last night/this morning

Someone called the police. They drove into the apartment complex where we were visiting her friend just as I was driving out, she had been that loud and obnoxious. They didn’t stop me, and I didn’t stop either, and I was very thankful for the GPS on my dashboard because she passed out/fell asleep as I was taking her home. It was 2:20 am, dark, and I don’t know Oregon City that well at all, but the GPS took me right to her place. I had gathered up all of her stuff; her cell phone, purse, money, cigarettes, and her herself, and repeatedly told her I had it all -"it’s right here", and I got her home with not problems.

She woke up enough to want to smoke a cigarette, and I found her keys and opened the door. I was intending to pour her into her bed – and leave, nothing else – but she wasn’t so far out of it that she couldn’t insist, almost violently, "No! Not here! I can take care of myself, now that I’m here. Go home!", and I did, driving the exact speed limit the whole way, quietly, no music out of my high power car stereo, a little paranoid about that police car I saw.

I didn’t even sniff the beer that she had in a road coffee cup – I poured it out, in fact, at her friend’s house, because after that vodka double at that noisy bar, she didn’t need any more to drink. Disturbingly, that tall glass of clear liquid with bubbles on ice and tall straws reminded me very clearly of the drinks my dad used to pour for himself, after mom died, although his, being self-poured, were mostly gin with a finger or two of tonic water, and were red plastic tall glasses instead of clear glass.

One thing I’ve noticed about "real" alcoholics, her, is that they drink and keep far more than I can; they don’t barf. Their body doesn’t reject the poison. This is good, in a way; my car didn’t get all messed up (my beautiful clean car). It is not good, in fact, it’s very bad, if you don’t puke up that poisonous stuff when you’ve drank too much. I was very careful, in those drinking days, not to drink too much; I hate throwing up, and I am soo glad I didn’t have to clean up any of that, or have my car defiled by it.

The change in her was sort of disturbing: once she stepped foot in that house.  Her survival mode kicked in and she woke up enough to nearly violently push me out – "not here!", although my intentions were to put her to bed and to leave right away. She is on very thin ice there; that guy is about ready to push HER out the door, and she knows it, somewhere.

I have questioned myself: am I "enabling her?", but it wasn’t I who gave her $20 to go out drinking, it was the guy she lives with, who, after her gave her the cash, took his pillow and blanket to his truck and drove off to sleep in his truck somewhere. He must be nearly to the point of throwing her out, I would think, leaving his own house to not be there when she came home, drunk as possible. I’ve met him, talked to him (I am somewhat surprised he didn’t hit me or shoot me – he is a hunter). Of course, I didn’t reveal most of the details – it is a "need to know" thing, and I don’t need him to know the whole of it. Last night/this morning, I was just her escort, her chaperone, making sure nothing bad happened to her, because, despite what she thinks, she’s very vulnerable when she’s black-out drunk. I’m not enabling her – I didn’t give her any money because I don’t have any to spare for that – but I kind of am enabling her, keeping her safe, ordering drinks in bars for her when by all rights, the bartenders should and mostly do refuse to serve her.

She is a hard-core alcoholic; she has been through detox a few times, and has been to AA meetings a few times, and has a tape loop running through her mind on auto-play when she’s drunk about why she shouldn’t drink, telling her she’s a worthless piece of shit, that no one loves her, that one more drink wouldn’t hurt her, that is ready to run the tape of why I’m (or whoever she’s with) going to take advantage of her. She knows what she really needs to do, to stop drinking altogether, that there is no "one drink but it’ll be ok" step between sober and black-out drunk. That’s not the minefield you might think it is, but I have learned through experience where most of the mines are, and I don’t raise my voice or tell her anything that can light that fuse and blow it all up in my face.

That did happen once, when she came here one time; I kicked her out and she had to call the guy she lives with to come and get her (and wasn’t that fun, eh?). This was last year, and I was drinking too, a very bad idea. She has a long history of blowing up at the guy she’s with and calling the police – she has sent a few guys to jail, because the system is heavily weighted on the woman’s side of domestic troubles, and the guy usually ends up "the bad guy". I don’t need or want that to happen to me, and have all the incentive in the world to prevent it from happening to me.

I don’t want it on my head that she got raped and killed during one of the black-outs – drunk women are very vulnerable, and drunks can turn on you in a heartbeat and fuck YOU over. Hence my cat-like care in talking to her, my pussy-footing around anything that might drive her off the edge, and my not drinking at all when this sort of thing happens.

I gave up the booze entirely when I started taking these meds – the potential for screwing up myself worse is very high if I drink anything, and I use the meds to keep myself from drinking anything… although I have had a few since I started the meds. ONE, just one, can of beer, or flavored malt-liquor, or airline bottle of bourbon, the couple of times I have had a drink, since I began this stuff, and I generally feel no need to have even one, most of the time. I think I’ve been really "good" about that, and face it, I crashed the car in ’98 because I was drunk and angry and didn’t care, and I thank God that I did not hurt anyone else, because I’d have to live with that, and I don’t want to.

In not an unreal sense, I am a kind of recovering alcoholic myself, although I was a different kind of drinker than she is, one who stayed home alone drinking (except that one night in 98 when I drove like a madman and almost killed myself). I did kill the car, and I did nearly die, severely injured and in a coma, after I hit my head so hard in the crash that I damaged my brain, permanently.

If that wasn’t an incentive not to drink, well, I’d deserve to die, I think, because obviously I’m too stupid to live. I would like to think I am not stupid, and can "prove" that to myself by not drinking, at all. I did black out, that night, and cost myself 45 days of memories and consciousness, and I really do feel like I got a second chance and most definitely do not want to blow it. I was very badly injured – they told me my brain split into three pieces, and I am fortunate or lucky to even be here, relatively undamaged, not crippled, and able to live

by myself.

Very lucky.

Very very fortunate, not to have killed myself or hurt anyone else, that rainy night in 1998.

Maybe I was fortunate so that I could be here when a friend needs me. Maybe I’m here to tell you about my past, to be an example of what not to do.  This cannot be an FO entry because of that.

Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw that I am here now; it most certainly could have been worse.

Am I enabling her, or keeping her safe?

Or letting her be worse.

That is a big question, THE question. What’s the right thing to do?

 

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