Broken Toys and Broken Boys

There has been a rash of posts in our "surviving family of alcoholics" blog community about whether to leave, whether to stay, what to do about your children etc. I have pretty thoroughly outlined in my beginning posts on this blog why I stayed. I have always been one to "play the long game" and so after careful analysis of the situation, I decided to stay. As I have ALSO mentioned, this was not a decision I made by myself; I did it in conference with my two sons. We decided to stay. And I had many a conversation with God about it as well - sorry, if that turns off the non-religious but I am a very spiritual being as I have mentioned before. Did I make the right decision?

Most of the time - yes, I think I made the correct decision. Like when instead of creating even more turmoil and misery in my life and my sons' lives by uprooting, I was eventually able to convert our sad, falling down home full of bad memories into a peaceful, clean, spacious, relaxing place to live. When I don't suffer at night from any "guilt" feelings - "if only I had done this or that" kind of stuff - hell, I DID do this and that! When I witness the empathy of my boys towards others' troubles because they have been in those shoes.

But I really have my moments of doubt too. My oldest son is now in intensive therapy for panic and anxiety attacks. This is almost 3 years after my husband/his father died! The initial therapy I had the boys in worked great for the younger son but not for the older apparently. Of course, the older one always maintained he didn't need therapy. I guess he did not need it until now. I am only too happy to provide it for him.

And then this past weekend when I was clearing out and cleaning up our back yard in preparation for workmen to come and bulldoze the place up and lay a new patio I came across something. It was a smashed up toy car. And I remembered this: When I came home from work one day my husband was in one of his awful "mean drunk" states. My youngest son had accidentally broken a tool of his. So, my husband said proudly that he took one of the youngest son's toy cars and smashed it with a rock in front of him so that now "he would know how bad it feels to have one's possessions broken." Wow - oh wow. It was one of those moments. You know - when you really don't quite know how to process it? You know of the profound and deep wrongness of all of this but you just don't know what to do. I remember going into my younger son's room to make sure he was all right. He shrugged and said, "I didn't like that car anyway." I just felt numb and helpless.

Then a few days later, I was out in the back yard and my youngest son came out with a toy car and a rock and started smashing it. I asked him why he was doing that and he told me that it was because he had done something bad and that he was punishing himself. I told him that he should never destroy himself or his possessions because of doing something bad and that his father had been mean and wrong. He said he understood and that he wouldn't do it again. Well, he must have done it again in secret because when I was clearing up the yard, I found these other smashed cars....so he kept on doing it at least for awhile... So - you know - did I make the right decision?

My husband used to work at this huge desk in the garage facing the driveway. My sons and I had a "little game" (what we called it) - would we have "Good Daddy" or "Bad Daddy" tonight? We would know immediately - my husband would look up from his desk at our car driving in and we could see on his face whether he was "good" or "bad". We would always say to each other in the car either "Whew! Good Daddy tonight!" or "Uh-oh, Bad Daddy tonight!" and then we would laugh and soldier on. Jesus-Christ-on-a-crutch how sick and twisted was that - how in the hell did we survive that?

Just leave your alcoholic...just leave them... (btw - the week after my husband died I had Goodwill come and haul that big awful desk away)