Note – I don’t know what other people experienced, I can only speculate from a few sentences in an email and a small amount of secondhand information. I am still in a place where no one directly involved will speak to me, and as painful as that is, I’m learning to respect their space and their process. Mostly I respect their pain and trauma and I won’t attempt to speak for them, if it comes across that way, I apologize. Maybe in time I will earn the trust, respect and opportunity to have those conversations, to have more understanding, but there are no guarantees and I can only do work on myself. With that being said, I am in no way trying to minimize the pain, heartbreak and sorrow of anyone else involved, I am simply trying to make sense of it as best I can, to heal my own pain, to find my own forgiveness, so that I can begin to put my life back together.
Addict, addiction, alcoholic. These words carry massive societal stigmas and stereotypes. They are hard words to swallow, even harder words to admit about yourself. Add in mental health struggles and a complete breakdown, not the picture of strength and stability most of us hope to be. But I am these things, I had a complete and total breakdown that has cost me nearly everything I love. I am guilty as charged of being the person who was an advocate for everyone else’s mental health but refused to listen to my own advice, my own friends and my own gut feeling. Maybe something I write here will help someone else, I believe it is helping me, for some reason this is the most clear, honest and open way for me to communicate my thoughts, so please bear with me.
The thoughts of what I have done and said in this state terrify me. I’ve never been here before, I have no experience to draw from and no tools to resolve it. So I’m doing what I can, what feels right, what I can do to try and untwist my heart and gut and find some peace in all of this. How did my evening go from having fun with friends in a bar, to completely unhinged and out of control? How did my life go from being so on-track and full of hope for the future to so off the rails in just a handful of weeks? How did I do something do horrible, the people I thought would be there to pick me up out of the dirt have completely turned their backs and shut me out? Mental health and addiction are a mother fucker, and it seems when you need the most help, is the moment you feel most alone.
I guess I’ll rewind. For better or worse, I’ve been abusing alcohol at one level or another since I was in High school. I’ve had periods in my life where I kept things reasonable, and I’ve had periods in my life where I was on nightly binges and benders. I’ve been able to stop for 6-9 month stretches to train for a race and I’ve had my family attempt to intervene and try to have me get help multiple times. I’ve been arrested for a DUI (not convicted, long story there) and I’ve been there to help friends get out of their own jams. Bottom line is, I’ve had a problem a long time, and I always justified things by distorting who and what I believed an addict or alcoholic to be. I didn’t need to drink in the morning to function, I was able to quit when I needed to (almost always for some external reason or validation) but I never openly admitted to having a problem. As I rewind my summer and take a hard, honest look, I realize I was slowly slipping, I was allowing myself a few more drinks than usual, Amy was giving me a hard time that my beer belly was getting too bit, and I was getting depressed about my physical condition. I even remember telling myself that once ranch season ended I would sober up for a month. But I couldn’t have foreseen the month that was about to unfold, and I was in no condition to handle it. I finally ‘wasn’t ok’ I could ‘suck it up’, and I knew it, but I didn’t know how to stop, I didn’t know how to ask for help.
DESTABLIZATION
Life was good. I left Logan International Airport on the 18th of July happier and more content than I had ever been. After 12 years of struggles in my personal, professional, spiritual and emotional lives, I finally saw a path forward that I was so happy with. I had a relationship
I never believed could happen, and I was finally ready, willing and able to make sacrifices to meet someone in the middle and truly share a life with them. The universe was finally showing me where and how I needed to go, but it wasn’t perfect, but every obstacle seemed manageable.
This summer had been tough, Amy lost her Grandmother Ann, her best friend, mentor and inspiration in Mid-March and then two days before I left New England, her other grandmother, Lena, passed away. During the same time frame, I had unexpectedly lost a lifelong mentor in mid-June and then a close ski patrol friend my own age in mid-July. Despite the grief we were both experiencing, we had had a really great time with her family in New England and I felt closer to Amy than I ever had before. She had decided to stay another week to support her sister and family and to process her own grief over the loss of her grandmother, I went home to deal with dogs and life etc…
The next few weeks got hard for us both. I recognize in hindsight how much I was neglecting myself as I did a very poor job of trying to help Amy process her grief and sadness. At the same time, I started drinking more to cope with some additional stresses that had little or nothing to do with us or our relationship. I’m not going to go into personal details here, as I am only half the story and her part is not mine to tell, but suffice it to say, we ran headlong into our first real challenge of our two year relationship, and we pushed each other away rather than look to each other for support. As the stresses built in my life, I realized that some of the tools I had historically used to ground and reset myself weren’t available in my location and in my desire to help her, I refused to think some space might be best for both of us. I looked for new tools and other things to help. I found some, but lacked others, in hind-sight, I should’ve had the courage to leave, to go reset in the desert and let out all this angst but I had this tremendous fear that I had to be there and support her.
On August 19th, it all starting unraveling faster. I tried to tell myself I was hanging on but in my gut, in my heart I knew I was losing control faster and faster. Over the next 96 hours I would lose three friends from various times and walks of my life. One to Covid, two to suicide. Any one of these deaths would’ve been hard to take but the three of them completely collapsed my internal support system. I needed help. I remember two distinct times, I think there are others I have forgotten where people asked me if I was doing ok in the days leading up to my breakdown. I remember both times telling them I was fine, I was getting by, and knowing in my gut I needed help. Knowing I didn’t know how to say I’m not ok. Knowing I was falling apart, and truly feeling like neither I or anyone else could do anything to fix it, I just needed to weather the storm. Other people had faced much tougher times, hell I had faced tougher times. I just needed to focus on work, to make it a few more weeks and then I would have a break and an opportunity to go take care of myself.
I remember being handed a beer in the late afternoon of the 26th. It was Thursday and not uncommon to drink a beer or two or three as we wrapped up the last few things of the day and got ready for the live music, the cattle roping and good times. I remember drinking a few more before dinner watching people rope, I remember a couple glasses of wine at dinner. I remember shots of whiskey and tequila in the saloon to salute my lost friends. I remember more beers, I remember some lively discussion with the band after they stopped at 10. I remember more shots and then It’s just black.
From here out, I have no idea if my memories are real or manufactured. I will just share what I know. I have snapshots. Maybe not even snapshots, screen grabs from a high speed video might be a better way to say it. I was at the house. Amy saying some things to me that still resonate and hurt. I remember panic that she was leaving me. I was losing control. Then we were outside. On the ground. And then I was in the parking lot. Trying to leave. Trying to get access to my guns. I remember just wanting to be gone from the world. I didn’t want to hurt. Then two friends were there. A scuffle, arguments, knives, keys and other things taken from me. My truck blocked in my another to prevent me from driving. Then I’m back at the house. Being talked farther back from the ledge. Someone stroking my head and telling me to calm down, telling me how my trauma was minor compared to theirs. Completely devaluing and discarding the pain I was in. And then I was awaken. Tally was whining to go to the bedroom, the door was shut. I let her in, someone else was in the bed, not Amy, not me. My dog was there. I let Tally in and went back to the couch. I awoke to broken glass, completely unsure of anything except Amy was gone. I found my keys, packed my things and left.
Some of the details have been filled in for me, and I’m excluding them here, not because I’m avoiding responsibility or accountability, but simply to acknowledge, I don’t remember, most are still blanks. I am sharing only my experience and thoughts. I’m terrified of losing control like that. I’m terrified of the black spots. I’m terrified of what I said, what I did and who I hurt. I may never have these answers, I may never be given the opportunity to repair the damage I’ve done. It’s a tremendous burden to bear and a painful obstacle to overcome as I learn the process of forgiving myself. I’ve never allowed myself forgiveness for anything, and now I am forced to learn it the hard way.
I am approaching 30 days sober. Truth be told, after the first 4 days of physical withdrawals, it hasn’t been that hard. All I have to do is think of the look on her face and the pain I brought to this world and the thought of alcohol in my life is easily dismissed. 30+ years of using it to numb my pain and I can’t think of anything good that came from it that couldn’t have been there if I were sober.
Alcohol is the enabler for a lack of control on my part. It took away my ability to reason, to think logically and to control my emotional outburst. It allowed my anger to be resolved in extremely unhealthy ways and it opened a door to me doing things I abhor, to being a person I never wanted to be and certainly wouldn’t want to be around. I accept and understand the anger and pain of those I hurt, I hope with some time, I will be allowed to make real apologies and do some work to repair what I broke.
The hard drinking, fatalistic, tough guy I pretended to be is gone. I am reinventing myself from the ground up and it a long, sad, lonely and depressing process. At the same time I am experiencing emotions I’ve never felt and seeing the world through a different, and clearer lens than I ever have. The saddest part for me is that I may never be allowed to share the best version of myself with the person I love most.
I had never blacked out before. I certainly have had some unclear memories of night before, but this is different, and it scared the shit out of me, it scared the shit out of the most important people in my life. I’ve never been so ashamed, so embarrassed and so angry at myself. It won’t ever happen again.
