- Alcohol
- Friends & Family
There seems to be about one emotion I have left in life. When children are very small and they go through the process of identifying emotion, they use words like happy and sad. Mad and glad. As we grow, we learn emotions such as anger, depression, love, and fear. Happiness and despair folds in as we learn to see the world through a series of give and take…failure and success. So at the age of 45, a life of experiences that make up the person that sits at the computer writing this article today, I can’t help but identify that the feelings I take forth in the world as I wake up each morning to a new day of this dance we call life. The feelings I most identify with, or that one feeling, is one they never talk about or warn you about. It’s the feeling of numbness. I’m numb. I don’t feel happy or sad or even angry. I’m just numb.
I look at my life, a successful woman in the field of social services, a good mom, and budding professional writer and feeling numb is the only actual feeling I can find. I thought the other day that maybe if someone died I could feel sadness and despair. How would I feel if that one job, the one I’ve been waiting for, just popped up out of nowhere? Would I be happy? Could I feel it?
I am a person who grew up in a great family. Nothing bad happened to my siblings or myself, and mom and dad were home every night to cook dinner and share in our lives. Somehow though, I found my way into the world of alcoholism and drug addiction. Friends…lovers…husband. You don’t realize how you are living your life and the acceptance you have of the absurdity until you realize that at the age of 45, you can no longer feel. I don’t even hear the door open anymore as he comes in late from a night at the bar. The door used to have wind chimes on it. I took the wind chimes down. I no longer hear the tone in his voice anymore as he demands sex under a drunken stupor that if not complied with, becomes a fight on how bad of a person I am. I don’t hear anymore the beer can as it is crumpled up and I don’t hear it as it’s pressed into the garbage can.
In the sounds of alcoholism, I’ve realized that I don’t hear my heart pound before the argument of “Where have you been tonight?” I’ve lost any sense of feeling as I sit and pray that he won’t raise his voice so our sleeping son doesn’t hear the name calling. I don’t hear the word bitch and stupid, because it becomes the sound of fear as I keep my mouth shut and my mind closed to a possibility that there can be a life where a family can grow without tears. Night time has been a nightmare as I’ve sat on the couch wondering if the sound of the siren down the road is him getting arrested for a DUI.
It’s the sounds of a life void of laughter and fun. Over time, you silence your dreams of the happy home and a future of openness and love. It’s the sounds of the lie you tell yourself that maybe he really isn’t an alcoholic and maybe it’s me who is the problem. In the numbness, you can make yourself believe he’ll change, knowing deep down he won’t. You see your life in a way that is a lie. That you can live like this as long as he doesn’t yell. “I can do this,” you say as you hear the pull tab of the beer can from the other room. That’s the sound I hate the most. Pull, after pull, after pull, after pull. You don’t even ask anymore how much he’s had to drink. You just count the cans in the trash can and pretend the lie isn’t real.
The sounds of a family gripped by alcoholism is one of secrets. Your prayers are silent as you believe God closed the door on happiness a long time ago. Your dreams, if you have them anymore, are only shared with yourself, because dreaming doesn’t exist in your reality.
An alcoholic can make you believe you’re crazy. They can twist your words and suppress your emotions. They can make you believe you have the problem. One glass of wine gets turned against you, as now you hear the cork pop on the wine bottle as a thought that maybe it’s you that has an addiction.
Little League games that can’t be attended as a family, because he’s at the bar and family holiday’s marred by the fear your secret will be exposed in front of the rest of the family. The sounds of alcoholism drown out the sounds of normality as normal is no longer a word you understand. You see families walking in the park or playing at the beach and wonder if they are the normal ones or you. You can really play the game of “I don’t need happiness,” if you really try.
As I sit here writing this, I pray that tears will flow so I can feel my heart again, but they don’t. I have become numb to a life that has become uniquely mine. When you hear someone talk about alcoholism, they never talk about the diminishing of the sounds of peace to make way for the sounds dripped in madness. They don’t talk about the curtailing of emotions as the family becomes accustomed to the sounds.
If we are to make a difference in the lives of people impacted by a disease that still remains a hidden stigma in today’s society, then we have to first talk about the declining senses of sound and sight. What we hear is not normal and what we see, although cannot be unseen, does not have to be the ending sights of life. We have to break what we think is normal and find that being numb is not an emotion.
As I write this, I can start to feel hope again. One night, upon the sound of the pull tab, I awoke to a world I didn’t want to live in anymore and I didn’t want my child exposed to. As Mother’s Day comes and goes, I realize how I enabled a life lacking in joy, but dripped in despair. We brought a child into it. The alcoholic and the wife that enabled the life. Accepting compliments on being a great mother is not a sound I enjoy right now, because I don’t feel great.
One day though, I’ll laugh again and my heart will race for a life filled with joy among walks by the ocean, back yard parties filled with friends I don’t keep secrets from, nights at the movies, holidays, and a love that doesn’t begin and end with the sound of the pull tab of a beer can.
One day, the sounds will silence and I’ll put the wind chimes back on the door.