Life With A Werewolf

The Beast

          Sometimes life is not laid out so neatly. We go through our individual adventures; we suffer through paying bills and doing laundry as we struggle to get to the day or two we’ve set aside for our respite. The things we know we deserve at the end of a long, hard work week. Sometimes though, those things we deserve just aren’t what we thought they would be.

          For me, that respite used to be alcohol. It was my poison of choice that had become my personal reward for not killing anyone on my job, even though at times I may have felt that they deserved it. But the problem with choosing such a thing is that it has its own teeth. The reward becomes a punishment of sorts, a means of hurting yourself for your own survival, as strange as that sounds. It no longer is the treat for doing a job well done, for existing and living in this plane of existence. It slowly usurps you from your own personal throne and becomes your king.

          It’s that way with any addiction, though. Whether it be food, porn, drugs, alcohol. They become your lord and leader. You become their willing servant, struggling at the foot of a beast that quite literally does not care about you. It cannot. Because it is little more than a ball of pain, doubt, anguish, anger, and good feelings brought on by chemical bliss: whether from the drugs and alcohol or from your own dopamine levels spiking to as you feed The Beast.

          The hardest thing for someone who has struggled to the other side of such a creature, who has usurped their own throne and tossed aside the addiction king, is to witness someone else you cared for, or have cared for in the past, go through the same thing.

          Sarah was a love. She wasn’t the love of my life by any stretch of the imagination, and that was half the reason we split. But I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t a love. I cared for that woman in a way I hadn’t for a lot of people. Same for her. She cared for me. A pain of a thousand mistakes and fights still sit between us like an ocean. Still waters on top, but death lies beneath the placid surface. We’re Facebook friends. Acquaintance buddies. The same type of individuals who can love and meet and greet each other over awkward chats and gentle touches of ‘good to hear from you’ and ‘glad you made it’ and ‘we should meet for coffee one day’, though neither of us ever actually want to.

          Thing is, though, if anyone deserves to struggle, it’s Sarah. I don’t mean that in a mean way. I mean that in an honest, sincere, wish she had never gone through any pain way. She spent months living with another being inside her head. Feeding off of her. Using her as food, bait, drug mule, whatever they wanted out of her. Live through that for a while and tell me if you don’t come away with a few problems afterwards.

          But on the other side of the coin, if anyone ever deserves to NOT struggle, it’s Sarah. She spent years married to me, then spent all that time being enslaved to a pair of creatures doing lord knows what to her. Things I’m honestly too afraid to ask about. When you’re in that sort of situation, you’re going to come back with a few scars.

          But those scars shouldn’t conquer you after you have survived. Because, after all, you were strong enough to survive. The Beast may have supplanted you on your throne in life. But you were strong enough to take that throne back. Whatever mistakes and pains you’ve had in your life because of what was controlling you, you still have that.

          How do you get that through to someone who has started down a spiral, one that you, yourself have fallen down a time or two? That’s the dilemma that’s faced me in our last conversation. I won’t detail everything, but I know her father is worried about her. She does seem a bit more haggard than she used to. Speech is slurred, glazed over, that sort of thing too. All the classic signs I know and have come to hate.

          It would be better if it was Kheid. If Mitch the vampire had made his way down there again. If The Nobility was behind it. If, if, if. A creature with nasty power and a devious mind. A monster of a person with venom in their bite and death in their breath. A creature I could easily defeat for her with a John Wayne smirk and a Robert Downy Jr one liner.

          But it’s one thing to have an enemy you can physically fight. A beast with fangs and claws, with muscle, will and determination. That’s easy enough for anyone. It’s another thing when you’re fighting yourself.

          You find the punches you’ve been throwing is at bare concrete. The pain you feel is from your own mind: from mistakes that creep up inside and tells you how horrible of a person you are because of decisions you made way back when. Because you didn’t know the things you believe you should have known or did the things you should have done. The poison as I’ve grown to call it.

          Make no mistakes, it is a poison. It twists your mind into thinking darker things about yourself. It twists your personality into a more inward, darker, meaner creature. One unrecognizable by friends and family. One unrecognizable by the world. A self-hating thing that only seeks its own destruction. A mission that The Beast may succeed in if you’re not careful.

          I’ve made my life these past several years into being the person that sticks their noses in other people’s business. I solve many situations or at least attempt to solve situations of others who cross my path. I do so with, well, bluntness. Stupidity. A loud mouth. Lots of luck. And on occasion, bullets.

          But this is one situation that I simply cannot fix on my own. I do know the day is coming though. I’ve told Sarah this. She was mad at me. Mainly for pointing out her drinking. We were on a zoom call together, catching up a bit. Her idea. One born by two new friends she made: Jack Daniels and his buddy, Lord Calvert. “Who the hell are you to judge me,” she slurred.

          It’s best to not engage drunks. I’ve never done what’s best. Her eyes were floating, they were so glazed over. Red. Speech was dragging one word into another. Who the hell was I, indeed? “I’m an alcoholic, that’s who,” I snapped at her. “Remember? I was sober I think one day of our entire marriage. And baby, it wasn’t our wedding night.”

          “You’re nobody, that’s who,” she spat.

          “No, I’m the drunk that was your husband. I’m the alcoholic that knows why you drink, the one who is smart enough to know that the reason why you’re drinking, is not. Your. Fault.”

          She stared down for a moment, instead of at the camera. At the screen. At me. “I know,” I continued, “one day it will happen. You’re going to be cleaned up. Smiling. You’ll hold up your six month sober medallion to me.”

          She chuffed. “That’ll be the day.”

          “It will,” I said. “It will be the day, I say congratulations. The day I will tell you two words you never heard me say at all during our entire marriage. Until then.”

          And then I signed off. It hasn’t made an effect. Not yet. There is two stages I’ve found that must occur before someone is ready to free themselves of The Beast. That first stage is admitting that there is in fact, a Beast. The second stage? Actually seeking help. Without those two stages, no amount of interventions, no amount of arm twisting or handholding makes much of a difference. The first two steps in dethroning The Beast is admitting there is one, and seeking help in getting them abdicated.

          I have faith in Sarah, though. It will happen. May not be next week. Next month. Or even this year. But soon, she’ll see it. She’ll tear down The Beast out of his throne, and kick it out of her kingdom. She’ll send that creature away in the paupers rags it came in. When that day finally comes, I’ll tell her those two words that I owe her. I’ll even give her four more: I’m proud of you. Cause on that day, I truly, truly will be.

          I know the price of that revolution. The pain and struggle of it. I know the anguish it can carry with it. But I also know, that beneath all of the grit, all of the pain and anguish, is a prize that truly makes the fight worth it. The prize is yourself, your true self. Sarah will get there, I know. I have faith in her.