“You deserve better than this…” he said while praying to the porcelain God, “you don’t deserve to put up with my shit!” As she feebly cleaned the rug from his stomach’s weakness, she wept, she cursed, she yelled. Little did she know how much he consumed tonight; little did he know what this situation triggered for her. The memory of her own drunken father snapped back to her mind like a vicious boomerang aiming for her sanity. She was on the unfortunate side of the 10% of children that grow up in an alcoholic’s household and now it seemed that one had found his way into her marriage.
“Why does this keep happening to me?!?” she asked God on her stain-remover soaked knees. Substance abuse was an all too familiar issue that she had unfortunately grown accustomed to. She was too accustomed to the challenge of removing an alcohol stain from a carpet.
With each scrub, she was transported to the memory of the last time her father came home drunk. Her father had excessively drank and came home blacked out. He had passed out, face down, on the family room’s carpet. There, he regurgitated that night’s indulgence. Suffocating, he began to choke. An innocent girl’s frail hands attempted to roll her father onto his side, trying to save his life that he threw on the floor. With three failed efforts to turn his head horizontal, she began to yell. She yelled like she never yelled before. But it was too late.
Between her husband and her father, the majority of her life was spent surrounded by alcohol abuse. First by chance, this by choice. A choice she regretted. A choice she wished she could have back. A choice she faced the consequences to every day of her life. When the minister said, “for better or for worse,” this is not what she had envisioned.
She was exhausted. She stared at the damage done. The carpet was soaked in spent beer. There was no chance at saving it. It was the first purchase the two of them made as a married couple for their home. The entire room reeked of regret, both of his mistake and her circumstance. Tears screamed from her eyes as words wept from her lips, “this ends now.” Grasping at what little strength she had left, she rose to her feet, like a phoenix, from her alcohol stained knees. Calmly, she strided towards the bathroom where her defeated husband knelt.
The bathroom, filled with the stench of the night, was nearly silent. The only sound was the flickering bathroom light. As it buzzed, the silence between them was broken by two words. Two words that will haunt him relentlessly. Two words that changed both of their lives forever.
“I’m leaving.”
The next sound he heard was the soft clink of a promise she left on the counter beside his sunken head. He didn’t try to beg, no, he knew what he had done and what needed to be done. He loved her. He loved her enough to know what was best for her… and it wasn’t him.
The ignition of her car turned over as a page in his book-of-life did the same. Jealousy grew in his mind towards the transmission of her car as she put it in reverse. Something he wished he could do to this forgettable but all too memorable night.
As his marriage drove away, those two words echoed in his mind. They were tattooed on his brain. The defeat in her voice. Oh, the defeat in her voice. He whimpered, “I don’t know how to fix this. Why do I keep doing this?” With no answer, another question was presented: “How can I end this?”
“End.” That was the word that lingered in his mind. “End.” The word, but small, was large enough to suffocate him. “End.” This needed to end.
He struggled to stand up but his intoxication won the battle. He tripped on his own foot, his head crashed into the mirror and he regressed to the bathroom floor. Defeated yet again, he laid on his back, fixating on the ceiling. Again, he used the last of his strength to stand. When his eyes began to focus, through the jagged cracks in the glass, he saw the hollow shadow of a man. Regurgitation dripped from his nostrils, eyes blood shot and now blood was protruding from his forehead. He wiped his brow and gawked at the blood that tainted his already filthy hands. Then his eyes fell from the reflection in the glass and landed on the refraction in the ring.
He picked up what was left of his relationship with two fingers and calmly placed the ring in his left palm. Pondering, he looked at the soap soaked ring. Then he clasped his fist gently but firm. He knew what needed to be done. For a while, he had been weighing the decision. But now… now the decision was made.
Thud… Thud… Thud… He limped across the house to his desk, nearly knocking over a lamp in the process. He collapsed in his chair as the air hissed out of the leather he sat on. “Click” the light above his desk turned on revealing a cluttered surface. Lifting pieces of paper and coffee mugs, he searched for his notebook. Then he found it. Nestled under an empty jewelry box.
Seeing what seemed to be 3 pens and unsure which was the real one, he aimed for the one in the middle. It was her pen that he borrowed. Her pen that wrote so many love notes to him just to fall on deaf ears. Another “click” and the pen was ready to write.
Silent, he sat frozen with their relationship flashing in front of his eyes. A few times he started to write and then stopped. Finally, he wrote three words. Three words that would be remembered as his last. Three words that only she would understand.
“I’m leaving too.”