I'm revealing this piece now as a means of contrasting the way my life is these days. For all the ugliness of the past few years, my head has reached the surface again and I can breathe.
It's called "Little Cat Feet" with apologies to poet Carl Sandburg, whose three words I borrowed from a famous poem he wrote about fog:
"My husband's rage creeps in on little cat feet.
There is no warning, then suddenly his eyes are cold, green-tinged and defiant. His masked anger slinks into seemingly innocuous conversations, and I prick my ears. I know his claws will come out, and they will draw blood.
He is not the kind of drunk who staggers, slurs his words, or pisses in his pants. I would prefer that, because then I would know what I was dealing with. He is the kind of sneaky drunk with no outward signs, except for the eyes and the anger and the claws. When I finally figure it out, it's too late. I am what's for dinner.
Alcohol turns him into a demon who hides in the shadows, and then pounces. He says the worst things he can think of. It's as though the poison inside him has to come out, so he throws it all up on me, like half-digested, putrid rat stew.
"You are the worst wife in the world. You are the most self-centered person alive. The kids and I all hate you-- we talk about it. You have no friends, do you know that? Nobody likes you. You are the reason I drink-- it's your fault. I can't stand you. You are ruining my life. I will do exactly what I want, and you can't stop me."
When I won't engage him, he follows me around, running up the stairs after me so he can puke up the rat stew.
He humiliates me in public, making thinly-veiled references to my ugliness or stupidity, and flirting with other women right in front of me. When we arrive, his eyes will narrow and become challenging, and he will give me the unmistakable signal that I am supposed to act like I don't know him. He will disappear, and I will see him caressing another woman's bare back in her evening gown, as though he is her lover. He will sit close to another woman in conversation, sometimes caressing her thigh. Other women get charismatic John, the one who could charm the lace-trimmed panties off a lesbian. I get the half-digested rat stew.
The dark sinew of his deception bothers me the most. It makes me feel sick inside. I feel like I am drowning. I would rather hear, 'I just drank an entire fifth of Grey Goose,' then the elaborate stories of how he has been sober for seven months, he is making friends in AA, he convinced over friends not to drink, he goes to AA meetings weekly. I would rather hear, 'I find myself attracted to other women, because I need to feel good about myself again,' then to uncover the text messages, e-mails, red roses sent to another woman on Valentine's Day.
I feel, for all the world, like he has put me out for the trash. My soul and my love have been murdered, and blood-soaked limbs are sticking out of the dumpster for all to see.
My husband's rage creeps in on little cat's feet."
It is a small miracle that John isn't that man anymore. The switch didn't flip the minute he stopped drinking. He was still justifying for far too long-- I am convinced that people can justify any kind of behavior they want in order to live with themselves. That is why history's greatest villains were convinced in their own minds that they were victims.
His booze-soaked, toxic brain took time to recover, and those old patterns of thinking didn't disappear overnight. All the medications he had to take for the liver transplant didn't help. But over time, I am seeing more and more of the old John. All the rage, passive-aggresiveness, blame, manipulation and lying is gone. There is peace in our home now.
Last week he gave me a written amends, something strongly suggested by AA. It isn't just a simple apology, but a careful reflection on what happened and why. In AA, alcoholics are taught that they can't just hide behind a label of alcoholism and expect all will be forgiven. They still have to take full responsibility for their alcoholic behavior, and understand they may never be forgiven. Making amends is as much for their own recovery as it is for the people they hurt.
I had been waiting for a written amends for five years, since John first went to rehab. I got one a few Thanksgivings ago, but he was drunk when he tossed it on the dining room table, and he later caused a huge angry scene. So that amends became something he would have to make another amends for.
I can laugh a little now when I think of it: hours after throwing the amends at me, I saw him frantically pawing through a drawer. "Have you been going through my stuff?" he angrily accused me, his voice rising and his eyes narrowing. "You moved everything, didn't you? You are going to be sorry, because you really wanted the thing I am looking for. You have wanted it for a long time." It suddenly dawned on me what he was talking about. "Do you mean the amends, John? You gave that to me hours ago-- don't you remember?" I wanted to add, dramatically and sarcastically, "It was everything I hoped for and more, my love. It makes up for everything, it explains everything, and now let us ride into the sunset together on your steed as white as snow."
After all my waiting, I had given up most of my expectations. When I was still enmeshed in the insanity of living with an alcoholic, I didn't know where he ended and I began. When someone asked how I was, I began talking about John and all the chaos. I was not used to focusing on myself, because I was too overwhelmed with his problems. I had recurring dreams that I was lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to IV's on both sides. He was a vampire and I was sucked dry.
Like Elliot separating from ET, I had to learn to detach and emotionally distance myself from John, in order to retain any semblance of sanity. I had to learn to release my expectations of what love and a family were supposed to be like. It was actually a healthier way of loving someone who didn't love himself. I had to learn that fear is the opposite of love, and that all my fears for him were not helping either of us.
So when he finally gave me the written amends I had been waiting for all those years, it was a little anticlimactic. I wasn't full of anxious anticipation, expecting one confessional letter to heal many years of grievous wounds. I had been healing little by little, all along.
"I want you to know how hurt I am over what I did," he wrote. "The shame I feel is unbearable. I can't believe I did things to hurt the nicest, most sincere and loving person I have ever met." He said he will making a living amends to me for the rest of his life, and that he knows he is the luckiest man on earth that his family stuck by him.
"I love you with all my heart and I will be honest and forthright and try to live my remaining days with integrity, honesty and love," he wrote.
A long time ago, those words would have moved me to tears and filled me with unrealistic hope. The little cat's feet of my husband's creeping rage is gone, but I am not the same woman I was. I am many things at once: damaged, traumatized, skeptical. I can still feel every throbbing scar on my heart. But I am also healthier, wiser and stronger in many ways.
Today, this woman accepts a long-awaited amends gratefully but cautiously and says inwardly, "We shall see. We shall see."
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