I’ve come to the conclusion that in the end, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how much I want a normal family or a normal life or a normal relationship. It doesn’t matter if I wince when I hear the pop of a can open or repeat please-don’t-get-a-beer mantra when I feel him get out of bet at night or how much I have to lose when things get out of control or the embarrassment and shame it has caused me, or the emotional toll it has taken on me. It really doesn’t matter.

In those moments, when the craving is strong and the need is deep, the only thing that really matters is him finding his peace. It doesn’t matter how understanding or encouraging I am or how hurt and angry I become. It has become his wife, always honoring it’s every request, and I am his mistress, there for the moments he can sneak away from her bloody grasp.

It’s the Dr Jekyll and the Mr Hyde that hurts the most. The minute he reaches that point, hits that limit, and crossed over from drinking to being a drunk, all bets are off. His behavior is unpredictable, his words are often dripping with poison and his actions almost unforgivable. Except is not him, it’s the doppelganger that resides inside of him, his other personality, its the drunk. I know that underneath the stench of nicotine-laced booze and sweat, it is not him. That is what hurts the most.

“Please stop,” I beg.

“Slow down, ” I plead.

“Talk about it, don’t drink it, ” I say.

“This hurts me, ” I cry.

He doesn’t answer because he doesn’t hear. All he hears is her whisper his name, seducing him to hear again, asking him to put her in his mouth and enjoy how she tastes. It isn’t until after he has enjoyed every part of her does he notice me - his face darting, his eyes glazed, his speech cloudy, his cheeks sucked in causing his lips to pucker and pout at the same time.

“I’m fine,” he says, maybe trying to convince himself, maybe trying to convince me, or maybe because he actually believes it to be true.

I know he’s not. I know there is a problem. I know he needs to stop. I think he knows this too, but his body now demands it, punishing him when he doesn’t get it, adding to the long list of why he seeks salvation at the bottom of a bottle or can.

He lights a cigarette, bringing it to his mouth, unsteady. He takes a long drag, his head darts in my direction again.

“I fucking hate them, ” he confesses.

He brings the smoke to his mouth again, his fingers penetrating his nostrils as he holds the lit cigarette in his mouth. He inhales again. Ah drops to the floor. We sit next to one another in silence, him lost in his own hops and barley induced thoughts, me sad, hurt, and angry as I prepare to offer a night full of reassurances, a sounding board for the hate and anger he feels, and the one who watched over him when he is unable to watch out for himself.

The world has wronged him. These are not imagined scenes created in his inebriated mind. He has gone through very difficult times. He has mate it through them, though, and has gone on to do impressive things. No matter how hard I love him or the high regard I have of him or how many times I have held him tight and told him it would be alright, I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t give him the same comfort or peace she could. I hated that fact. And because I couldn’t help him or fix it and because my and friendship and care wasn’t enough, I was starting to feel bad about me. I was letting him down.

He would go to her four or five more times, drinking her in, setting her down, immediately drinking her in again. With each sip, each drink, each guzzle, a little part of each of us died. He lost who he was, feeding his need for her, then each day need her more and more. I lost that care-free, funny, confident girl full of life and ambition, making the best out of whatever came my way. It was affecting my relationship with my children, having to babysit him and protect them at the same time. The mom that had activity-themed movie nights and read with her kids and played Barbies and soccer and went for walks was gone. she was replaced with mom that would put movies on in their bedroom, check on them occasionally, and try her best to just hold it together for that night while she sheltered them from tings that they didn’t need to see. She was replaced by the mom that was thankful for joint physical placement.

It was affecting my friendships. I no longer was going out, dancing, and making memories. The charms about me were wasted inside my home on someone not even present enough to appreciate them. The honesty I prided myself in with my friendships was gone, having to hide always our dirty little secret. I had no one I could talk to, o one I could go to, I was dealing with all of this by myself. I was forced to fake the strength I once had for him, for my kids, for myself.

At work, I was distracted, always watching him, wondering what would happen that day to lead to another one of those nights. He came to me throughout the day, and I welcomed it. It was the only time of the day that I got a glimpse of what he used to be. I would watch for it to start - the headaches, the irritability, the anxiety, and the shakes. While I was busy doing that, the work that I was supposed to be doing was being left undone or done without the attention i was known to give it. Soon it would just be another item on the things-that-overwhelm-me list keeping me up at night.

He began to play “Seasons in the Abyss by Slayer, a song that I was growing to hate. When I heard the opening bars, I knew he was lost in a world of anger, hurt, depression, sadness, and hate growing inside of him and soon he would be concentrating on those and it would be my place to pick up the pieces that they had spent a lifetime chiseling away. Soon their insanity would become his and he would succumb to the mind control of never being good enough, of being too much, of letting them down, and of their unreasonable expectations going unmet.

He would go from “Season in the Abyss” to Carcass and I would ask him to please turn it off. The change in music indicated the change in his mindset, going from internalizing everything and being beaten to wanting to rage on them, violently punishing them for everything done to him. He would speak of throwing elbows and bringing to them all kinds of pain. He would ask me if I felt he was capable, then tell me he was a much darker person than I would ever know. I would listen, but there was nothing more that I could do as long as he kept leaving me for her, choosing her voodoo over my love.

Once the violence and rage exhausted him and he rendezvoused with her again, he would crash. He would question life, why he was even here, and why he couldn’t be happy. He would discuss always feeling that he didn’t want to be here and would talk about the time he tried not to be. he would talk about wanting to walk into the river and just cease to be. No matter how many times I heard this, my heart would break and tears would stream down my face and I would feel helpless, hopeless, loveless. I feared that even if I felt that I needed to go, if I did, that would be the last I saw of him.

He would sit back, his eye lids getting heavy, and would grow silent.

“You’re not a good person,” he would say, looking at me with hate.

“Now her, she was a good person!”

“You’re a fat wench.”

“They were all so hot. You don’t even compare.”

“I’ll never love you like I loved her.”

“You’re ugly with your stupid feet and big ears.”

“They were all pretty packages. I did things different with you on purpose.”

He would black and and tell me how I didn’t love him enough, how I wasn’t smart enough, how they were all that mattered, and how he was settling for me. This happened often, nearly every night, and I would fall asleep with tears on my pillow, feeling badly about myself while he would pass out on the couch. He wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow. He doesn’t mean these things. I would repeat this to myself over and over until finally I fell asleep.

I would wake up at the sound of my alarm, welcoming the start of a new day, knowing that if only for a little while, I would have him back before it would all begin again. The arms I felt around me would be his. The kiss we would share was genuine. The apology was sincere. The confession of love for me was real. This was why I loved him. This is why I stayed- this was him. That other guy, despite all the time I spent with him, was someone I didn’t know.