Becomes the quiet slip.

Well, well, well no post from me in over two weeks.

This is certainly not what I envisioned or planned when I started this blog.

Maybe I didn’t think the words would come easily but I certainly thought they would come more frequently.

I suppose as a reader my silence could seem to mean one of two things:

My husband’s drinking has gotten so bad that I am in full survival mode and writing a blog is the least of my concerns.

Or…

My husband has QUIT drinking and we are now working together to heal and rebuild our lives.

And yet, my silence means neither of these.

What it means – and perhaps it is more sinister than the obvious danger of life with an alcoholic – is that I am slipping.

Slipping down that slope of someone else’s compulsive drinking where at the bottoms awaits apathy.

Lethargy.

Indifference.

Passivity.

Listlessness.

We wives spend so long, work so hard, digging our nails into that muddy hill, desperately trying to stop the slide. We grab frantically at roots as we slip down, jam our toes into the hard Earth as we try to will ourselves to stop but it seems eventually the gravity of his alcoholism prevails.

What awaits me at the bottom?

Nothing.

Nothing as in no dreams, no passion, no excitment for life.

What awaits me, as Henry David Thoreau said, is a quiet desperation.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”