2 a.m.

Today I have the honor of sharing some words with you that are not mine. Words that tell the story of what it feels like to helplessly witness the spinning despair of a loved one that is also an alcoholic.

This post was written by one of my favorites: anymommy

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May he turned twenty-one on the base at Fort Bliss
“Just a day,” he said down to the flask in his fist,
“Ain’t been sober since maybe October of last year.”
Here in town you can tell he’s been down for a while,
But, my god, it’s so beautiful when the boy smiles,
Wanna hold him. Maybe I’ll just sing about it. ——–Anna Nalick

We want it to be someone else’s cousin. Someone else’s sister. Father. Brother. Husband. Wife.  But there’s a great big target on all of our backs and it comes home to us eventually.  It has to. The odds say you and everyone you know are going to die. Roll the bones.

Alcoholism. War.  Is it different in the end?

No. It’s different in the middle.  Where it bleeds before it bleeds out.

My god, he’s so beautiful. Soccer star. Special ops. He sits in my living room on our faded leather chair and eats a burger and drinks cheap beers one after another.  My husband can’t drink one to his two.

“Don’t tell my Dad, okay?”  He asks me as he pops the first one. “He’s crazy about this shit.”  I look into his eyes and there’s a scared little boy in there. We are still little kids. Every single one of us. He’s in town for evasion and torture training before his deployment. He passed with flying colors. “Cake walk, cuz.”

I laugh hard, his devoted cousin.  As if we’re back at Grandma and Grandpa’s fiftieth wedding anniversary barbecue laughing insanely over our third glasses of spiked, fizzy punch. Running into the woods with our ten-year-old cousins – some even younger – we were barely thirteen. Like we’re still throwing rocks at semis from the trees. Have you ever heard the sound of a rock hitting a semi going 75 mph? It’s an exhilarating and terrifying sound. Your whole body tingles.

I imagine it’s something like the sound of a shell hitting an armored humvee, before the true terror starts, but what the hell do I know?  I get to sit at my dining room table and whine about how the idiots in this country can’t pass a budget.  I get to tuck my kids into bed every night.

He has two boys. Six and three.

“Is he drinking?” my mom asks me.  Nah, not that I saw. He only came over for dinner. She’ll tell her brother. I won’t be the snitch. My god, am I thirteen?  Sometimes, I am.

I drop him at Hooter’s to hang with the other graduates of torture school. He ribs me the whole way there, relaxed and happy with six – was it seven? – beers in him.  He calls me “cuz.” He mocks my minivan. It’s so easy.  It’s so damn hard.

Does it help? I want to ask him, but I can’t around the broken glass in my stomach. It pushes up my throat and cuts my tongue.  Maybe it does help. What the hell do I know?

I would fight for our country, I think. But I’m an insane optimist. I want people, things, causes, governments, laws, motivations, to be right.  I want there to be a cause.  I want us to be kids again. I wish it was just punch. If I could go back, I’d stop his hand from pouring the flask; I wouldn’t laugh. Even if they all laughed at me.  I loved the way he drove us around the lake on our uncle’s farm in that beat up old sedan. Was he even twelve? We went so fast, I can only remember a blur, all of us laughing, green fluid shooting from under the hood, soaking the windshield. We were superheros, invincible to flipped cars. To tragedy. Seven cousins killed in horrific accident.

That wasn’t our middle. Our middle was pure joy. Or maybe that was just my middle.

Be safe over there, sweet boy. Come home to us.  And then try not to drink yourself to death.

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Thank you, my friend.

You can find Stacey at Is There Any Mommy Out There?

Her writing will consistently knock your socks off.
It’s truly an honor to have her words here today.