite shirt was ruined.

To this day, I take real umbrage with writers who put children in stressful situations like this one and they spout emotional and psychological rhetoric like they are a first year therapy student at Yale. A real child of trauma is scared. They are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Of getting someone in trouble. They know they are loved, but don't understand what the full context is because: they are a child. And that knowledge is incomplete, complicated by the feelings of insecurity from the anger, violence and deprivation at times. This is precisely why it is so difficult to diagnose and help struggling families. Parents won't confess and address the root problem and children simply cannot.

The Al-Anon room lives with me always. It must have been the first time it was explained to me that Mom's behavior wasn't normal. 'Go get me another beer.' Was not a regular part of a child's lexicon. And learning to open the yellow-gold Coors can without making it foam and spill was a skill most don't learn until much older. There must have been other families there. Al-Anon is the kind of group that even flotsam and jetsam like us have access to at no cost. That means, group sessions. What else did I hear? Were other children and spouses of a similar experience? No doubt.

PART II

When I was 19, I got married. It was wonderful and exciting and there were so many terrific things about my young life. A morbid fear of alcohol and a raging temper were among the less-appealing aspects of my personality. I married a woman who celebrated drink and while not addicted, had zero qualms about indulging at appropriate opportunities. For me, there was never an appropriate opportunity. Constant fear lingered that I would fall prey to the disease that had consumed my grandfather and had done a bang up job of trying to swallow mom down whole. Those first few years, there were many arguments about when and if my wife should drink, all from the morally superior high-ground of a teetotaler.

I celebrate my wife's patience in teaching me to drink with a modicum of responsibility. Jesus himself, after all, was a proponent of the fruit of the vine. Making the heart of mortal man rejoice, as it is written. I would learn later that life-partner would be termed a problem drinker. That is one whom can easily live without the drug, but once begun, at times finds it difficult or impossible to stop. What started as a party could easily turn into trouble.

My first negative experience popped up on my honeymoon of all places. That seems to me now like a perfectly acceptable time to enjoy a little heart-lightener, but it was my first experience with too much is too much. We had made our way to Mexico and were having a wonderful day. It was winter and we had spent it shopping for souvenirs and enjoying the local culture. Fresh tortillas and Mexican blankets. It was just terrific!!!

At the end of the day, we wandered in somewhere that was serving margaritas. They were frozen and the bartender made them in a blender. This was LOOOONG before the ubiquitous snow cone-machine-dispenser you see on the bar of every Mexican restaurant in the universe today. I declined and opted for a soda while my wife enjoyed one, then two and a third. She is such a gem and SO much fun to be around, especially when she drinks (alcohol OR coffee) and I was enjoying the moment. It wasn't quite dancing-on-tables but it was pretty close. The trouble for me started after we left.

In those days, driving with an open container was a normal thing. And in Mexico, it felt downright encouraged. So when she walked out with her frozen margarita it was no big deal. As we drove away I think she started to want me to enjoy her liberated state. I was generally wound too tight and she knew that a drink would loosen me up.

“Here, have a sip of my margarita hon, you'll REALLY like it.” She encouraged.

I declined. She offered again. Again I said thanks but no thanks. After the 4th or 5th time, my temper started triggering but she was completely unaware.

“Come on, don't be such a fuddy-duddy.” She pined.

But, my trauma response was fully engaged now and I started getting mad and shouting about her lack of respect and loss of good sense and God, who knows what else kind of baloney I was spouting. Whatever it was, it triggered her and a full on argument ensued.

To my great shame even today after more than 3 decades together, I can remember the tears that came after I reached over, rolled down her window (we had manual crank windows back then) and slapped the drink out of her hand and out window.

In my determination not to abuse alcohol, I had become an abuser. Maybe it didn't result in a black eye that needed sunglasses. But I bruised something deeper in both of us that day. And I would go on to do this many times over the course of our marriage.

It took me many years to even understand that this was a problem and that normal people don't behave this way toward one another. For me, it was a standard operation procedure to yell and scream and argue when we disagreed. The idea of having feelings and expressing them with controlled words never occurred to me. I think this is why both of my sisters sought out abusive relationships in their lives.

God bless the patience of my wife though. Over the years, she would patiently try to explain to me that drinking was something that I could control. That even though I had a family who seemed determined to destroy themselves, I didn't have to be that way. I could choose to be different. And she was right. In time I would come to enjoy a beer now and then. A bottle of wine on a special occasion made life more enjoyable. And I grew confident that while I may have the genetic tendency toward addictive nature, I didn't have to fall prey to it. That didn't mean it would never cause me trouble.

Particular after we moved into a bigger city in the early 90's did I learn a hard lesson about alcohol. In our hometown, there seemed to be an almost omniscient fear of the stuff. Everyone was either a full-blown abuser and addict or a pearl-clutching abstainer. And here I was newly converted to from the clutching crowd to a user when we were invited to a baby shower. I know, that seems like an odd place to learn a hard lesson about the dangers of fermentation, but learn I did.

Our new friends had a bang-up party and beer and wine were served. We both partook and enjoyed ourselves. As the party wound down and the mom-to-be (who abstained) left, the handful that was left started the after party. As you can imagine, the idea of an after-party was a new one to me. I'd rarely been at the party-party and had no idea that after the general crowd left, the music got turned up and the hard liquor came out.

Feeling quite bulletproof after an evening of wine and beer, when offered a little whiskey, I said 'why not'. After a shot or two of that, I remember standing next to the pool table, playing a new friend and feeling so effervescent that I just started jumping in the air. I was bouncing like a Masai warrior up and down and down, my pool cue a makeshift spear. I was positively certain I could fly. I learned I was still quite bound by gravity when I landed wrong and nearly broke my ankle. My pool-buddy thought it was hilarious and offered me another shot, this time tequila.

Half an hour later, I found myself in the hosts theater room watching something (I forget what they were screening—Back to the Future comes to mind) with one of our hosts. A very attractive woman and wife of the man that beat me at pool and found my near-crippling injury so funny. She too found my state of inebriation quite entertaining. I don't remember what I was saying but I remember her laughing hysterically at my witticism and banter. All while she served me one, then another mixed drink of some kind. At some point she started complaining about not being seen by her husband and feeling frustrated about it. And it seemed like the smartest thing in the world to me to brush her hair back and tell her what a fool he was and that she was so beautiful that I couldn't imagine him not being completely smitten with her. When I put my hand on her shoulder in as a suggestive manner as I could muster, she looked at me and sighed. It was not the sigh of longing or desire, it was the sigh of sympathy. As in 'You poor thing, let's get you to bed.' Saving us both from any further bad judgment, my wife walked in to see if I was ready to leave.

I was.

My friend's wife and I never spoke of this moment ever again. I don't know if she ever remembers it. I was likely a child in her eyes, me in my 20's and her well into her 40's. But that wasn't the lesson I learned.

I learned that night the dangers of over drinking and mixing your drinks. And I learned it behind a bush in front of a Walgreens at 3am.

Even then I was what I term a 'stable drunk'. Meaning that even though I may be completely hammered, I show little signs of my state of drunkenness. Even to myself. I don't slur, I don't stumble. I'm a little brighter when I speak and a little quieter when I don't. But otherwise, you'd need close observation or a blood test to know I've had too much. So, it was easy to convince myself I could drive us home. We didn't live far away from our friends anyway, maybe 5 minutes, so I thought we'd be safe.

I was terrified. I had never driven after drinking before and certainly never had so much alcohol in an evening. I was blitzed, as the kids say. No wonder that after driving down the street from where we had been partying that I started feeling sick to my stomach. The pain was so bad that my wife decided to drive. We made it another half mile before the pain became too great and I insisted she stop immediately. And so I came to find myself wrenching my guts out behind a shrub in the parking lot of a Walgreens. Or maybe it was CVS. It was a pharmacy, that much I know for sure.

I learned a few things: don't drink too much, don't stay out too late, absolutely NEVER mix beer and wine and liquor. Never, for any reason. Pick a lane and stay in it. Do NOT hit on your friend's wife. And by and large, I'd live by these rules for many years. Mostly. At some point I'd forget and do all of these things again. But, more on that later.

Daily Drinker — 

Over the course of my life, I have faced many stressing situations. Not very choice I made paned out or delivered the desired results. And the pressure of life grinds away at us all. But I never used alcohol to hide from those stresses. Until 2016.

We had been living in a small town for three years. It was a new way of life for us and it took serious adjustments after having been in a major city for almost twenty. A slower pace meant I had more time to make art and subsequently was on the very end of a major art show that went exceedingly well. The problem with high moments like that is the follow up. It's hard to maintain the emotional high that comes with unusual success.

That was also the year that I lost someone very dear to me in death. It wasn't a shock, as it had been long expected, but losing a loved one is devastating regardless of the circumstance. Wrestling with the usual emotions of loss and drastic changes in relationships is overwhelming. Within weeks of the death, my younger sister was attacked by her husband and left for dead. It is difficult to describe the shift emotionally over the course of a few months. Drastic.

All of this instigated a tremendous amount of stress that I discovered could be mitigated with a little liquid courage. Not a crazy indulgence, but just a couple of fingers with ice at the end of each day. Every day. For months. And the longer it went on, the harder the drinks got, until I understood why those suits of the industrial age would pour two fingers at lunch and at dinner.

It was a longtime friend whom to whom I was explaining my newfound love of whiskey, who described what I had as a drinking problem.

'Drinking problem!!' I reflexively responded. 'I don't have a drinking problem, I just need to unwind at the end of the day.' I was well into my forties and knew very well what an alcoholic and a problem drinker were. It was a new concept when he said, 'You drink regularly, most days, in order manage stress or other problems, this is the definition of using alcohol as a crutch.'

And he was right. It had never occurred to me that I had come to rely on the drug so heavily. So, it was that I determined to just stop. I had to find other ways to manage the new stresses that middle-age was introducing. And it's a good thing because life had more curve-balls to come.

Relationships change, that is the one constant in the universe physically and emotionally. How do you prepare for the indifference that creeps into a marriage after decades together? Even though there is deep and unquestionable love, the sad lack of interest in the passions that once were the glue is debilitating, for one or both. But commitment keeps you together because you were promised that if you just keep going on the journey that you'll find shangri-la. A hope kept alive by an occasional glimpse over a peak or through a valley but never a destination reached.

I wonder sometimes if that is just a promise. One that keeps us going until we don't have any choice BUT to be together because no one could stand us any longer and so we're no longer together by choice but my circumstance. And then perhaps we cling to long for one another like Jack and Rose cringed to that plank all those decades ago. Freezing and miserable, but thankful to God and the universe and everything just to have a place to land.

It is easy in an environment like this for alcohol to become a lubricant for the relationship. Particularly when it comes to intimacy. My wife and I have had very different psychological profiles develop after having been sexually abused as children. For her, it created a rebellious but timid personality. She spent her 20's (before we met) in wild abandon and drinking partying her days away. When she drinks it makes her very amorous. And this played a big part of her young adulthood, though I've never gotten a complete picture, it has been thorough enough to understand she had more than her fair share of partners. Which is odd, as a married woman, she's always been extremely reserved sexually. This, I attribute to the abuse. I think drinking removes those barriers for better or worse. With a husband it is welcome to see her so free and engaged physically.

For me, the abuse created an introspective and fearful person, afraid to experiment or dare to pursue sex before marriage. I wanted sex, but was terrified of it and the effect it would have on a person if I pierced that veil. I knew how it made me feel as a child and assumed it would have similar emotional consequences even into my late teens.