Tag: Addictions

Delayed Grief

Photo: K. Mitch Hodge

I was clearing out old voicemails recently because someone told me my mailbox was full. There, at the bottom, was the Blocked Messages folder. I opened it to find the same three messages, the last one dated 12/16/2017. That left me curious. I did a quick search of my inbox and found the last email from him was on 12/26/2017. I was curious what made him finally stop.

Something tugged at me. I wonder what he’s up to these days. Could he have finally gotten himself together and moved on?

I did a quick Google search on his first and last name and came up with several hits, but not him. I thought that seemed odd. He didn’t like social media, but he should at least have a LinkedIn profile because of the type of work he does.

I did another Google search using his full name. There was one hit. An obituary. 

I stared at the screen, stunned. I read and re-read the content. This couldn’t be real. “…died in his home.”

It was a Tuesday when I stumbled onto the news, and I had a very busy work schedule that week so there wasn’t time to process my feelings immediately. I had planned to take Thursday off, but had a full day of activities that day and didn’t want to be a wreck on Friday. So I filed it away as best I could. That’s right, I was scheduling time to grieve. We do what we must.

For the next few days this new bit of reality continued to swirl around in my head. I allowed myself to feel very little emotion about it, but every time I would pause – or when I would wake up in the middle of the night to roll over (yes, I wake up for this) – I would feel the gut-punch echo of the words “…died in his home.”

A day or two into this, facebook presented me with a memory. It was not something directly about him, but it was an event that I remembered as happening shortly after I moved out. It had been nine years. So why was I feeling this strongly?

Friday evening finally arrived. It was grieving time. I sat on my yoga mat and talked to him. I said I was sorry. I said I had hoped he would find strength to work through things. I said I was sorry I hadn’t been able to help him. I told him I missed what we had had in the beginning of our relationship. I cried. I punched my fists into a cushion and shouted. After exhausting myself, I laid on my mat and stared. 

In the three weeks following my discovery of his death I found myself in a funk off and on…mostly on. I didn’t want to talk on the phone with my friend, who by the way both lost her father and broke up with her boyfriend in the two months prior. I felt some guilt about not being there for her, but I needed to be alone. 

Nine years. That is the marker for when I moved out of our three year live-in arrangement. I had loved him dearly, but his alcoholism proved to be too much for us to overcome. I tried so many approaches to encourage him to help himself, but he was not interested. He didn’t have a problem, I just needed to lighten up. I didn’t recognize my behavior as codependency. He was an alcoholic and I was a victim.

Toward the end of our live-in relationship he would pass out in his chair once or twice a week – sometimes more often. He’d wake up after a bit and resume whatever conversation we had been having before he had passed out. In his opinion we were having playful banter; I felt it was obnoxious and harrassing, though I never used those words with him because my life path had taught me there were boundaries I should not cross if I wanted to be safe. 

We had come together fast and intensely. We had an extreme physical chemistry from the start, and we connected on so many other levels. I heard him and I knew he heard me. I felt loved unconditionally for the first time in my life. 

I knew from the beginning that he liked to have a drink now and then, but I didn’t see it as excessive. He always seemed to be in control. It wasn’t long after I moved in that it became clear he had a problem. Once his secret was out, all bets were off.

The first time I was locked out of the house while he was passed out drunk, I told him I was leaving. But he had been so repentant the next day and actually promised, for the first time, to quit drinking. So I stayed. He lasted maybe three weeks. The second time I was locked out I didn’t tell him I was leaving, I just started making plans.

There had been so many good things about our relationship…when he was sober. He was the person I could fall into…when he was sober. He was the kindest, most reasonable man I’d ever been in a relationship with…when he was sober. He often said he’d lie down on railroad tracks for me. For all these reasons, even after I moved out, we continued to stay in touch. 

My codependency – my need to be loved wholeheartedly – allowed us to come back together a few times over the next four years. He only did his heavy drinking at home, so it would appear to me that he was doing better. Each time we’d come together we went through the same cycle: 

  • We would start with an agreement that we’d just be friends. 
  • I would give in to his promises that he had everything under control and lean into him once again. 
  • He would resume drinking heavily.
  • Somewhere in the timeline there would be a beach trip, where I would get to relive the experience of living with an alcoholic.
  • I would push back and say we had to keep it just friends or I was out.
  • He’d agree to that, but then would become more and more demanding of my time.
  • I would push back again.
  • He would drunk email or voicemail me to tell me how heartless I was.
  • I would break off contact completely. 
  • A month or two later he’d reach out again, promising once more that we could be just friends. He just really wanted me in his life.

By the time I shut the door for good his mental faculties had degraded significantly. I could see the  changes in his personality and in his ability to think rationally. He was moving further and further into a darkness that I couldn’t understand. And I felt less and less safe.

In June 2015 I blocked his number. He would still leave me voicemails, but I wouldn’t know about it until I emptied my mailbox. He would still email, but I wouldn’t respond. In December 2017, he emailed to tell me he’d straightened himself out and maybe we could make a go of it. I finally knew better. I didn’t respond. 

He passed in May 2018. “…died in his home.” I’m pretty sure I know what happened.

So why had I felt so bad about the news after all this time? I was sad that he wasn’t able to move on with his life and find happiness in some way; that he wasn’t able to see rock bottom and recognize it was time for long lasting change. And I’ve pondered my role in all of this. It was his disease, but I played a part in his emotional health because I allowed us to come back together over and over again until he could no longer see past a life with me. I know I didn’t directly cause his death, but I have wondered if he might have seen his way through this if I had just walked out the door and not looked back. Eventually I made my peace with the understanding that, even if he had moved on from me, he would still have kept drinking. It’s what he was wired to do.

While we’re on the topic of grieving, I’ll mention that I lost a dear friend in January of this year. It was a relapse, and the cancer took her quickly. Nobody expected she wouldn’t get through it, most of all her. I’ve no doubt the loss of my friend added to the weight of this more recent loss.

It is said there are several phases to the grieving process. According to the Healthline website, the five stages of grief are:

They also say, “Not everyone will experience all five stages, and you may not go through them in this order.” I would add that you may experience grief differently each time. 

When I lost my friend, I found myself wandering the house in a daze for the first week or so. I would walk into a room and just stand there, staring and swaying. It was like I was lost. I had just had dinner with her a week before she went into the hospital for the last time. Her spirits had seemed high and she had planned to go back to work part-time the following week.

My current grief is different. It is a haunting of my soul. He was supposed to be the person I lived out the rest of my life with. We had each been married twice before and the idea of another marriage never came into play for either of us. I just wanted him and he wanted me. It was simple. It should have worked. But it didn’t.

I think I’ve been hanging out in denial over my friend’s death ever since it happened in January. I only saw her every couple months or so and we didn’t chat on the phone or text much. But each time I saw her was memorable. A part of me still expects her to call me one day and say, “Hey Mel! I’m going to a freak show this weekend. Come with me – it’ll be a blast!”

As for Eric, my emotions pinballed between denial, depression, and anger. Some days felt like a heavy grey blanket of sad. He may have passed two years ago, but to me it’s new. And it still hurts.

Repressed Grief

Watching the movie P.S. I Love You on TV.  About 40 minutes in I break into a major crying jag. First, the movie is really, really, sad. It’s about a young couple who have been married 9 years when the man gets a brain tumor and dies.  Shortly after, on the woman’s 30th birthday, she learns that her dead husband has arranged for her to receive letters from him at various intervals for the foreseeable future.

It was at the memorial service scene where I broke down. Nobody close to me as died recently, so why did it affect me so strongly?  I felt the pain and emptiness that comes with the loss of – someone in my life. It doesn’t take a death to cause that feeling. There are many losses that can hurt just as deeply.

I watched the movie the day after I had been locked out of my apartment because of an apartment fire in another unit in the building. I had not been home at the time of the fire and by the time I got home the fire had been put out and all emergency personnel had left the scene. I didn’t have any idea anything had happened while I was away. There were no notices posted anywhere and I had not received a phone call or an email. I had no clue. I found out about the fire because my garage door wouldn’t open.  I keep the privacy lock on at my front door because I always come and go through my garage. My apartment was locked down from the inside. I called the after hours maintenance contact, who filled me in about the fire and said that power had been cut off to my garage. Nice.

To top it off, instead of coming out to take care of my issue, Maintenance Guy sent an office resource to handle the job, and after an hour and a half, Office Boy had made no progress and had headed off to some undisclosed location to get something, and after ten minutes had not returned. So I called the after hours number again and left the message that it was after midnight so I was getting myself a hotel room and would present them with the invoice in the morning.

At around 7 a.m. the next morning I drove back to my apartment to see if they had by some miracle figured out how to open my garage door. They hadn’t. The leasing office at my complex normally opens at 9:00 a.m. during the week. I stopped by the leasing office to see if someone may have come in early to manage my issue. Nope. I drove back to my hotel, had breakfast, and then left a message with the leasing office asking that they call me as they are in so they could share with me their plan of action. Nobody called.

I drove back to the office at 9. When one of the other office staff members greeted me at the door I stated my name and apartment number. No recognition. I explained that I had been locked out of my apartment all night and stayed in a hotel. I handed her the invoice. Across the room I saw Office Boy. He clearly had not told anyone what had happened the night before.  Neither had Maintenance Guy. Really?

I was told I would have to wait to see the Office Manager because she was currently speaking with another tenant who had been affected by the fire. The tenant lived in the apartment below the unit where the fire occurred. She had experienced water damage. But she had still been able to get into her apartment and sleep in her own bed.

When I was ushered over to Office Manager, I shoved the hotel invoice at her and told her my story. She apologized profusely. She had had no idea this had happened. Clearly, but there was no excuse for that. She offered to have the amount of my hotel stay deducted from my next month’s rent. “Not acceptable,” I told her. I had just paid my rent for the month and wasn’t interested in waiting around for a month to get my money back. She said she would have to call “Corporate” and she would do her best to get me what I wanted.

I left the office still angry and feeling patronized…but also feeling something else. Helplessness…neglect. I had showered at the hotel, but had had to dress in the same clothes from the day before – don’t ask about my underwear. I couldn’t go to work that way. What was I supposed to do?

I drove to the parking garage at my job, turned off my car and sat for a minute. My phone rang. It was Office Manager. Did I know my garage door was open, she asked? Had I gone over that way when I left the leasing office? “No,” I told her. “You said your maintenance supervisor was just on his way over.” “Well, the door is open already,” she said. “You can get into your apartment now.”

Fast forward to the end of the day. I spoke with a lawyer who said I should take the offer to credit the hotel bill against my next month’s rent.  Sigh. But, good news (relatively speaking), I have a brand new garage door opener (something about “the  event” had damaged the wiring in the previous opener). And the leasing office’s Corporate office approved an immediate refund of my hotel expense. Vindication.

Back to the movie which I’m watching at the end of a day of feeling angry, patronized, frustrated and…helpless. So of course I would be a little extra emotional watching a very sad movie. But it’s more than that. What had this story of loss triggered inside of me? Which wound had it ripped open, jagged edges inflamed and leaking fresh blood? The feeling was so familiar.

It was the sense of helplessness on being locked out of my home twice while living with my alcoholic boyfriend because he was passed out drunk inside and had locked the house from the inside. Both times there was nothing I could do to get in except break a window, which would have wakened the neighborhood, or call the police (which would also wake the neighborhood and also intensify the sense of humiliation associated with the situation.)  I chose to find another place to spend the night.

It was the hurt of knowing that no matter how much love I showed my boyfriend and how genuinely loving and caring he was toward me when he was sober, he was still willing to lie to me when he was drunk. He would lie about being drunk and never lost his determination to defend himself against all reason. It felt insulting to me.

It was also the sense of loss I felt after finally leaving my alcoholic boyfriend and then attempting to remain friends with him so I can support him through his journey to sobriety…something he wasn’t willing to do while I was still the romantic interest in his life. There is still a big hole in my soul for losing my best friend to alcohol. It’s a hole I’ve been reluctant to try to fill again. I have had one date in the year and a half since I moved out. I just don’t have it in me to go another round.  I guess I have some work to do myself.

Dream: I Can’t Keep Up!

2/16/2012

I am in my car and Ex is in his. We are both driving to his condo. As was typical for Ex in the beginning of our relationship, he wanted me to be in front of him whenever possible so he could keep an eye on me. We play a game of leap frog; him speeding ahead (because he prefers to drive fast) and me trying to keep up; then he’ll slow down a bit to allow me to catch up and sometimes pass him. I’m basically following his lead, zipping up the passing lane and then he’ll pull into the slow lane and wait for me to pass him and pull into the slow lane in front of him.

As we near the exit to his condo, he wants to ensure I’m in front of him so he can know I’ve gotten off and am safe. With me behind him in the passing lane he passes a car in the slow lane and then waits for me to pass him and pull into the slow lane in front of him. I feel myself getting nervous over the speed we’re moving, but I know I must get in front of him in time to make the exit. Even though I’m feeling stressed about it, I accelerate and begin to pass him, but then feel the wheels of my car begin to vibrate (which happens in my real car when I drive at certain speeds). This causes me to feel out of control and I ease up on the accelerator to make the vibration stop. The dream ends before I know whether I’ve made the exit.

THOUGHTS:

The feeling I have in the dream is that trying to “keep up” with Ex makes me feel out of control and I’m not comfortable with that. He is “driving recklessly” and I’m not comfortable with that. The terms “keeping up” and “driving recklessly” have to do with drinking. I’m not wired for the reckless lifestyle of heavy drinking on a regular basis. I can’t keep up.