Never To Late

I didn’t start out my marriage drinking. I started out dating drinking. I partied quite heavily before I got married, before I met my husband and well while I dated my husband. He however is the polar opposite. He has never done a drug in his life and can count on one hand the number of times he has been drunk. Opposites attract they say. On one of his few times of drinking he decided to play mailbox baseball and fell out of the back of a pickup truck and left one side of his face stuck to the road. Like you could see his skull. When I say he looked like 2 Face from Batman that is not an exageration boys and girls. His recovery was long and this is how messed up and selfish I was. I still needed to get alcohol and he could get it for my friends and I. We were both under 21 but there was a place that would sell to him because I think the little girl who worked there had a crush on him. What did I do, I called him up and asked him if he would go get us beer. He’s layed up in the bed bandaged up and I’m concerned with getting beer to party. What does he do? He gets up and gets it for me. Addict let me introduce you to enabler. At the time I was just doing what teenagers/young adults do, well I thought so. He recovered and his face healed and he doesn’t look like 2 Face anymore. I did not see my behavior as selfish. I asked, he didn’t have to say yes. That really was the beginning of a lot of selfish behavior. It was about me as long as we were doing things I wanted to do, actually as long as wherever we went involved drinking I was usually fine. We didn’t fight much only when he had something to say about my drinking. We had moved in together and the drinking had gotten so out of control that after about a year of living together he looked at me and told me I needed to leave. He couldn’t take it anymore. Whoa there buddy, are you actually giving me consequences for my actions. Uh….. that’s not usually how this works. I drink, you get mad, I say I’m sorry the next day and we are fine. Wash, rinse, repeat cycle. I came to a complete halt and didn’t want to lose him and said I would stop. I would change and that is what I did. It’s amazing when we are faced with real consequences we start to see what we have in front of us. I did this time but this would creep back into my life later on and sometimes we think we are bigger than the consequences. We have more control, we know what we are doing, we are not that stupid. It’s like a weed out in my garden. I planted 48 tomato plants this year. I hope everyone likes salsa. I go out and look and there’s this tiny little weed not doing anything, not hurting anything and they are so small between the plants so i’ll pull them later. Couple days they aren’t that big. Now it’s the weekend and I’ve gotten busy and those weeds need to be pulled but still they are a little tall but not out of control I’ll pull them next week when I have more time. Life happens and next weekend comes and oh great these weeds are out of control and look some of them have actually taken over a couple of the plants and choked the life right out of them. I can’t tell the weed from the plant. That’s how alcohol or any addiction will work in your life. Slowly, gently but all of the sudden it will reach up and choke the life you have right out of you and take everything you love.

That was 25 years ago. I think if I could go back and tell myself to do things a different way to make things easier, would I do that? I would certainly not want to cause the heartache I have caused for the people I love. I know that I would not be the person I am today and through every one of those trials and tribulations, many of them self made, God made me a better wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend and I could not share his love with any of you had I not experienced the things I had. I feel like I may have been asleep at the wheel for quite some time and maybe you do to. It’s never to late. I’ll be 45 this year, my life is just beginning. It would really be a shame if God brought me through everything I’ve been through and all the things I’ve learned to keep them all to myself because I was scared of the opinions of people and thought I was to old to be used.