It was a dark and stormy night…

Well, actually it was an afternoon a lot like today will be, bright, crisp, and filled with the anticipation of the holidays. I know it was a Thursday because he had DUI court and I had taught a yoga class that morning.

By all accounts it was set to be an awesome day. I loved and still love Thursdays, Yin Yoga is a gift to the body and soul and I am always grateful to start the day sharing it with my students. He had found out they were extending his Thursday morning court house visits by two more weeks each cycle, he was 11 months and some change sober, and he was in a great mood when he called me to report the news and tell me he was going to do some “looking,” a little pre-gaming for Christmas shopping if you will.

I got home first. He wasn’t far behind and he jumped right on the ATV when he arrived but came back shortly, not a strange occurrence by any means this time of year, he was always running to the woods to check trail cams and see if there were deer in “the back forty.” We nearly crashed into one another as he walked in the door and for a brief second I think I left my body. I knew when I saw him. My stomach ached, I was probably white as a sheet and I immediately said goodbye to the friend I had on other end of the phone. He had taken his last first drink and I knew it, even before I ever smelled it on him or found the can he had tossed into the woods that day.

The thing is that 11 days, 11 weeks, 11 months of relative peace can feel like an eternity when life has been relentless for so long. Its long enough to let the guard down, its long enough to let hope live, its long enough to forget the pain and let the fear rest, until its not. It only took one breath, one decision, one moment, one drink, to derail all of it.

And you know what? Trauma is so intelligent in the way it imprints in your cells, so you remember, in order to keep you alive, and when it gets set off it’s like the moment they throw the switch on the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. It all lights up. All of the anger and heartbreak, hurt and destruction, sickness inducing deep despair, it all came back in that one second. The three past years of arrests and jail time, all the whiskey, the smell of it seeping out of his pores after days of blackout drinking, the times he tossed me aside like a rag doll or had his hands on me in anger, the things he said to me to try and destroy my spirit, the fear in the voices of my sweet babies, all of it coursed through me like a drug hitting every inch of me all at once. It nearly broke me. And then I remembered. The babies, at this point 8 and 10, they need you to collect up your pieces and stand strong.

I did not know how exactly things would progress this time, but I knew in my gut it was going to have to end differently. No one could give him what he needed to heal because he was unwilling or what I came to understand later, unable, to summon the strength to do the work. The world had broken him beyond repair, at least that is what he believed. It had also gifted him, through his own baggage and trauma, the thought that he deserved all of what came his way, even though at the surface he would blame anyone and everyone that stepped in to intervene for his trouble.

What followed was the beginning of the end. A chain of events, even as they were, that were punctuated by hope.  He finally showed up in between the binges and rages. Maybe he was sorry, I thought, maybe he did want to change, maybe he could be the dad the kids need, but how we would make that work I could not say. Those last few weeks rode like a an old school wooden roller coaster, smooth, even gentle, and then bone rattling bumpy; darkness punctuated by moments of light, hope and realization; words of regret and apologies, followed by visceral anger bent on destruction. I lost track of how many messes I had to clean up in that time period, how many tears I wiped off my own face and my babes, how much of what I had worked on so hard in myself those last few years had to be scooped up over and over, again and again.

By the time we would reach the end of that first week in December I would be exhausted, to the core.  Bone tired was an understatement. Up to that point I had wrestled so hard with what to do, to call or not to call, have him picked up or committed, either way I lost. I would never be forgiven. It was always me to blame, somehow I made him do it or I got him in trouble when I could have kept my mouth shut, but soon that was no longer an option. The sickness was too much for any person to handle and no one seemed able to get through to him.

For now, what I will tell you about that last night we spent as a family, is this…I would not wish it on anyone, ever, and I hope none of you ever have to watch someone unravel in the way that we did that day. And for those of you that have been touched by addiction, severe PTSD, anxiety or depression, and/or the profound loss of suicide, I am so sorry and I see you and your pain, your hurt, and the regrets. For us, there would still be one night of uncertainty as he ran, five days of what seemed like relative “safety” behind bars, and then three and a half weeks of waiting and ultimately saying goodbye.

But that is a story for another day. This has been enough for today.