The morning was the worst time of the day for me. It started with a hangover. Head pounding, mouth dry, every bone feeling brittle. I wanted to kill myself in the mornings, and I vowed I'd stop drinking. I wanted to wake up one morning not feeling like I might die any second, not having half memories of nightmarish bad behavior. What had I done the night before? Had a drank until I was stupid, my words slurring, stumbling around everywhere? Had I fought with my wife? Had I hit my wife? Had I hit my son? Had I called my son terrible things, contributing to that haunted look in his eyes, that suspicious, haunted look? I couldn't quite remember.
The house was a wreck. We didn't have any money, all the money from whatever odd jobs I could get here and there was drank away, pissed away in shots at the bars and cases of beer from the liquor stores. There was no money. Everything was a wreck, my life was a wreck.
Something had to change, but I couldn't stop drinking. I couldn't stop, not after the hangover had finally drained away and the thought of alcohol didn't make me want to puke. I wanted the oblivion it would bring. I wanted to forget myself and my life for awhile. I wanted to not feel like such a goddamn failure. I knew that I had failed, let everyone down, that things were bad and getting worse. I knew that. I knew I was sinking and taking everyone with me. When would I hit bottom?
My wife was watching T.V. and smoking her cigarettes, her eyes bleary, and she looked at me with thinly veiled hatred and I saw the dark bruising on her face. My son Johnny wasn't here, and I didn't know if it was a school day or not, and if it was I wasn't entirely sure he was at school or just roaming around the streets with his hoodlum friends.
If Johnny was here, when he was here, he shrank away from me and flinched every time I moved, and of course I knew why. I'd hit him so many times, I'd beaten him with belts and two-by-fours. I'd left that kid crumpled and crying on the floor. I was a terrible father. I knew it. A failure at that like everything else.
I got coffee, trying to hold onto the conviction of not drinking. I lit up a cigarette and feared talking to my wife. She didn't always talk to me, giving me the silent treatment. I wondered what it would be like to have a good marriage, to not be like I was, violent and addicted.
"Hi," I said, walking into the living room. She looked at me, a look that was an almost tragic mix of fear and hope and hate, and she didn't say a word. She could be so quiet. Johnny was like that, too. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard him say anything.
I sipped my coffee, wondering if I hunted around could I find some work today. Wondering if I could ever rebuild the shattered trust with my wife, with my son. Maybe this could be the bottom, this morning of this skull busting hangover and the silence that was coming in oppressive waves from my wife.
As the day wore on my resolve to look for work weakened and broke, and my desire for a drink grew stronger. Just one. Just one smooth and cool beer, one warm explosive shot. One. One to smooth the rough edges, to let me off the hook for a moment. Just one moment of oblivion, one tiny little moment to feel like a normal human being, not this mass of cravings and crawling nerve endings.
The bar was dark and cool, and the counter gleamed. I went up to it and could smell the alcohol that permeated the air. I breathed it in and thought, with the last shreds of my resolve, that I could get up and walk out of here and go hunt for a job, something permanent, something that might be able to get us out of the shit hole neighborhood we lived in. But then the bartender came over so friendly and I ordered my beer and my shot and felt the sweet anticipation of their arrival. I felt my mouth start to water. Screw the job and my wife and son, screw that, I wanted this drink and then the next one.
I stumbled out of the bar and headed home, headed to a refrigerator full of beer and a cabinet stocked with Jim Beam and Jack Daniel's. I felt the beginnings of the anger that would explode at whatever convenient target presented itself. Beneath the drunkenness and the anger I felt the familiar disappointment that I had failed again, that I was weak again, that I drank again and the whole cycle would start up again tomorrow with the skull buster of a hangover and the self recriminations and the fragile hope that I could stop drinking and get on the right path.