Zibby Mag

I wasn’t just afraid that he might die, but that maybe he didn’t love me enough to get sober

By Dana Killion

I don’t remember the first time I chose to stay quiet about my husband’s drinking. But it felt like I’d never considered anything other than silence.. After all, I’d been raised a good girl, and taught that her voice was to be used for agreeable pleasantries. Although I was long past the worst of that stifling standard of womanhood, the “good girl” conditioning had probably colored my view of marriage, or more specifically, helped shape what marital loyalty looked like to me.

Good wives, like good girls, don’t talk about finding their husbands passed out on the floor of the closet or reeking so badly of stale booze in the middle of the night they turn away repulsed. Good wives don’t tell stories of discovering their husbands have been drinking straight from the vodka bottle. Good wives protect their families.

Once I began to fear that booze was a problem, and the man I loved was heading down a dangerous path, I shifted into problem-solving mode. I read the books, perused websites, and had tough conversations.. And I did it, again and again and again, hoping beyond hope, to cut through the fog of what I soon realized was a formidable addiction. And still, I rarely spoke my full truth.

At first my silence was about love and loyalty. As his disease progressed, speaking my truth was pushed lower on the priority list and I assumed the role of project manager of his addiction. There was no time to indulge my angst. There were children to shepherd, a home to manage, a business that demanded me. Instead, I pushed for therapy. I searched for new words that would get through to him when the old words didn’t.. I found new data, programs, books—presented anything that might change his path..

Despite my efforts, the booze was never gone for long—a month, sometimes two, but he was always back at it, secretly, as if I wouldn’t be able to smell the stench of vodka as it metabolized in his body, or notice his glassy eyes. That’s when the guilt took over. My words weren’t effective. My love wasn’t effective. Surely, if he loved me, he could see what this was doing to us, I thought. And I would go back to my task with new words, or new hopes, or a new way to express my love, always searching for something that would turn the tide. And grappling with fear. Fear of car accidents, illness, death.

I wasn’t just afraid that he might die, but that maybe he didn’t love me enough to get sober. And that fear kept me silent, too. I didn’t yet know sobriety was about him learning to love himself.

While he didn’t want to face the reality that he was an alcoholic, I didn’t want to face the reality that my love might not be enough. Keeping myself in the busyness of seeking solutions—instead of venting or raging or even considering my own mental state—seemed essential. There was no room for me to collapse into my own hole of pain and still protect our life. Someone needed to be the grown-up.

I was only vaguely aware at moments of the parent-child dynamic that seemed to be forming in our marriage. Moments where my sixty-year-old husband seemed to be channeling a fourteen-year-old boy being drunk for the first time while claiming he wasn’t and thinking his mother had never smelled beer before. But alcoholism brings out the worst in all of us. The addict lies and sneaks around and behaves irresponsibly. The sober partner monitors and snoops and sets rules. And you both resent the hell out of it all.

When the burdens became too great, I sought professional help, but the messages they delivered were always about the addict. “Have you suggested a support group?” “How are you enabling him?” “You didn’t cause it. You can’t fix it.”

In other words, shut up about your needs. Even the professionals were tacitly encouraging my silence, suggesting I was unimportant in the scheme of things. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I thought I was unimportant, too.

Good wives don’t talk about finding their husbands passed out on the floor of the closet or reeking so badly of stale booze in the middle of the night they turn away repulsed

Through the many years of our dance with addiction, I was only vaguely aware of the personal toll this was taking on me. After all, when there is a life to save, is anything else important? My needs and my emotional state were simply selfish blips low on the list of considerations when I dared to feel something. Now and then the tug of regret and longing and emptiness pulled at me, thoughts I would discard like used tissues not worthy of scrutiny.

Back to protective silence I would go.

After two decades of pleading and tears and love, I finally saved him from the self-destructive path he was on. But oh, what a price I paid. With sobriety came the knowledge that he’d been leading a secret sex life. I was punched in the gut for a second time, uncertain how much of my marriage had been an illusion.

By then, my voice was reduced to a whisper so low I no longer recognized it. This new truth replaced what little I had left with shock and shame and fear and anger and revulsion. And silence again served as my protection, shielding me from absorbing more pain, even if it was just my own pain reflected in someone else’s eyes. Daring to speak would risk losing myself completely to grief.

Eventually the alternating pain and numbness became too much for even therapy to solve, and I needed a way to exorcise it from my heart. I tentatively began to journal as I contemplated my path. My husband was sober now, but his betrayals had decisively broken my heart. Emotions oozed onto the pages slowly. At first it was nothing more than disjointed questions of “Why?” and indignant cries of “How could he!” written on paper smudged with tears. Slowly the words formed sentences, then paragraphs, and then chapters, taking on a life of their own.

Untill, finally, a manuscript. A manuscript that held my truth and my voice. The voice I’d held back for decades. The voice that was starting to heal me.

What now?

Those who only know addictive relationships from the outside view them with pity, thinking to themselves how awful it must be and wondering why I didn’t leave. They fail to understand the pull of my love or the strength of the hope that kept me alive. They don’t understand that there are also tidal waves of adoration. They don’t understand the guilt that seized me at the thought of leaving, fearing what would happen to him. Nightmares were consumed with images of the man I loved descending into addiction irretrievably and my feeling responsible.

I had decisions to make that only seem clear cut to those who are not emotionally broken.. I knew there was no future to salvage for us, but my heart had other ideas. Was it my love or my silence or my history of fighting for sobriety that held me in limbo?

Eventually, I saw that this wasn’t a question of whether or not I stay married, or try to publish my book. Those weren’t terribly complex on the surface. Instead, I had a larger, more important choice to make, a choice I hadn’t made in decades.

The real question was if I loved myself enough to finally find my voice and shed my silence.

I chose myself.

After I ended my marriage and told my story, I discovered that I have nothing to fear—not my voice or my vulnerability.. Those were the greatest strengths I possessed all along.

Dana Killion is an author of mystery and memoir addressing the shadows that women live in, keep secret, and store away. Needing a new kind of female protagonist, Dana created Andrea Kellner—and a book series centered around her unrelenting ability to confront deceit. In the midst of her own turmoil, Dana became compelled to shed further light on the shadows—this time her own, and that of every woman who has set aside her life for another. Dana’s debut memoir, Where the Shadows Dance, shares her deeply personal story of love, lies, and leaving.