I was already in bed. I had been there for a while when he finally wandered in to sit, beer in hand. He had been wandering in periodically to talk to me while taking a break from whatever he was doing. I can’t even recall now - only recall that each time another can was emptied and placed upon the mantel in front of the chipped and foggy mirror.
At some point, I woke from my half sleep to him sobbing in the chair.
He started telling me I wasn’t special and he wasn’t special and he was a horrible person, as he related a series of stories recounting the horrible things he had done to women in his past. Abuse and screaming and cheating, you name it, I heard it all. He would just end up doing the same to me. The whole scene something from a Hemingway novel. Head bobbing trying to stay focused but too inebriated to be successful. I could barely see him in the dark but I could smell the beer, hear the sobs and the halting breath and sounds of a man well past one too many.
He was in blubbering sloppy drunk mode - talking to himself now trying to justify his past behaviors with the women he had hurt and disrespected. Convincing himself that it was his only recourse and he was the REAL victim. He did what he had to do because of reasons - so many reasons that only made sense to him. Eventually he just passed out in the chair and I fell off to sleep while assuring him, before I did, that everything was cool and I was glad he opened up to me.
The next morning we both woke up in the bed.
The day started late but things just carried on like nothing happened.
To him, nothing had happened. He didn’t remember any of it.
A recovering alcoholic once told me that being a blackout drunk made it easy to continue to be an alcoholic because not remembering meant you didn’t have to be accountable. Everything you did was hearsay and therefore easy to dismiss. Not remembering also made it easier to say and do things without remorse.
The night I couldn’t take anymore of the disrespect, we were both drunk. He was blackout drunk. I didn’t realize this until a few weeks after I had sent him out of my house at 2 in the morning for saying and doing some of the meanest things I’d ever had anyone say to me, let alone someone who called himself my boyfriend. It wasn’t until I was recounting a few of the things he said and why I broke up with him, that I realized he had been blackout - He honestly had no remembrance of why I made him get out of my house and broke everything off. All he remembered was how I ‘made him drive home drunk’
Always the victim.
Looking back, I now realize why he couldn’t remember much about our first date. I never saw anyone drink so many beers so fast. We were having fun, drinking and dancing and playing jukebox games all of which he doesn’t remember. This was the trajectory on which our relationship set off.
We would often joke about the daytime persona vs the nighttime persona. The daytime character was my lover and best friend. The nighttime character was sometimes funny and sexy and silly but more often than not, sad and mean and self destructive; making my nights with him miserable. Then the sun would rise and he was my man again.
Forgiveness became my own kind of blackout.
They say that everyone in that position has to hit rock bottom before being able to deal with their demons but what if someone keeps you from realizing your rock bottom?
We woke up one morning from a wild night and his car was gone.
Just gone.
A series of factors led to this very moment. Running through his very hot brain were thoughts of financial mismanagement, a DUI and the breathalyzer attached to the car ignition, parole officers, inability to recover the car, not being able to get to work or to take his kid to and from school and an impending threat of losing custody of his kid. All this loomed large in the moment of realization - the car was not stolen but repossessed. He looked at me with the distress of all these weights sitting on his brow, visible in his face. He said he didn’t have the money to fix this situation. His stress and fear was staring at me with large black eyes.
Was this rock bottom?
Should it have been his rock bottom?
I volunteered to loan him the large sum of money despite his objections.
He needed his car, right?
I cared about him and what happened to him.
That’s what you do, right?
Looking back at the contention this brought about, I should not have.
I never even got a thank you.
Had I interfered in what should have been a pivot point?
Perhaps all that followed after would have had a different outcome; my best friend still with me and the nighttime guy gone or in process of being reconciled.
There’s no way of knowing now.
And still no way of remembering, come tomorrow.
