A Vicious Cycle

June

“You will be sober by the end of the year, or I will leave you.”

The message echoed in his brain. But only when he was clearheaded enough. Drink a few more glasses and he’d forget. But seeing it in her handwriting writing made it real regardless of his state of sobriety.

What a cycle. He’d get sober, just enough to realise how far he’d slipped into the drink. The guilt would eat him up. So he’d drink some more. Just enough to forget. Sometimes more than enough to forget. The more he drank, the less he could keep count.

“Shh,” he’d say to her when she admonished him. “I don’t need this.”

“Have you worked out what it is that you do need?” she’d growl through gritted teeth, eyes always flashing and condemning.

“I know, I know, just ‘Shhh’, OK?”

And she complied with lips pressed firmly together, eyes still damning him with their fire and disappointment.

Days rolled into weeks, and weeks rolled into months, and still he drank.

“I’m not that drunk,” he’d explain. “I’ve not had that many?”

“How many?”

“Shh, you always do this. It’s not helping.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“You’ll just get angry.”

“I am angry when you lie.”

And so it went, round and round, and nothing changed. He hated himself, then hated her for hating him.

July

He’d never done ‘Dry July’. Why start now?

He hid the empty bottles, decanted cheap wine into tumblers and topped them up with orange juice to make it more palatable. Not that he cared what it tasted like. He just didn’t want to disappoint her.

“I’m sick,” she’d said, her face flushed with fever and voice hoarse with coughing. “I have the ‘flu. Can you pick the kids up today?”

With a slow blink, he’d looked at her, his mind eventually making connections as the words she’d said tumbled together with his thoughts. He never drove when he was drinking. It was his unbreakable rule, his one saving grace. He knew the risk of alcohol and driving, and he never wanted to put his kids into a dangerous situation.

“Oh, for the love of God!” she’d cried, as she picked up her keys, her face flushed with fever and rage.

August

“I can’t do it anymore.”

Her voice was flat, and that was how he knew she meant it. She no longer screamed, or cried, or glared daggers at him. She didn’t ask him how much he’d had to drink and ignored him for the most part.

“Do what?” he’d asked her, just to be sure.

“This. Us. Nothing is changing.”

“I’m working on it, really. I am trying. You just expect too much.”

Her eyes were shadowed and tired. He wondered when he’d stopped seeing her and started seeing this stranger. 

“I’m sick of everything. Sick of worrying if you’re drunk, worrying if you’ll come home, worrying if you’ll wake up.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

She ignored him, as she had become so good at doing.

“You have until after Christmas. I will not spoil the season for the kids. But after Christmas, you are to move out, unless you make a huge change.”

“That’s it? Marriage over?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t mean it.”

“I’ve had a real estate agent in to value the house. If I can’t buy you out of your share, then we sell and split it.”

“For God’s sake! You can’t do this to the kids.”

She had looked at him then, and a small amount of fire flashed in her irises.

“If I was really thinking about the kids, I would have left you years ago. You have no idea what damage you’re doing to them, or what I’m doing to them by staying with you, giving you chance after chance after chance.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I’m not entering into an argument. Get help or get out.”

September

He did love her, he realised, more than anything. He just couldn’t stop drinking, not without help.

So he had gone to the doctor. There were programs. He enrolled in them. A counsellor, a clinic, a treatment plan.

It began with a bang.

“I’m done with drink. I’m turning a corner.” As far as declarations go, this one was right up there with promises made in an election year. He had meant it, it sounded good, it made him feel good to say, but deep down, in the part of him that contained the demon, he knew the truth.

“Can you help me?” he had begged her. “Keep me accountable. Check in with me each day.”

“I will,” she had replied, looking him directly in the eye and saying, “Just don’t lie to me.”

She knew him so well.

October

“How much have you had to drink today?” she’d asked him after dinner, when she’d finished the dishes and wiped down the counter.

“Not much.”

“Don’t lie to me.” She had fixed him with that look that seared through all the bullshit.

He shifted uncomfortably under her piercing stare.

“You’re not being helpful.”

A frustrated sound, not quite a scream, yet not a sigh, puffed from her lips like an explosion.

“You asked me to check up on you.”

“You have no idea what it’s like, do you? You think I can just stop, just like that?” Anger was a defensive reaction he had mastered.

She glared at him.

“Could you give up coffee? Or chocolate?”

“It’s hardly the same.”

“You quit coffee, I’ll quit drinking.”

She had rolled her eyes and turned her back.

“I am not negotiating with you.”

“You couldn’t do it, could you?” He felt justified in his argument.

November

The plumber came and fixed the leaky tap. 

“I would have done it,” he’d said. And he could have done it, would have done it—maybe. It hadn’t been leaking that long, had it?

On another weekend she had painted the bathroom all by herself, repairing the years of neglect he’d never noticed.

Then she had hired a guy to fix the sinking paving outside. Now it looked great, especially after she swept it clean and trimmed the hedges.

“Why are you doing all this now?” he’d asked her.

“I will not be ashamed of my house when the real estate agent puts up photos on the web.”

December

And thus he stood outside the gate to a rehab clinic.

“You know, some people try rehab three, four or five times. It might not work.”

She glared daggers at him.

“Are you giving yourself an excuse to fail?” she said through gritted teeth.

“I’m being realistic.”

“I still have the real estate agent’s number. There are no more chances.”

It wasn’t realistic to expect him to succeed. Thirty years of drinking doesn’t go away in a week. He was destined to fail.

Striding through the gates, he didn’t glance back even once. He’d rather not see her expression.

He knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

January

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