Hill Holler

Lessons in life aren’t always easily learned. Sometimes, it takes a while for us to recognize that there may be a reason that certain situations in life seem to keep repeating themselves, and each time seems worse than the last.  Here’s a thought. Is it possible we’re just not getting the lesson we’re supposed to learn from it?

I’d like to illustrate this with a story from my own experience. My ex had a problem with alcohol and not a small one. He was an alcoholic but in denial. It worsened over the years. Eventually he reached the point where he had to face up to the fact he was an alcoholic, at which time he sought treatment. He never ever gave it up completely though even to this day.

It had started quietly, graduating from a few nights a week of drinking to every day. We talked about his drinking many times. Talked as in argued, yelled, shed tears - those kinds of talks. Those alcohol soaked years amounted to a decade of our lives. Actually when I think about it, I spent more years in that relationship with him as a drunk husband than a sober one. It was a shame because when he wasn’t drinking, he was a decent enough guy.

Usually it was me instigating these conversations when I’d had enough of coming home from work and seeing him drunk already at five in the afternoon. When we did discuss it, it invariably ended in promises that were never kept by him, leading to disappointment and hurt later.

I felt so stupid that I couldn’t see how to solve it. I can be a bit of a control freak and not being able to control how this was unfolding was uncommon in my experience. I was used to having everything in my life shipshape but this particular ship had sailed into stormy waters without me captaining it. I was at a loss as to what to do but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

It was our secret. I was too ashamed to admit to anyone else what was happening and he sure wasn’t in any rush to tell anyone - he didn’t think he had a problem for most of those years. Though we’d never discussed the silence on our part, it was an unspoken agreement between us. Family and friends would never know. The longer we hid it, the more ill I got with stress, depression and debilitating headaches. My weight plummeted and I was like death warmed up, but still I kept quiet, confiding in no one.

Throughout those years, I kept thinking if we talked enough about it and tried to figure out a way to stop it happening, it would be okay next time. Yet it progressively got worse. What would happen is that he’d stop for a while, seem to be making an effort, then he would just start again. Of course, he hadn’t really stopped. He was just learning to hide it better from me.

I’d find vodka bottles hidden in toilet cisterns, under bedding I never used anymore, up the loft in ancient sealed packing boxes, behind bath panels…and every time I’d bawl my eyes out in frustration and anger. It’s ironic he could be so creative and spend so much time discerning where I’d not look for the one thing he said he felt wasn’t a problem in our relationship. No doubt there were some I never did unearth.

Eventually, I just stopped trying to help. It took me ten years but I did.

That may sound callous saying I stopped trying to help, but to me the lesson there (that I just wasn’t seeing for a long time up till then) was I couldn’t take responsibility of and solve the problems of everyone in my life. I just couldn’t do it for him, much as I wanted to. I’d loved him and we were together many years, sixteen in fact.

But it was his choice and his alone whether he wanted to deal with it and when he wanted to, he would - no sooner. Me wanting it and trying to fix it all wouldn’t make it happen.

Maybe if I had recognized the lesson earlier, it wouldn’t have got to the stage that it did. I’ll never know. What I do feel now though is it would maybe be wiser to take a closer look at recurring situations.

Is it  not better to try to see the lesson when you’re still being given it with a feather’s touch rather than waiting for the sledgehammer blow as it gets worse and worse before you recognize it for what it is?  I think so but heck, what do I know.

When we put up with any situation we don’t have to put up with, it’s not because we’re dumb. We put up with it because we want the lesson that only that situation can teach, and we want it more than freedom itself.- Richard Bach