Insanity

“I’ve got it!!” I believe those were the exact words that came out of my mouth as my head burst through the top of the water. It was summer time and I was at the pool swimming with my wife and our two boys.  I was halfway across when the idea hit. It was a revolution! I couldn’t wait to get to the other side because my wife, who is not a fan of the water but LOVES to lay out in the sun, was at the other end in her usual spot soaking up the day’s rays. I knew that if I swam just left of center I would come out of the water directly in front of her.

This was going to be AMAZING! Pride colored every word out of my mouth as I spoke. “Bae! I have the perfect idea! I’m going to buy a safe! I’m going to order it off Amazon and it will be here in just a couple of days!” With a curious look my wife said, “A safe??? For what?”

It’s a that point I begin to explain to her why I wanted the safe. When I say explain I mean EXPLAIN! I had thought this through with great care and concern. I’m a salesman by trade and let me tell you…I was seriously pitching this idea to her. I was going to order this cool blue safe that’s approximately the size of a toaster. It’s digital, so you can change the combination on it as many times as you’d like which means this particular safe is the safest-safe you could ever purchase.

I provided bullet-proof examples of the importance of this amazing safe. My reasoning was sound, my arguments unquestionable. This is a game-changer and I am EXCITED. In my mind this safe is going to protect us in ways that will have lasting effects on our marriage and our life, and that’s why this safe is going to be the most important purchase I have ever made. So, case made, I eagerly await her reaction. I knew she was going to see the value of this safe as I have just argued the best case EVER! She’s going to buy-in I just know it!

“That’s great Bae” was what came out, in the flattest, delivery possible. It was almost like she was disappointed. I don’t know if it’s possible for something to be “incredibly tepid” but looking back at it now, that’s exactly what her reaction was.

I was as far off the mark as one could be considering the situation, and my wife responded in kind. I didn’t see it at the time though. I did not have the ability to read the room. I was too wrapped up in how great I thought I was to hear how unimpressed she was. I can say with great certainty now she was not with me on this one.  We were not existing on the same plane, and there was a concrete reason as to why.

I was drinking. A lot. As lagniappe I also had a severe addiction to drugs that I could not escape either. I was truly out of my mind. Not to worry though, the safe was going to fix EVERYTHING!

The issue at hand was that once I started drinking I did not want to stop. “First-guy-in-last guy-out” was my modus operandi when it came to drinking and drugging. Once the party started it was difficult for me to shut it down. I didn’t want it to end. I’m laughing at myself as I write this because of my use of the word “party” is generous. Typically, “party” infers there were other people involved. The last years of my drinking those parties were usually made up of me and me alone. Especially at the end of the night. It was normal for me to hang out by myself because I didn’t want to stop, and I was the only one who could keep up with me.

It was terrible for my wife though, but usually it wouldn’t start out bad. We would drink together, talk about the day’s or week’s events, listen to music outside, or play cards.  At some point, most nights before 10PM she would go to bed. Not me though, the night had just started. A local dive bar was approximately 2 miles from my house. It was close enough that I had convinced myself that it wasn’t THAT dangerous to drive to. So, it became a habit. We drink, she goes to sleep, I go to the bar. Rinse and repeat.

God she hated it. She really wanted me to stop doing it and tried everything to stop me. She bargained with me, she begged me, she yelled furiously at me. Nothing worked. In the moment I would apologize all over myself. I hated that I had done it again. Then I hated it when I did it again, and I continued to hate each subsequent time that I did it. It didn’t matter though, no matter how many times we would have the argument and no matter how many times I promised on my life not to do it again, the second she went to sleep I was gone. I despised myself, but the drink I had at the bar helped to make that feeling go away.

So, we made a deal. “Keys and wallet”. That’s what she would say every time we would drink together. The deal was I would hand over my keys and wallet. She would hide them and then we could have our drinks together. We could enjoy our shared company, then go to bed like normal adults without fear of me sneaking out once she went to sleep.

It worked! For about 2 weeks.

That’s when the real insanity started. One night after having drinks she went to bed and I had some more wine left and was in the backyard, headphones on, singing to myself louder than my neighbors appreciated when it hit me. “I bet I can find them”. I got my drunken-self out of the lawn chair and went to where I believed they would be. We have a good sized walk-in closet and I figured that would be the general area she would have chosen to hide them.

My wife has a vanity that she has used since she was a child and she loves it. We have room in the closet so that is where it sits today. It has a bunch of drawers and I assumed that my wife would think it to be an adequate hiding spot, so that is where I started my search. BINGO!  Keys and wallet right there in the first drawer I pulled. I was off to the bar faster than you could say “Don’t Do It”.

The next morning my wife was far less impressed with me than I was of myself finding them the night before. The next several months played out like this. “Keys and wallet”, she would go to bed and I would start my new ritual of trying to find wherever she had put them.

Realizing the error of her ways from the first night she began to get more imaginative with her hiding spot. Her imagination was matched only by my ruthless determination to get to the bar and continue my night. And so, it began. The battle of good and evil. She would find a spot then I would find her spot. It caused a ton of arguments, each ending with the promise of me to not to do it again.

I now know that random shoes at the bottoms of boxes are good hiding places. Coat pockets of folded not-worn-in-five-years coats were good locations. Top shelfs of other closets in the house, make-up drawers, candle holders, pottery…all great places to hide stuff…until they weren’t. I figured there was a finite number of places she could hide things based on where she went in our house to hide them. Once the general area was determined, like the Coast Guard searching for a lost soul at sea, I made a search grid and used that grid every time to pin-point the key’s location. I got REALLY GOOD at it.  Which made her REALLY MAD at me.

But times they were a’changin’!!!

As soon as the safe got here things were going to be different. Life would get back to normal. No more “search grids”. We would have our drinks, go to bed, and wake up the next morning like a good married couple should, and go about our day.

I wish that would have been what happened, but it wasn’t.

When the safe came in, I studied its manual. I learned how to operate the digital combination and then taught my wife how to use it. It was fun! I was happy! This was going to work! We did a test, she entered her secret code and when I went to open it I was unable. Success was ours! We cracked a bottle of wine and had drinks to celebrate.

Unfortunately, there was a fatal flaw. The makers of the safe must have figured out that the problem with having a changeable security code to open the safe was that if the code was ever changed to a number sequence that was forgotten, how would one open the safe? Their answer?? A key. A small key that could be inserted in a lock on the bottom of the safe. Which meant, and I am sure you have figured this out, the key had to be placed somewhere. It needed a hiding spot.

So, first night, drinking our wine in celebration I hand over my keys and wallet and watched as my wife secured them in our new life saving device. Per our norm, we drink, she gets tired and goes to bed and I am left drunk and awake with my thoughts. All of which are telling me that I must have another drink.

So, I do what I always did. I went on the hunt. It took a while, but I found the key and off I was again. Rendering the safest-safe ever completely useless.

The definition of insanity was playing itself out in my life and the one constant was simple. Once I had the first drink all bets were off. There was a singleness-of-purpose that came with my first drink and that was to get another one in me as fast as I could until I passed out. It drove every bad decision I made once I took the first. Mentally I was unable to deal with the craving I had, and it drove me absolutely insane.

Nothing else mattered. Not my wife, not my kids, not my job, not my self-respect, not anything. The drink was King. Ruler of all that was me, and it got the only thing it ever wanted, every time, and that was one more.

It’s crazy to think that as I sit here and write about the insanity that was my life I am a little over two years removed from my last mind-altering substance. The booze and the drugs have been removed from my life as I live it today. In all that mess I found an absolute truth in my life. I don’t drink well. Period. I am not a good person when I do because when I pick up a drink I lose all ability to care about anything else other than my next one. It took more than 27 years of my life to finally get it, but I believe I have.

I attribute my initial glimpse at my inability to drink to God’s Grace. That is to say a God of my understanding. A Higher Power, or a Spirit of Nature or a Spirit of the Universe….whatever it may be. I call it God because that’s what is easy for me. My God helped me to see it. He put me in contact with other like-minded people who had also been blessed with His Grace to see where they too had been controlled by their inability to say “No more” once they had started to drink. It’s precarious position to be in once I realized this truth about myself. Precarious that is, without a real effort on my part to strengthen my relationship with God and own up to my inability to drink like a “normal” person.

What I believe now is that without asking for it, God showed me a way out. I cannot explain how, but I choose to believe that He did. I also choose to believe that I now have a debt to pay. The only way to do so is by living a life that has turned away from drinking and drugging, away from the selfishness and self-centeredness of my previous life, and move towards a life focused on Him. I also need to do my best to reach out my hand to whomever else may be struggling like I did and let them know there is another way. To let them know the good that comes with a real belief in this gift of life. I know now for a fact, that without this gift, without this Grace, I’d still be in that closet looking for the keys that I thought was real freedom.