A Spiritual Battle for My Alcoholic Wife
Her body lay crumpled on the sofa, legs bent, head twisted above a rising urine stench brought about by another vodka binge.
Once proud, she now resigns to the grips of her vice, one so baleful that it has unhinged her dreams and erstwhile pride.
This scene — marked by visceral imagery and accompanied by hints of abstract fascination — finds my wife at her lowest.
Nevertheless, her soul remains.
Even as she mumbles through intoxicated breath, I see beauty, and above all, love, in her pale and worn face.
In that moment, as I’m overtaken by all that is around me, I cannot react outwardly.
However, inwardly my heart grieves as pieces of my spirit dive even lower than her physical state.
And amid this toxicity I absorb her pain and harbor my own, but feel selfish for reeling as I stand sober above her.
Yes, I can care for her needs, provide companionship and even slow her spiral, but I cannot restore dreams or offer a solution to cure the pains which reside among us.
I’ve never known an alcoholic before, though the woman I love has introduced me well to the disease.
And it is a disease worth fighting, especially with her, though the fight itself is exhausting.
Many times, by day’s end, I feel hollow and burdened beyond anything I could’ve imagined.
But I’ll never surrender in the face, and clutches, of addiction.
My thoughts are with those who battle addiction from either side of the substance or drug.
Joshua Broom is a longtime writer and copy editor working most recently with SBNation.com and The Inquisitr. Today’s political climate has drawn him from sports, however, and he strives to champion common sense alternatives to our nation’s plight of political over-correctness.
A version of this Op-Ed previously appeared on Medium.com.
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