Broken Glass, Blood, and Vomit: Why Not to Protect an Addict

Warning: This post is very dark and very personal. My professor wrote "This piece is one of the best essays I have read in a long time." After sharing it with my ex-husband's other ex, she has convinced me to share it. My ex-husband recently killed a friend in an automobile accident.

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Melissa Beckwith

12/12/14/ Garrett Vail
Multi-Mode Essay

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Broken Glass, Blood, and Vomit: Why Not to Protect an Addict

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The past has a way of coming back to remind one of what Hell really looks like. My ex husband's cold, unemotional mugshot has been appearing in news articles, social media, and the local news since the week before Thanksgiving. He has the same cold and glazed stare that he had the day he put a gun to my head. His friend may have died in a tragic accident, but my ex is undoubtedly only considering the affect this accident might have on his own life. He shows no remorse, no regret, no emotion at all. My fear is that his family will work to have this covered up and forgotten just as all of his other indiscretions have been. I’m concerned that he will continue to go on with his life without consequence and without the intervention that he has desperately needed for years. I’m worried that he will continue to affect my life from a distance with every big mistake and poor decision that he makes. Unfortunately, the effects of alcoholism and drug addiction hurt more than just the user and the effects on other victims don’t always just go away when a victim removes themselves from the situation.

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When I see the mugshot with his bloodshot and glazed eyes, I remember the sound of breaking glass as he swung his father’s handgun to the side and smashed the coffee pot. I remember the blood running down my fingers as I cut my hands scrambling, trying to pick up the glass pieces as I shook. I remember wondering how such a small cut could bleed so much. I remember reaching for the dish towel to wrap around my hand when I heard the click of the gun and the way his breathing changed to slow ragged breaths when he pointed it at me. Most of all I remember that far off gaze with no emotion and the smell of cheap beer in the vomit that he didn’t even have the decency to throw up into the nearby kitchen sink. These type of flashbacks are nothing new for myself or for his other more recent ex, though they had, until recently, dwindled down to just rare and brief startling moments for myself. Both his more recent ex and I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, a condition most commonly associated with soldiers who’ve experienced unthinkable tragedies at war (10 Common Misconceptions About PTSD). I feel that that is a perfect description of what we’d both been through. We both survived a tragic life for a period of time in a losing battle against a significant other’s addiction to drugs and alcohol.

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I spent over six years-- from the time I was 15 years old until I was nearly 22-- assisting my ex and his family with covering up his addictions. When an addiction first begins, it’s normal for friends and family to rationalize the dependency and protect the dependent person (Arnold). Originally, it was his mother, sister, and I hiding it from his grandfather and father. When he was arrested for possession of alcohol and drug paraphernalia as a minor, I stood by his sister and mother and lied to his father about whom the items belonged too. We blamed it on a friend of his. I was raised to be honest and had a very hard time with covering up his addictions with lies, but I had to help his mother make things better for him. I was brainwashed to believe that hiding his addictions would help him.  

Years later, I was living in Hell with an unpredictable addict who cared about no one, but himself. It was one o’clock in the morning on a Sunday, when he stumbled into the house slamming the door and sending our three dogs into a barking and growling fury. He shut himself in the bathroom. I was tired and it was one o’clock in the morning, so I fell back asleep. That was a mistake. It was approximately three o’clock when I was yanked awake by my hair and dragged across the floor in the dark. The manner in which my hair was held gave me no chance to fighting without causing harm to my head and neck. The dogs bailed off the bed behind my body, their nails tapping the floor as they paced behind me. The pain, led me to believe my scalp was going to be yanked from my skull. The smooth wood-laminate flooring allowed my body to be dragged easily across without causing my body harm. A low throated grumble came from my ex’s dog as he considered attacking his own person. I was dragged to the bathroom and dumped onto a wet floor. “If you, if you were a good wife, you would check on me to make sure I didn’t drown in my puke”, he stammered forcefully. “Now clean it up!”

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To help an addict get better, I had to be a good, patient wife. I had to be there when he was sick. I had to put off my plans and dreams to tend to him. Or so I was lead to believe. An addict’s spouse tends to become more preoccupied with the problems of the user than with her own health and well-being. The spouse very often denies their own interests, hobbies, and friends in order to focus on the ill person (Arnold). I stopped sleeping whenever he went out, in fear that my ex would come home and choke and suffocate on his own vomit or that he would fall and hit his head on the cement stairs on the way in or even the toilet while throwing up. I stopped eating regular meals and lost weight. I stopped talking to friends and I lost a great deal of interest in my horses and spent a great deal of time, when he wasn’t home, just laying in bed. I was horribly depressed and anxious over all the possibilities. I finally asked for a divorce while sitting in the passenger seat of his truck, parked in our driveway. His intoxicated response, “The only way out of this marriage is in a pine box”, came only days before he put a gun to my head. I think back on that day in the truck and am horrified that in all those years, I never considered the possibility of an accident while he was driving under the influence. Driving under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol was something he did almost daily.

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The effects of living with an addict can last months and even years. It had been six months since I had removed myself from Hell, when I accidently knocked a glass off the counter in my new home. I remember my chest feeling tight as glanced around in pure panic, praying that I didn’t hurt his head with the sound of the crash. I scrambled to clean up the glass, remembering his staggering figure, his slumped shoulders, and his anger from the last time I dropped and broke a glass while he had a hangover. “You stupid bitch! Can’t you do anything right?! My head is killing me and you’re out here breaking glasses, ON PURPOSE!” He’d accused. It was several seconds before I remembered that he didn’t live in my new home. He wasn’t going to appear in the doorway. I didn’t need to panic and rush to clean up the glass and hide the evidence that I had made a mistake. It was then that I stood back up, grabbed another glass, smashing it on the floor purposely and then walked away from the mess. Looking back now, that moment --my reaction to breaking a glass-- was one of the first signs that I had PTSD and I’d ignored it, allowing him to affect my life even more. People who develop PTSD were inherently more susceptible to the disorder than others, often exhibiting prior signs of mental illness, such as anxiety and depression. After a traumatic event, the possible onset of PTSD can be exacerbated by coping with it inappropriately (10 Common Misconceptions About PTSD). I was not diagnosed and treated for PTSD until nearly a year and a half later while dealing with him in court, trying to remove myself from the mortgage on the house--an issue I am still dealing with in court several years later.

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The effects of alcoholism and drug addiction hurt more than just the user and the effects on other victims don’t just go away when a victim removes themselves from the situation. After I left, my ex had a baby with another woman and then threatened them both with a gun in a drunken and drug induced rampage. The scene was narrated over a smartly place call to 911, that had undoubtedly saved their lives and yet no charges were ever pressed. She and her son are safe in another state and he has no parental rights at this time. My ex’s family and some of his friends have portrayed him to the news as a great friend and family man that made a mistake, driving with just over the legal blood-alcohol limit allowed and hitting a dear friend who was riding his bike in the middle of the road. I wish I could say that this tragedy will result in something good for him and that he will finally get the help he’s needed to cope with his addictions. Unfortunately, I think that this tragedy will disappear as if it never happened. His family will protect him with their excuses and their lies as they have always done. I fear that this tragedy will just become another little forgotten bump on his life path and that the death of his friend will be just that, just an unfortunate accidental death. It makes me wonder, sadly, how many more lives his choices will affect in years to come.  

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Work Cited

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“10 Common Misconceptions about PTSD”, X-Ray Technician Schools, March 6, 2011, WEB, December 12, 2014

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Arnold, McKayla, “The Effects of Addiction on Family and Friends”, Drug and Alcohol Addiction Recovery Magazine, November 19, 2008, WEB, December 12, 2014

#survivor #jeffreymoran #jeffmoran #jeffmoranwashingtonmaine Jeff Moran Washington maine