Tag: Alcoholism

Chris is dead…

Published on by annwjwhite8 Comments

Those were the first words that I heard this weekend. My husband arrived from work at 6:30 in the morning and the first words to leave his lips were “Chris is dead…” The deep breath that followed held years of sorrow at the world. The second set of words floored me. “They sat at the Hooters and said they missed him as they downed beer and toasted him.”

My husband met Chris at UPS and both were drivers. They started at the same time, drove trucks, and Chris was a newly wed. His wife was beautiful. But where there was so m Iuch potential, there was a dark secret that would destroy his life. We didn’t understand how Chris could let his lovely wife go, but go she did with the alcohol chasing her out the door. Chris hid the booze, or tried too. My husband saw all of the symptoms and tried to give support, but Chris drifted away.

It was the alcohol that killed him. They say that only thirty percent of alcoholics find their way to sobriety. A lot of them lose their families, friends, jobs, careers and end up in trouble of some sort with the law. Chris hid his by hanging out with a crowd who spent all of their off hours drinking together.

Sadly, Chris was in his mid-forties, looked older than my husband does at 58, and at the end, alone. If you have a friend with a drinking problem, please, don’t buy them a drink. Encourage them to get help. Chris could have gotten help through the programs at UPS, but somehow, he never did. If you have a problem with alcohol, there is hope. Find an AA meeting, go through an Employee Assistance Program, use your insurance, but please, it is a matter of life or death.

Drunkard

Published on by annwjwhite1 Comment

I watched you,
Your gin swilled with lime,
Just before you work,
Just before you open that door.
Just before you drive.
I used to talk to you.
Deep talks, listening ears,
Listening to your promises,
To your future dreams,
To your fight between good and evil.
Listen, boy!
I saw the bottles mount up
I saw them empty
Cigarette ashes coating
Your mother’s furniture.
I saw you ignore responsibility
As you spread your empties and partials
In places you had no right
To contaminate.
I used to believe you,
But now I know you are a drunk
In search of an opportunity
To wile away hours uselessly.
You blame the economy
For not being a hero…
You had your chance.
You dropped out of everything.
Sweat means only that your pearl
Skin glistens.
So you blame, so you dive into bottles
That drink from you.

Addiction

Published on by annwjwhite1 Comment

Gone forever, so high the cost
That took from laughter to lies,
Your sense of home.
The referee between women,
Morphine, and cocktails, pacified,
Struggled with her lack of sobriety.
Sober as a judge, your own life.
Your leash cinched tightly.
Your words planned to
Balance on a knife’s edge.
Cruel words striking.
A life wasted, putting salt grains
In a jar with pickup sticks,
With Chopsticks.
Saki bottle,
Or gin, or rum, or morphine, her perfume.
Her pain, her lack:
Luring, alluring
Without humanity.
We lost you then, drowning, as
Tears raced upwards.

Staring into the Abyss

Published on by annwjwhite2 Comments

You left me for work, you say, screaming as you went out the door. Your words are filled with hate, confusion, disgust. The throwing ceases with the door slamming shut, and now it’s only a matter of time. The phone will ring, and you will cry, “I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry. You know I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’m so sorry.”

My part of the conversation will go as usual, “Hello? It’s all right. It’s all fine. You have to stop yelling now. Stop it. Take some deep breaths. It’s not so bad. Calm down, I’ll see you in the morning. Everything will be just fine.”

Everything I dreamed falling in love would be is only a pipe dream. They say only fools fall in love, and it is true. I was a cute little blond full of energy, wanting someone to love me. I was a first class fool.

Our marriage started with you drunk and disorderly. It started with my denying there was a problem. I was fine at work, where the guys would tease and try to cop a feel. I could out dance, sing and play them into the ground. You could come home from work, cursing that the road was wrong and you couldn’t pay for the apartment we lived in. You didn’t make enough. I was pregnant before we knew it. You told me that someone was trying to kill us. I lost my job, the apartment upstairs where the MP dropped only one shoe a night, and my dreams. I couldn’t go home, and the throwing started then. The door did hit my face.

That day you called me from the payphone. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

I ignored the pain, used the powder, and looked into your eyes trying to see my dream. Dad would have killed you, but I couldn’t go home to hear about what foolish childish dreams I had had. No, my mother would have been too much to bear.

In part, my mother modeled this for me. My father yelled. He split the kitchen table in half with a butcher knife. He yelled as he threw her across the room for having loved him. I couldn’t go home there. I pick up the phone, “Hi mom, I need to go back to school. There are no jobs for me here. Tell Dad I love him.”

It was something not spoken of in polite society. Your mother let us move to her home. It lasted a whole month. You smoked, lied, drank and ignored your mother who was ailing from having teenagers at home. She was as polite as you, “Get the fuck out of my house.” So I did.

We didn’t have food to eat. When the baby came, I walked to the social service’s office five miles away. You stayed home and drank. I had the baby. I had only enough bus fare to take the bus one way. They belittled me. Everything must me my fault. Ignorant woman that I was to have gotten pregnant so early. They thought I was a teenager, but I outgrew you by four days. On the way home, I hawked my wedding ring so that we would have a bit of cash. Thirty dollars for a cigar band. On the way home, I stopped to buy food for us. Orange juice, frozen pizza, formula, salad: these were for us both. I was starving. You ate the pizza while I showered and put the baby down for a nap. I drank the juice.

You took care of the baby while I found a job. Minimum wage to fold household goods. The manager told me I had one month to fix the department. I finished in one day. Everything tagged, Everything in its own place. He offered me a management job if I could move to Tennessee. Our car was dead. The company closed at the end of the month. Your parents blamed me for our poverty. How could such an educated woman live in squalor? You were expunged from the US Army’s roll call.

My aunt and uncle tried to straighten you out. They fixed me. I could smile at their house. I cleaned, worked for my aunt, and the second baby arrived. They gave us up.

We separated. I was to return to the Army, but they told me I had to give my children up for adoption. That wasn’t going to happen. I worked at a bank of hopelessness. It didn’t cover our rent or childcare. You drank and slept while the baby slept on your chest.

I pulled us together. I set rules, worked my way through a graduate degree, got a teaching job. Your son failed first grade. He called his classmates, “You little shit birds.” You got detention from his teacher, a minister’s wife. Your daughter had large eyes, a timid nature, and fear.

You got a job, and all turned into sunshine. Your boy worried us to death, your daughter fought at school. She swore like her brother. I took care of the swearing. I had power.

Then like a fool, I broke. My brain fried. I had trouble walking. I would sleep through teaching. Your mother told me to slow down. Your father drank. Your mother cried, and I bled for her. It was too much for her. She died. He drank.

You stayed sober, but despaired. Everything I did wrong, you looked at me with leaden eyes. I kept telling you I loved you. Tonight was the last.

After you called tonight, I went to the park and looked across the Potomac. As the sun went down, I did the only thing I could do to let you know how much I loved you. The water was cold.

The Drunk’s Protector

Published on by annwjwhite2 Comments 
I was nineteen, full of life,
student, musician, believer
and happened upon 
A wall flower, sodden but sweet,
A drunk, full of his nectar.
 
A peaceful drunk
Leaning upon a concrete wall 
Near the overused metaphor of a 
Greyhound Bus station.
Of a bus stop occupied
By the rushing middle class.
Of a city overcoming change.
 
A drunk, a target of easy mark
Was found by another mark,
A pointed mark.
Perhaps needing ease from his demons.
The voices listened and 
He took a knife, leaned, put it 
On the old man's neck.
Close enough to shave.

The audience breathed drama,
Turning slowly, waiting for buses.
Standing full of wisdom
As far as they could go. 
Time froze.
They were mannequins.

Needs,
Simply a phone in need of quarters,
An operator call,  
But locked into movie reviews,newspapers,work,
They were motionless. 

I was nineteen then. 
Full of life, a 1945 wooden case 
that protected my heart, 
Holding my horn.
My weapon of choice.

After years, why a decade of years,
Of playing, of lugging miles, building brass muscles,
Of practice at spinning, 
I launched myself  
Pushing my horn between the two.

I was a shield maiden,
Because I was nineteen, descended
From blonde Vikings and grim Scots, 
I became a piper of sound
With the bottom of my lungs. 

Somehow, instantly, incredibly,
Unsummoned, the infantry arrived.
A squad car, blinking red,
Drove up upon the curb.
Collared the knife, the shield maiden,
Slipped the men apart.

I was nineteen, set to
Activism, driven in hopes to 
Change poverty, racism, anger, hate. 
The men in blue sent me on my way, 
Part fool, part human. Head patted.
Reform suggested for my safety,
After all, I was nineteen.

“As One Mad with Wine” a study of similes in poetry

Published on by annwjwhiteLeave a comment

“As one mad with wine”
The bottle swirls and twists
One after the other
My thoughts disappear
Until my humanity is gone
And I feel nothing, nothing,
Voices come and go,
Loudly they demand attention
Finally I stand and fist raised
I twist and swirl until the view
Goes black.