You're right, it's a monster.
A monster that can take on my forms, may ruin your life, worse kill you, or even just distort it to all living hell and leave one deeply hurt from broken relationships. Still a monster and a beast. My father became a foster child cause his father was an alcoholic (this was the 40s and kids weren't taken from their home easily), my father after he retired, and a sudden health shock took to drinking too much, and I watched it hurt theirs, almost to the point of destroying it.
I tried to understand it then. I was living with them as the youngest in my family. He never acted out, but they were so far gone from each other. Emotionally it was destroying my mother, I knew her love of him. She'd avoid him in the evening, not from fear of violence or abuse, but for it being unbearable for her to watch. I'd sit with him, often just to almost mediate, if things arose about his drinking. He'd deny his amount, she'd exaggerate them. No child wants to be the one between parents, found myself in that place. Maybe helped, I was an adult by this time, but I won't deny the emotions/hurt either.
He never became sober; nor was his death caused by alcoholism.... but it stings, where would his life have been?
Somewhere in that time, since then and now, I've taken up the cause. I used to have endless nights of reckless abandonment, is what I call them, maybe torn from grief, not learning my lessons, or thinking this won't happen to me. However, I cut the cloth of how, it's arrived at my door. I embraced it foolishly to start with. But that's how it creeps in. I had friends who would tell me. I would always find the story, but this is not me, I have not done these things. And, I hadn't. All of our lives are different.
Took me years to see in myself, and have never taken the raw pledge to become truly sober since, when someone I once loved was losing her father to cancer, and I was doing things I could not accept in myself. When I look back, I'm truly in awe, I never lost that friendship entirely. Maybe because she had her own story with addiction and a very empathetic soul. She told me, I was hitting my bottom, and she was damn right.
Years later, I did learn to taper amounts, I could control some. But even if I have escaped the worst of emotional turmoil from it, I keep feeling inside myself, I say that 'now' when my life is not upside down, or reeling in emotional hurt. Blind, dumb, foolish in a way. My family recently had a shocking death in the family, I know I took one night for myself to let myself "release", and the next day I thought to myself, what if this was my mother who died? The only one, who I feel really binds our family together. What kind of response would I have had?
I've done it before quitting drinking, but it was a temporary idea, 100 days. I remember the energy and health I found, but that was years ago now. Everything I have learned over the years, from the broken family histories, and no longer wanting that demon controlling my emotions/heart, looking for clarity, nor wanting the future it could bring, or broken relationships. I had made a decision a couple months ago to finally place myself towards looking to sobriety, and you could say my cousin's death, the hurt I saw in family (mental health related, suicide and not addiction), but feeling to myself how deeply I can't watch this, and seeing 'what if' this was my funeral. (Edit here forgetting to mention: the time is now to quit)
Congratulations on your 16 years. Be proud of yourself, it took courage and love of life to escape that demon, monster.
