When living with an alcoholic |
Safety Net There is no such thing as a perfect life. No perfect people. Anywhere. Life on its own is difficult. Rough patches, smooth sailing, narrow paths with no railing. Living with a recovering alcoholic is a road trip through depression valleys and ego-centric alps, through rivers of tears and crossing manic mountains. Driving blind through a shooting range: never knowing what might trip numerous triggers. Stomach-churning curves when heart-wrenching tears flood and short of holding on, rocking, and offering cool cloths: there is nothing one can do. Meanwhile praying for sunshine and calming thoughts. Anything that will work to avoid that fatal step to return to alcohol alleys, wine winding pitfalls or worse. Time stops for there is no time when you need to be there and nothing else matters than that climb over hideous humps of horror. Alcoholics let their problems and issues sink into a morass of mind numbed stupors. A recovering alcoholic finds those issues rising, surfacing without that alcoholic anchor pulling them to numbing depths-- allowing them (in their minds) to hang on. Years ago, but years spent lost in a genii's bottle becomes yesterday. Loss of a beloved grandmother isn't smoothed, soothed over lost time but still fresh, immediate, now and overwhelming without supposed safety net. Only net is me and my hoping I find, choose, and use correct words at opportune times. Sleep becomes caught in nightmares snagged in shallow sleep for I must be vigilant. Always on, providing a sense of balance lest she fall. She's afraid of falling even more so now: she is so close to yearly mark of being sober. A precipice she both fears to surmount and fears to slide down in a landslide of failed expectations from herself and those around her. Right now, she doesn't see how far she's traveled, only the incredible distance yet to go. Right now, she has no clue how strong she's become, only remembers misleading strength in a wine bottle, power it had to let her lie in limbo. It is her battle. I can only help her to avoid petty skirmishes, keep her determination (however weakened) to be well-supplied and be there to mop inevitable blood wars leave behind. |