“And then he smashed it over my head”

Tags

alcoholism, children of alcoholics, domestic violence, failing marriage, wife of alcoholic

source: http://static.onemansblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cracked-screen-wallpaper.jpg

I was talking to someone I know. I can’t tell you who exactly, so I’ll just say she’s a friend. She was telling us (my mum and me) about her new job, how she’d been given a verbal warning for the equivalent of brushing her hair briefly at her desk.

She was in shock when she got back home. Her husband, she said, told her it was probably time to just pack it in. Her children told her to apologise to the directors, since there was nothing else she could say to justify her actions (not that her actions were particularly inappropriate). She took the latter option. The directors were sympathetic. She was a temp. They made her permanent.

But somewhere in between, she said, the “incident” happened:

“I came home one evening after work and X [her husband] had a go at me and the man cleaning our windows. I’d just gone in to get some money for the window cleaner – £12. But X wasn’t happy about that. He bollocked me and he bollocked the window cleaner. I was so embarrassed.”

When she and X were alone, she told him she wasn’t happy about the way he had spoken to her in front of the window cleaner. She said it was humiliating. X didn’t care. “He kept pushing me,” she said. [Readers should note that X is over 6 foot tall; my friend is not quite 5 foot]. She told him to stop, to leave her alone so she could get on with the housework. Eventually he did.

Later, while she was cooking, while her children were in the kitchen, X came up from behind her and smashed a Britvic jug over her head. “I didn’t know what happened. I thought, ‘What’s this?’ And then the blood started coming.”

Her sons pulled him off her. She ended up in A&E. X didn’t apologise. He showed no remorse. He blamed her – claimed she’d driven him to it. “He did apologise eventually,”  she said. “But it took him a long, long time.” Her children told her he had been at the pub that evening – before it all happened.

She didn’t press charges. Shortly afterward, they went away on holiday together. She is still angry at him for what happened. She says it will probably happen again. “If it does, I’ll go to the police.”

I prefaced the “incident” with the work incident, because I can’t help but see a link between them. Why is it that X assaulted her shortly before she was made permanent at her job. Why, when she was issued a verbal warning, did he tell her to leave the job rather than fight for it? Did her getting a job mean he was less able to control her? And yet, he was always worrying about the finances – about the fact that they were spending more than they were earning. My friend counters that she has worked for the past decade. But then, things between them have been up and down for at least that long. 

I know X. I know he drinks and that he and my friend have a volatile relationship. I know they frequently shout at one another. But this shocked me.

I remember when Ben was drinking. He was never violent (aside from some very uncharacteristic shouting now and again). But his behaviour was so erratic, the anxiety so great, that living with him became impossible. Each time he got clean, I vowed I’d leave him if he ever relapsed. But when the inevitable relapse came, I was still there.

So, even as I offered my tuppence (in the form of an unhelpful: You should have let them throw him in jail!), I knew it was her decision to make. Change, in this case, much as it was in mine, would only be triggered at the point of hopelessness.

Happy birthday, Rosie

Tags

alcoholism, Birthday, child of alcoholic, Family, Muswell Hill, parenting, wife of alcoholic

Yes, I made this. Beneath all that confection lurks a jam and cream-filled Victoria sponge.

Rosie turned five today – her first birthday with a sober dad. We celebrated at a pottery painting cafe in Muswell Hill with nine of her friends. My mum was there, too, all the way from Canada.

Me being me, I was tense throughout, though I managed to chat to a few parents here and there, and survey the children, hoping none of them would break free from the work table and send a shelf-load of unpainted pottery crashing to the floor (they didn’t).

Ben sat with the kids, encouraging them to keep painting. I hovered. Rosie was in her element, joyful at her own party – something she had been looking forward to for months, while I’d been watching it approach with dread.

Dread because I was terrified that no one would come. My mind kept returning to a long-ago birthday, when I was seven or eight and watching the hours go by, waiting for someone to turn up to my party. No one did. I don’t remember what my mum said to me. I remember nothing but that horrible sucking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The one that comes with the realisation that no one likes you.

Not so, Rosie. Everyone, bar one child, made it to her birthday. She was spared my childhood anguish and I was spared that impossible conversation with my daughter, in which no explanation, other than the truth of one’s own unpopularity, is possible. Rosie, of course, had no such qualms. Thoughts like these never enter the heads of four-soon-to-be-five-year-olds.

Lost in sleep

Now, as I gaze at her face lost in sleep, I marvel at the journey she’s taken, and at her resilience in the face of a near-lifetime of trauma. But children are children, aren’t they? Her dad is an alcoholic. Her mum is a lunatic most of the time. This is her reality. She takes the improvements as they come, just as she takes the knocks. Her fortitude comes from the certainty that she is loved.

Limbs splayed, mouth ajar, breathing in dreams,
she sleeps,
her expression as still as sculpture,
her chest rising and falling like gently ambling waves.
Little wanderer, lost in a somnolent wood
stumbles softly in the loam,
finds wings unfolding slowly,
sparkling under moonlight
and flies. 

Inheritance of loss

Tags

alcoholism, detox, child of alcoholic, parenting, Cowardice, Obsessive–compulsive disorder

These are the things our parents give us (and that we, in turn, bequeath to our children). There are the deliberate gestures – the passing on of certain attitudes and behaviours:

• no shoes in the house
• a love of good cheese and chocolate
• an appreciation of literature and classical music
• frugality that morphs into a penchant for recycling
• disdain for flashiness and the pursuit of financial gain at all costs
• the pursuit of education at all costs
• a deep sense of justice and fairness
• a secret love of meringues

And then there are the accidental loans  - the unconscious drip-drip of patterns and behaviours that leak out despite (or in the absence of) the best intentions:

• a tendency to criticise and judge others harshly
• an inability to deal with rejection
• lies and subterfuge
• moodiness and depression
• prejudice
• obsessive compulsive disorder
• cowardice
• indecisiveness
• alcoholism

Last week, Ben told me his dad went into detox. My response was less than charitable.  I was still angry at him for failing his son – and me – so spectacularly when Ben needed him most. I remembered the addled and circular conversations we’d had when Ben was at his worst and I had been desperate for someone from Ben’s family to come and take over, instead of leaving me to handle it on my own (which they happily did in the end). I realised that Ben’s dad had been drunk on the few occasions we spoke over the phone – much as I’d suspected.

And then I blamed him for Ben’s alcoholism, too. Here was clear evidence that almost every disappointing element of Ben’s character – the cowardice, the weakness, the lying, the drinking – all of it came from his selfish, cowardly, alcoholic father.

In one gesture, I’d managed to shift the blame from Ben to his father, paradoxically opening the door to compassion. As long as Ben’s father was the bastard, Ben was just the victim. I chose not to look too deeply into the fact that Ben’s paternal grandfather was also a severe alcoholic (like his grandfather on his mother’s side).

When I look at Rosie and think about her prospects, I’m filled with dread. It is because of the sheer hopelessness of her paternal genes (when it comes to alcohol and addiction) that I have sworn off alcohol for good. I am keenly aware of what image I want to pass on to her vis-a-vis drinking. It’s her inheritance on her dad’s side that worries me. Is she already lost?

Stupid lonely me

Tags

alcoholism, Chiang Mai, failing marriage, Quebec, recovering alcoholic, Sri Lanka, wife of alcoholic

source: bugbog.com

These past few weeks have been unremarkable (aside from my brief reincarnation as the Incredible Hulk a few days back, that is). Ben comes and goes, much like the postman, only he camps out on the futon for a few days in between the coming and the going. He also takes Rosie to gymnastics on Sundays and collects her from school on Mondays.

He does more than that – much more. He cooks and does some essential cleaning – stuff I would never have time to get to, like mowing the lawn or cleaning the oven (yes, he really did clean the oven).

These are all helpful things. No doubt, his way of contributing given he hasn’t the means to contribute financially. Still, I can’t help wondering whether they are also his way of compensating for being distant and unapproachable.

Travelling companions

As the sun finally shows its face and the heat creeps into our bones, I find my thoughts travelling somewhere else, back to those moments of escape we thrived on so many years ago: a beach in Mombassa, a balcony in Kerala, a hilltop in Chiang Mai, twilight in Perth’s King’s Park, a Parisian ferris wheel, a ruin in Sri Lanka, a beluga whale in eastern Quebec, a foggy moor in the Lake District, the banks of the Thames. On and on and on and on – so many paths beaten in curiosity, so many chances to witness another part of this world and our place in it.

And when I’m back there, treading that route in bite-sized vignettes, I think how easy it would be to just slide these two halves together: the past and the present, and simply move forward. Why waste the last precious moments we have in this world contorted with bitterness? Why not close our eyes to the past and agree that we need to make this the best it can be, because this is all we have?

Trick of the light

Invariably, these thoughts dance up when I’m on my way home. They catch me when I’m alone, staring into an impossibly blue sky, or while I’m walking through the park with Rosie, both of us made stupid by the sun glancing off the fields.

And then Ben comes round and says the usual 10 words to me. He lies on the couch, nesting under a green blanket, and murmurs from time to time. It isn’t conversation. He speaks as if no one wants to listen. And because I can’t hear him, and because it is too much of an effort to keep asking him to speak a little louder because I’m deaf in one ear, I don’t want to listen. And if, by chance, we look at each other, his expression is flat and uninterested.

These thoughts, these memories, are from another era. They are aliens from another world, suddenly made visible by a trick of the light. Because when I’m sitting next to Ben on the couch, with the TV tuned to some dreadful piece of drivel (white noise that he uses to lull himself to sleep), the feasability of sliding those two halves together vanishes, replaced by an ever-widening crater.

Some things are irreparable.

Epic rage

Tags

allergies, anger management, antihistamines, ceterizine hydrochloride, Rage, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

source: http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/RGB+rage.+brandnew+classic+rage+comp+online+tinyurl.com+cl-rage-part9_e3794e_3390001.jpg

Yesterday I almost killed my own child.

I woke up foggy headed after a lovely evening out with Rosie. We went to a friend’s wedding at a stately home in Hampstead. It was pitched perfectly. An intimate gathering, a short ceremony, some live piano accompaniment and a special reading, which turned out to be the Owl and the Pussycat – the perfect combination of whimsy and romance.

source: http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/pussy1.gif

Rosie spent the evening playing with my friend’s daughter – an old friend who no longer lives in London. I spent it chatting to people I’d never met before, all of whom were welcoming and engaging.

I was in a fine mood, and when dessert came along, I took an antihistamine to pre-empt the unpleasant effects of eating chocolate cake and creme-fraiche (I’m allergic to wheat and dairy), and enjoyed the rest of the night.

Fog and mirrors

The next morning, I woke up heavy headed and irritable. It took me a minute to remember I hadn’t drunk anything the night before (since I don’t drink any more), and another minute to remember I’d fallen asleep at the very decent hour of 10pm and couldn’t possibly be tired.

I got up, did my usual crazy work-out while Rosie had her breakfast, all with the intention of taking her to her swimming lessons. As the day progressed, my mood became increasingly darker. I found myself snapping at Rosie. Snapping and apologising, snapping and apologising, careering from one emotion to the next like a ball bearing in a plastic pinball machine.

After swimming, I did some music with Rosie, but as always, she was reluctant and silly. Each time she dallied or refused to play when I asked her to, the blood rushed to my head. I felt like Bruce Banner - no joke – about to pop my shirt. Any minute I was going to turn green.

source: http://marvel.com/universe/Hulk_(Bruce_Banner)

At one point, I ran to the kitchen, and in a fit of rage, dashed a bowl in the sink, strawberries and all, sending chips of pottery flying. I did it because I didn’t want to hurt Rosie. I felt out of control, dangerous, murderous – and exhausted.

I don’t want to remember the things I said to her. They were awful, hateful things. It was like a storm had swept into our flat and churned me up until I was spitting venom. Then every so often, the winds would drop and I would kneel in front of her, saying: ‘I’m sorry, Rosie. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Something’s wrong with mummy. Forgive me. Stay away from me.’ And then a gale would sweep in and I would lose sight of her again.

Side-effects

I couldn’t understand it. I was terrified and confused. And then I wondered about the antihistamine I’d taken the night before. I looked up ceterizine hydrochloride – a common ingredient in many antihistamines, like Zirtek, and one I take frequently for my food allergies. Apparently, it has certain side-effects, one of which is fuzzy-headedness, exhaustion and rage.

I thought back to previous occasions when I’d taken ceterizine hydrochloride, and could recall a number of occasions where I’d felt similarly groggy and irritable – although nowhere near as intensely as this time.

By the time Ben arrived for his usual weekend visit, the worst effects of the drug had dissipated.

This morning, I woke up feeling much as I had the Friday before, happily reading to Rosie, cuddling her and being firm with her without losing my temper. It was a classic Jekyll and Hyde moment –  one I have no wish to repeat. I’d rather suffer the allergy than turn into that monster again.

 

 

 

Return to Plato’s cave

Tags

Addiction, alcoholism, allegory of the cave, Plato, Socrates, wife of alcoholic

Wayang kulit (Indonesian shadow puppetry) Source: http://www.yale.edu/seas/WesWayang.jpg

It’s possible I never left it. This place that Plato has Socrates describe so cogently in his Republic.

This place with prisoners shackled to a cave wall from childhood, with no choice but to look straight ahead. To them, the shadows thrown by objects on the wall opposite are the only reality they know. Their world is one of blurred forms that leap, tower and shrink without warning.

And even if one prisoner was somehow freed and finally able to turn around, says Socrates: the flash of the fire would make it impossible for him to see the objects of which he had earlier seen the shadows.

Neighbourhood drunk

Emerging from the pedestrian subway the other day, I glimpsed our resident drunk swaying in the doorway of a money lending shop. He was wearing his trademark shades and salt-and-pepper beard. His guitar was propped up against one of the shop windows.

His jeans were surprisingly clean. I don’t know why I’m always surprised by this – his clothes are usually clean whenever I see him, suggesting a warm home and someone looking out for him. I suspect my surprise is not so much that his clothes are clean, but that there is still someone back home fretting over him while he’s out, and patiently caring for him when he returns.

This man, who has occasionally exchanged glances with me and once (to my horror) attempted to touch fists with Rosie, is someone I have grown to hate. I know nothing about him. But he only has to lurch into view for revulsion to come tumbling coldly from my throat.

I never say anything to him. There is just the usual shrinking away, the tensing jaw, the hateful thoughts that puff forth like fungal spores (He’s useless. He’s pathetic. He does nothing all day. I feel sorry for his wife or girlfriend or whoever. Why hasn’t he been run over yet?).

Savage projections

I’m not proud of feeling this way. This is what I told my counsellor last week – that I wish I could find some compassion for this man, instead of fury. I couldn’t understand why I felt so strongly about him, in particular. I’m repulsed by most drunks, but this man – let’s call him Beard – sends me into paroxysms.

She said something she’s often said – that I may never relinquish these vestiges of rage. That I may never get over the antipathy I feel for alcohol addiction. Then she suggested I might be projecting my anxieties and disappointments – all the unexpressed frustrations I would otherwise have directed at Ben when he was still drinking – at Beard.

As obvious as it may seem, it had never occurred to me before. She was right.

It is my anger – rooted as deeply and viscerally as the sting inside a bee – that chains
me to the wall, preventing me from seeing Beard for who he is. Instead, I see his shadow – the alcoholism – which now dwarfs him and defines him.

I understand. But even as I am able at this moment to turn my head towards the light, I still don’t see. Not yet, anyway.

And now a word from our sponsors

Ok, not sponsors. I’ve been asked to help a graduate student out with research that, in her own words: focuses on the spouse’s role in a person’s decision to seek help for alcohol use issues. The study is designed for married couples for whom alcohol use is an area of disagreement in their marriage, and is intended for people at all levels of alcohol intake. The study is fully approved by my university [Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA].

I’m told there are some Amazon.com giftcards for a few lucky participants. 

——————————-

Are you and your spouse legally married and at least 18 years of age?

Do you or your partner currently consume alcoholic beverages at least once a month?

Is alcohol use an area of disagreement in your marriage?

If you answered yes to the above questions, you and your spouse are eligible to participate in a research survey regarding the relationship between your marriage and your alcohol-related help seeking behaviors. When you both complete the survey, you will each be entered into a raffle for one of four $50 Amazon.com gift cards!

The survey will take each participant approximately 20 minutes, and survey responses will be anonymous.

https://surveys.clarku.edu/AlcoholUseSurveyStart.aspx

This study has been approved by the Clark Committee for the Rights of Human Participants in Research and Training Programs (IRB). Any questions about human rights issues should be directed to the IRB Chair, Dr. James P. Elliott,508-793-7152, jelliott@clarku.edu. The study is being conducted by C.J. Fleming, M.A. and James Cordova, Ph.D. in the Psychology Department at Clark University. Please feel free to contact the researcher (alcoholusesurveyemail@gmail.com ) or the research supervisor ( jcordova@clarku.edu ) with any questions or concerns.

———————————————— 

Day 365

Tags

alcohol detox, alcoholism, recovery, rehab, wife of alcoholic, Withdrawal

It’s been one year since I started this blog. Despair compelled me to write that first post. Ben was on the couch – as he is right now – except today the detritus at its foot is a mug of hot chocolate. And a bowl of chocolate digestives. The digestives are the one thing that hasn’t changed.

Five things I remember about last year:

1. My futon‘s progressive ruin. Ben frequently wet the couch, occasionally soaking it right through so that I’d find him some mornings mopping up the mess with an old rag.
2. The car. Ben crashed it on his way to a gig. He was arrested and charged with a DUI. He got away with a community service order served at an Oxfam shop, where he’d sneak a drink throughout the day and pretend I was mad for smelling it on him later.
3. Olfactory overload. Like a haunting, the smell of beer pursued me everywhere, transforming me into a human bloodhound, sniffing out beer stashes. Or a clairvoyant – struck by that telltale odour in unexpected places, signalling another relapse (Ben’s) miles away.
4. Detox-relapse-withdrawal-despair. There’s that word again. Despair. Caught in its all-encompassing grip, we careened from week to week, he in a blur of beer and bile, me on tides of rage and desperation, Rosie trapped in an eddy of confusion. There were detoxes, pockets of hope and the inevitable trip and fall.
5. Recovery. A fantasy then, tenuous even now, but somehow more and more real. Ben and I are two satellites orbiting Rosie. Our family feels cobbled together but strong. Ben finds beauty in the everyday. I find it in an incremental calm. And Rosie draws it from fairy-mermaid world – this place she roams as freely as the wind.

And so it continues. Where once we plundered despair, today we exalt in glimpses of sunlight and colour.

High-strung highway

Tags

Addiction, alcoholism, recovery, rehab, Relapse, wife of alcoholic

This is the view from my kitchen window. Over the past 24 months I’ve spent hours caked in anxiety, peering out this window, counting the buses going by, hoping for Ben to materialise, willing him to be on his feet and not lurching, limping or covered in blood. These days, I do this less and less. Ben’s recovery is something I have grown to believe in. Until now.

In my last post, I mentioned Ben’s rehab mentor. More specifically, his relapse. X (let’s call him X since I can’t think of anything better) has been on a bender since Good Friday. Ben has been worried – so worried, in fact, that he racked up unknown telephone charges on my phone line speaking to him all night long. Anyway, X is still necking it and where is Ben tonight but right there with him.

‘I’m alright,’ he tells me earlier tonight. ‘I’m not in danger.’ Sure, maybe not tonight, but surely these things have a way of working on the subconscious?

It’s touching to see Ben reaching out and supporting his friend, but this is his first exposure to alcohol in months. And he is prone to making stupid decisions, as we all know. Is this one of them? Or is this him taking responsibility? I don’t know. I want it to be the latter, but find I can only worry and feel pissed off with him for risking his recovery like this.

The what-if’s have resumed that familiar riff at the back of my mind. And in an instant I’m back here again, scanning the highway outside my window, hoping the anxiety will just drive on by.

Sacrifice/regeneration

Tags

alcoholism, failing marriage, Relapse, wife of alcoholic

1. Ben and I create a treasure hunt for Rosie. She finds it more exciting than the organic chocolate egg at the end. Verdict: ‘I don’t really like it.’
2. Ben’s friend and rehab mentor relapses on Friday. Ben is anxious. So am I. I can’t help thinking this spells doom for Ben. Then Ben says he wants to make the 2.5 hour journey to help his friend but the guy doesn’t think it’s safe. Impressive logic for someone blitzed on vodka and valium.
3. Ben spends every spare hour on the phone talking to this guy, trying to make sure he is ok.
4. I grow bitter, thinking of all the times I was depressed and Ben found somewhere else to be. Then I tell him what I’m thinking. We revert to silent unease and accusatory sighs.
5. Meanwhile, BT hijacks my phone number and I lose both my number and my internet connection. I am not even a BT customer.
6. My providers claim there was nothing they could have done about my unauthorised disconnection, but waste no time in selling me a new package. They can’t activate my service for another 3 weeks.
7. Ben and I resume a fragile alliance come morning.
8. I compose this post on my 4x5cm phone.

Sea monkey SOS

Tags

animal welfare, Brine shrimp, Fish and Aquaria, novelty pets, Pets, Recreation, Sea Monkeys

Folks, this post is slightly off-piste, but it’s a situation that has been preying on my mind of late. 

Around Christmas time, Rosie received a gift from her Australian cousins: a little aquarium, three sachets of powder, a set of wordless instructions, and some very misleading images of what you should expect at the end of your endeavours.

So misleading, in fact, that I assumed it was all a joke. I remember the ads for sea monkeys at the back of my Mad magazines when I was a kid. Even then, we assumed it was a scam.

But no. Within a few days, there were dozens of microscopic creatures darting about in the water. Quite a few of them perished in the intervening weeks. Three months later and there are three tiny white prawns (they’re brine shrimp) swimming about in the mucky water, ploughing through the sediment at the bottom of the mini tank, and spending days – yes days – mating at the top. Ugh.

I want to feel something that isn’t revulsion when I look at them. I mean, they’re harmless, really. Poor tiny things. They didn’t ask to be sold as novelty pets that, in most cases, probably end their lives down a toilet.

Rosie keeps looking at them and telling me I’m starving them to death. This is not true. It’s just that I forget to feed them from time to time. For a while, they were a healthy pink. Now they’re a ghostly white. Two of them have what might be egg cases attached to their nether regions. I think there is one male in there. Just typing about them is making my skin crawl.

source: http://www.mastermarf.com

Why the aversion? I don’t know. There’s something about the way they move, their translucent bodies and delicate bones. I want to give them away to a pet shop or aquarium enthusiast, but Ben has told me I’m being ridiculous. I know I’m not caring for them properly, but I can’t find any proper instructions on what to do if your sea monkeys actually live… for several months.

I’ve read they can survive for up to two years. This makes the hairs on my arms stand up. The problem is this: I am now responsible for these little lives. I can’t wilfully neglect them. I can’t flush them down the toilet, because they’re alive, they’re as alive as anyone else and deserve to live. But what kind of life is this?

Believe it or not, I was a little reluctant to write this post, fearing the good people at PETA might fire-bomb my home, or unleash a troll on my site. But if they really cared, they’d tell me what to do. What do I do? Do I put the little critters out of their misery now? Is there a home for sea monkeys that isn’t my toilet? Help!