The Epiphany

         Snow flakes continued to fall from the sky at a steady pace.  It had been like this for the last couple of hours.  I wasn’t in the least bit surprised; the sky had been overcast all afternoon and the temperature had continued to drop since lunch.  It was actually kind of peaceful to see the flakes floating down, slowly coating the brown grass in a blanket of white.  It wasn’t too often that I had peaceful moments, and the desire to enjoy the serenity that the snow provided made me decide to stay home tonight. 
         With that thought in mind I decided a drink was in order.  I walked into the kitchen, grabbed a glass, put some ice in it, and poured some 18 year old scotch.  Replacing the decanter’s top, I walked back into the living room and sat down in my recliner.  I now had a nice view of the snowfall. 
         Those snow flakes falling so slowly, so gracefully, was quite peaceful, easing the tension that I had been feeling all week.  And there was a lot of tension there; it had been a difficult couple of weeks at work.  After 10 days of very little sleep, cold nights, and frayed tempers, I had been ready to come out of the field.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked going to the field, but after 10 years in the Army they did take their toll on me.
         Feeling the peace slowly sink in, I took that first good sip of scotch.  Its smoothness was great; I always spent extra just for that quality.  I closed my eyes and began to savor the taste.  Soon I would start to feel the other effects:  I would forget the stresses of the day, I would be a little calmer, and my thoughts would be less active.
         That thought reminded me of a conversation I had had earlier that day with one of my peers at work.  My buddy John had asked me if I was going to be ok tonight.  This revolved around the fact that many of the people I worked with were aware that I drank quite frequently and had a very high tolerance from drinking so regualar.  Of course, I said, I will be fine.  This was something that had become more and more common.  There were now five different people I worked with that had expressed concern with my drinking. 
         Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated their concern.  It was comforting to know that those I served with were genuinely concerned with my well being.  But their concern was not necessary:  I did drink fairly regularly, and I did drink a lot when I did, but I had never let my drinking interfere with my life or my profession. 
         The more I thought of the conversation I had had earlier with my buddy John, and the one I had had a couple of weeks earlier with my other buddy Jose, I began to wonder if I had began to slip a little.  John had only been over to my house a couple of times and Jose had never been there:  yet both were aware of how much I drank.  Maybe it was starting to seep over into my professional life. 
         This began to give me some concern.  As I sat there watching the snow continue to build up in my back yard, I started to wonder just where I stood when it came to my drinking.  It was a regular staple in my life when I wasn’t at work.  Almost every night once I was home I would have a few glasses of scotch.  I had been doing it for a few years now and was so accustomed to it that I had forgotten what it was like to not have a drink when I walked through my front door.  I did, however, have no problem not drinking.  When I was in the field or had been deployed overseas I had not had any problem with being sober for the course of the exercise or deployment. 
         With this thought, I began to wonder whether or not I actually had a problem.  I could go without drinking if I had to and it didn’t affect my ability to effectively perform my duties.  But every time that I was away from work and had the opportunity, I would have a drink.  And that drink would lead to several more.  I had slowly developed the tolerance to drink a fifth of scotch in one evening.  And I was so used to this that I no longer had hangovers from doing it. 
         I had come home planning on an evening of peaceful relaxation; I had not planned on having an evening of soul-searching.  And yet I began to think back to when I had begun to drink.  My first memories of heavy drinking were in Korea.  My year there was little more than a party when I was off duty.  With our only options being playing D&D and drinking, I chose drinking because the other was way too boring and lame.  It wasn’t anything emotional or stress related.  It was just my way of dealing with boredom.  Surely that wasn’t why I drank like I did.  Boredom was not enough.
         Finishing my drink, I went back to the kitchen for a refill.  After I put ice in my drink I noticed that the sink was full.  I needed to wash my dishes, but I decided that would have to wait until tomorrow.  I wasn’t in the mood to do any cleaning.  I was too wrapped up in thought about the path that had lead me to my current place in life.
         Upon my return from Korea I was assigned back to a high tempo unit.  That meant a lot of field time in preparation for a possible combat deployment.  While I was there I met a girl that was fun to be around.  We began to date, and grow closer to each other.  I still drank a lot, but it wasn’t from boredom.  We would have some good times, but we would also have some bad times.  We were both pretty head-strong.  She wasn’t a bad girl, but we had some personality conflicts that lead to a lot of drama.  I continued to drink because it made it easier to deal with everything.  We eventually got married, and had some good memories together, but that would come to a painful end.  But a failed marriage surely was not enough to drive someone to drink the way that I did. 
         Before that happened I would be deployed for the second time.  Iraq wasn’t too bad other than the heat.  I enjoyed my time there for the most part because my job was to help people.  Over the course of my year there I was involved in the rebuilding of two schools, a hospital, and seeing to the welfare of a refugee camp.  Those are the kind of things that make someone proud of what they have done. 
         Unfortunately, my positive work was overshadowed by one dreadful day.  My team was passing out humanitarian assistance supplies to a refugee camp outside of a small town called Khaniquin when we felt what we thought was a small earthquake.  My team leader came over and said that the local police that were with us said that there had been an explosion in town.  We hurriedly loaded up in our humvees and followed the local police into town.
         Once we were in town we started to run into emergency personnel who were the first responders.  We arrived at the scene of the explosion, and to my dismay it was a local mosque:  a suicide bomber had decided to mass-murder almost 100 people who had showed up to that mosque to worship.  I hopped out of my vehicle and followed my team leader into the building.  I wasn’t a medic, but I hoped to provide some form of help.  Unfortunately we had arrived too late and what little I knew for first aid was of no use at all.  I walked around inside the mosque, inspecting the damage and carnage.  It had been the first time that I had truly felt powerless.  With all of my training I didn’t have the ability to save one person who had came to that building with only the desire to worship.  That evening when I got back to our base camp I had to throw away my boots because the soles were stained from the blood of the victims as I had walked through the remains of that mosque. 
         When I thought about that day I did feel some small amount of pain.  It would be a memory that I would always carry with me.  But it too was not enough to make me drink like I did.  I genuinely felt sympathy towards those who were affected by what had happened that day, but it was not something that bothered me on a day to day basis.
Being reunited with my wife upon redeployment was like a second honeymoon for a time.  But that was short lived.  We began to have more fights and I began to drink more as well.  Several times once it was getting obvious that our relationship was ending she would point out my drinking, trying to blame that for the reason we weren’t going to make it. 
         But that wasn’t it.  We weren’t having problems just because I drank.  We had problems because our personalities had conflict.  We had a lot of the same goals in life, but we just couldn’t get along anymore.  We had both changed since I had been gone, and this caused more friction than we were able to deal with.  We couldn’t go a single day without arguing over something trivial.  We were alike in a lot of ways:  we had the same goals in life and were hard working.  But we were different in personality.  I was patient and rebellious at times, and I could be very opinionated; she could be very sentimental at times but also had a need for immediate gratification and she was always concerned with what others thought of her. 
         I still drank like I had for the last few years, but it wasn’t from boredom.  This time it was so I could be more tolerant of her.  The more I was with her the more I began to get tired of who she was.  Drinking made it easier to deal with.  I even began to drink stronger liquor.  I had moved on to Wild Turkey 101!  Drinking also made it easier for her to leave after just two years of marriage.
         I had spent over three years putting up with someone that had aggravated me more and more as each day passed.  But once she was gone I continued to drink.  Now it was to numb the pain of coming home to the house of the lonely and gone.  I felt like my heart had been ripped away from me.  I felt like a stranger in my own house.   
         Finishing the last sip of my glass, I returned to the kitchen for a refill.  Again I put a few ice cubes in the glass before pouring some scotch over it.  This routine had become far more than a habit:  I could do it blindfolded. 
         Returning to my chair, I once again began to stare out at the snow as it continued to accumulate on my back yard.  My thoughts once again returned to their previous path.  I remembered the pain of my separation and subsequent divorce.  It had been incredibly painful.  I had lost 20 pounds from not being able to eat due to my anxiety.  But once I had began to heal I was able to get a better grip on my emotions and soon was back to my old self.  And yet I still was drinking at the same level.  Dealing with a painful divorce was tough, but it too wasn’t enough to answer for my drinking. 
         The last decade of my life had been spent in service to my country.  This thought reminded me of why I had left home:  I had grown up with an alcoholic and abusive father.  From an early age I had memories of him getting drunk and rampaging throughout our house, tearing up anything that was in his way.  At first, it wasn’t too bad:  He would have a few too many and would end up breaking a plate or decoration.  But that soon gave way to him destroying half the house on Christmas Eve and forcing my mom and I to stay at my Aunt and Uncle’s house just to feel safe. 
This had been in my early childhood.  I had not been a target but someone who was caught in the ripple effect of my dad’s drunken rage.  This time was short-lived:  once I had hit my teenage years I became the target of opportunity for my dad’s drunken anger.  He would blow up over the smallest things.  Once my glasses had been bent from playing football with the neighbors and I didn’t know who in particular had caused it.  The argument with my dad escalated until I had a pocket knife held in my face and him threatening to cut my throat.  This was over glasses!  I didn’t have to think twice when the recruiter offered me a path out of this house. 
I had never understood why my dad was the way he was towards me.  Even after I had left home, he had always been very impersonal towards me.  I would hear from others how he would brag about what I had accomplished in my career in the Army.  He never would say it to me but I heard it second-hand from others. 
Whenever we were around each other too long we would have some very bad disagreements that would turn very ugly.  In retrospect I do not know why.  We had similar opinions on a lot of things.  But we were polar opposites when it came to personality.  Even now I do not know why we can’t get along.  I can look at others I know who have done nothing in their life but get into trouble and need their parents to bail them out.  Their parents continue this cycle.  I, however, am self-sufficient and have not needed my family since I left home a decade ago.  And yet my dad and I cannot be around each other.  Most other parents would be proud to have a son like me.  But my dad refuses to accept me. 
This is yet another thing I could blame my drinking on.  But deep down I know this isn’t the root cause.  I was already numb to his violence by the time I started high school.  It would be several years before I would have my first drink.  Sure, having a violent and abusive father would be enough for most people to have a drinking problem, it was not enough for me.  I had long since quit caring. 
Here I sat, searching through my past, and had already finished another drink.  I quickly made my way to the kitchen and got a refill.  This time I returned to the living room but instead of taking a seat I decided to stand in front of the window, looking out into my backyard and thinking about what made me who I am today.
I was a Sergeant First Class, and I had made it in nine years.  This wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t a common occurrence.  I also was someone who was jaded by past experiences.  But I couldn’t figure out which one was the one that had made me who I was now.  I had experienced a lot of partying and I knew that wasn’t behind it.  I had some bad memories of combat that occasionally resurfaced.  But that too wasn’t why I was the way I had become.  I had also had bad relationships with my ex wife and my dad, but those too had not been the root cause. 
With all of those things to think about, it was not surprising that I was this way.  But I knew deep down that none of these things had made me like this.  There was something else that I had buried. 
As I stood there, watching the snow fall, I remembered the Christmas after I had come back from Korea.  That day had been just like today:  It started out sunny but by lunch the clouds had moved in and the snow began to fall. 
I had previously had a pretty bad fight with my dad, and had been staying at a friend’s place.  I came back late Christmas Eve to see my mom.  We had met up in the garage and talked for a while.  She had reminded me that both her and my dad loved me.  I had little trust in the belief that my dad had any feeling towards me at all.  But I knew that my mom would always love me.  We had always been close, and I had never had a reason to not share something with her.  Throughout my childhood and early adulthood she had remained my best friend. 
This memory caught me off-guard.  I hadn’t thought of my mom in earnest in a very long time.  I had written her off the same time I had my dad.  She had stayed with him after our fight, but that was because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.  My mom didn’t have anything to fall back on besides being a housewife.  So when push came to shove she had chosen her meal-ticket as it were.
This was the pain that I carried.  All throughout my childhood my mom had been my closest friend.  I could talk to her about anything.  Once I had reached adulthood I had went in the Army to get away from my dad.  We had still remained close, but our relationship had changed because of the distance.  I could still talk to her about what I was dealing with, but she would never be able to understand.  As I continued to grow as a person, I also grew apart from her.  And it was my side of the relationship that would never be the same again. 
My father was the first to come between us, and he was most definitely a negative affect on the relationship between us.  I eventually found someone to fill the void she left, but my ex-wife was not enough.  I constantly pushed her away until the day came that she would decide I was not someone that could be salvaged.  My dad would never allow my mom and I to have a relationship he did not control.  And my pride would never accept that.  I was better than him.
Watching the snow slowly fall to the ground was nothing new to me.  I had done it every winter for the last 25 years.  But it was the first time that I had been able to figure out why I was who I was.  I had always heard how people drink to numb their pain, to fill some void in their life.  But I had figured that I was the exception.  I didn’t have any real pain or a void.  But I was wrong.  An evening of self-analysis had put the lie to that thought.
I stood looking out a window, watching the snow fall, and truly felt empty.  Not from some bad memories or a bad marriage.  I felt empty because I had a mom that I had not spoken to for over four years.  And my pride would not allow me to change that.