PLAYING THE ALCOHOLIC BLAME GAME, OR, ANOTHER SLIVER OF LIFE IN THE TRENCHES

Would you like to play a game?

Back in the 80’s, or back in the day, there was a little cultish breakout movie called War Games. It brought Reaganism and the Cold War to the blizzard level. Briefly, a geeky  teenager hacks into the Pentagon and, thinking he’s downloaded a harmless computer game, nearly starts WWIII. Had this actually happened, of course, none of us would be sitting here. Because there would have been no winners, just moral hubris.

So it is with the game I’ve played. There are no winners in this game, not me, not my spouse. The only winner is the bottle. Regardless of how you spin it or who it points to when it stops, the bottle always wins. Now, let’s put it on a roulette wheel and divide it into possibilities, spin it and see where the clicker stops. Ready? SPIN! 

Clickclickclickclick.

Clickclick.

Click.

Stop.

It’s your fault, you enabled, you allowed this to happen.

Really??? I tackled a 20+ year police veteran, with a sidearm and pepper spray, brought him to the floor, knee-chested him, forced his airway open, intubated him and poured  liquor down his throat. I also didn’t stand in front of his car, or take his keys, or his wallet, thus preventing him from going to the liquor store. I also didn’t bar the front door when he walked in with a couple of cases of beer and a few bottles of liquor. I also did not, like Carrie Nation, take an axe to my ten thousand dollar kitchen cabinets in an attempt to smash bottles and make a point. I know this because alcoholism is a disease which any or all of the above cannot cure.

I don’t buy it.

Next spin.

You didn’t spend enough time with him, so he sought comfort elsewhere.

I don’t have time to think about this one. We each have a full time job. For years, his job required him to work ungodly shifts consisting of long hours, usually in the form of monotonous, mindless duty (at least to my Civilian understanding, but I’m usually wrong about these things), punctuated by intervals of madness and once in a while, a sprinkling of sheer terror. The months following 9/11 were a good example. I also worked. Outside the home, inside the home, the huge yard where I cleared, planted and maintain a rose garden, a vegetable garden, and a hosta garden and mowed a large lawn once a week. Shopping, cooking, cleaning, maintenance, 2 special needs animals and trying to niche out some time for my writing career. Workshops, book signings, conventions, meetings, retreats. If someone where to make sleep a commodity on the stock market, I’d sink my last discontinued penny into it. Perhaps it was sleep deprivation that blinded me. Too busy to notice the extra bottles under the cupboard, to tired to see the effects. Too empathetic to nag. Spin Again.

 CONGRATULATIONS! YOU LANDED ON GUILT.

Double the points, double the agony. Two sets of elderly parents, four of a kind. One set dying, one set chronically ill. Spending what little time we had together up and down the 400 set of highways and the Trans Canada speeding from crisis to crisis. Come home, mother needs you. Come home, father is dying. Come home, mother is in the hospital. Come home, mother is dying. Easier said than done. My spouse’s parents lived in New Brunswick. We live an hour north of Toronto. My parents live east of Toronto. My spouse is Catholic. And we all know, THERE’S NO GUILT LIKE CATHOLIC GUILT!

Late night long distance phone calls from family members. I’ve been through all this from a very young age. I knew what to expect. So-and-so is in the hospital and might not live until the ‘morrow. As a child, I remember being roused out of bed in the middle of the night and sleeping in the back seat of my dad’s car until we got to the destination of crisis, usually Belleville. As I stated in my previous entry, I was born and raised into a family of old people. Old people only get older. When they get older, they become chronically ill. Chronic turns into terminal. Then you go to a funeral. Mom dresses you in navy blue or black. You get to wear a hat and gloves to church. At the funeral home they make you kiss the corpse. That’s when the guilt lands on you and grows roots. Why didn’t they urge me to kiss so-and-so when they were alive? Why not take me to visit more? I read sympathy cards which included my name, but which I did not sign, and sprays of flowers I didn’t know I picked out. Afterwards, you go to the Legion hall and eat sandwiches. Really old people you’ve never seen before hug and kiss you and praise your parents for having a child so well-behaved, “under the circumstances.”  Too bad so-and-so will never live to see you grow up.

Guilt grows inside you. It becomes a parasitic symbiant, and you, an oh-so-willing host. And so it was in the case of my spouse, only multiplied by the number of miles between him and his family. What I could never figure out was what, exactly, were we supposed to do at this end? Oh, the hours wasted debating and agonizing over decisions and events we have absolutely no control over. We are at least a 20 hour drive from New Brunswick. Who do you call in the middle of the night at your place of work to inform that you’ve been called home for a family crisis. How do you get a hold of a cat sitter? What do you pack, how long do you think you’ll be gone? What about the mail?

 And do we drive or fly? Flying is problematic from a locale point of view. By the time we pack, rush to the airport, try to find a flight out, wait, fly, rent a car, etc., we could just as easily have driven. But, families being families, if you don’t show up when called then they get to dump on you for not being there and lending your support in times of crises. We had dozens of nights like that. Agonizing over ‘do we or don’t we’ only to end up playing the waiting game and breathing a sigh of relief when the parent is discharged from the hospital and back safe and snug in their little bungalow. Of course, it never fails that some bass-mouth will always slide in a remark about an only son not ‘doing his duty’ and rushing home at a moment’s notice, even if you are two thousand miles away. These are the ass-wads who don’t bother to stop and think that my man still has to suit up for his shift and go out and protect the unsuspecting public regardless of what responsibilities weigh heavy on his conscious. Is it any wonder then, that a strong hit at the end of the day seems like a good idea?  A good (or a few) stiff ones seem like a convenient remedy for guilt. Turns out all it does is nurture something that doesn’t belong in the first place. If guilt can suck the life out of you, all drinking does it make it thirsty. Ironic, isn’t it.

 I’m pretty sure that guilt was catalyst for the most common form of The Serenity Prayer as I first learned it many years ago during one of my early introductions to what is commonly known today as Al-Anon, and which has been adapted and adopted by AA:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

 

No truer words were ever written. Because this is not a game I can win alone, but at least I understand the rules.

Until next time…Amen.