Sorrow and Sunflowers

  “What is this ice that gathers ‘round my heart? To stop the flood of warmth before is even starts. It would make me blind to what I thought would always be. The only constant in the world for me.” ~Lyrics by Toad the Wet Sprocket Fourth of July, 2020. Holidays are normally rough in the household where an alcoholic resides. Like most other days, the other residents have no idea what to expect. It all hinges on the whim of a brain disrupted by alcohol. We weren’t having fun that day. It was in the middle of a pandemic. We couldn’t go anywhere. The alcoholic was busy getting drunk and then getting increasingly mean. At some point later in the day he asked me to bring him to get cigarettes. This happens a lot. Once he’s too drunk to drive. I become the errand girl. “Go get me cigarettes!” “I want candy!” “Everyone wants ice cream, just go get it!” It doesn’t matter if I want to go or not. It doesn’t matter if my kids don’t feel like getting dragged back into the car. If I refuse to g...

 “I feel like I’m drowning… You’re holding me down… And killing me slow… I feel like I’m drowning” ~Lyrics by Two Feet I am the wife of an alcoholic. There. I said it out loud…or wrote it out loud, rather. It’s not something I say often, and I certainly don’t try to claim it as an identity. But there it is.  “What’s it like?” You ask? Most people don’t quite get the distinction between being married to an alcoholic vs being married to someone who just likes to drink.  But the difference is vast. Being married to a bona fide alcoholic (meaning someone who can no longer function without their booze) is like being in a permanent state of drowning. You are always underwater. Always fighting against the current that is holding you down. Always fighting to get that one breath.  And when you do get that one breath? You have forgotten how to relax into it. You look around, in a panic, for that hand that will almost certainly come to shove you back down under water.  The...