Author's Note: Thank you all so much for reading! The title of this interlude comes from lyrics to the song "Into the Ocean" by Blue October.
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Interlude 8 - Into the Ocean, End It All
Erik
Early in December, Josephine was invited to go to a close friend's sleepover birthday party. And in spite of the decidedly bitter reality that I'd have to stay entirely alone in my house for the first time in more than ten years, I strongly encouraged her to go, attempting to build up her excitement for the occasion from the moment she opened the invitation letter.
But while perhaps I'd opted to express that encouragement more adamantly than I would have under other circumstances, my instincts told me that my daughter was very much in need of the experience. Regardless of my own loneliness, the fact remained that she needed to spend a bit of time away from home, needed to spend time with her friends and see for herself that life could and must continue in the wake of our loss. Because thus far, even in spite of everything that her grief counselor had said, she had been stubbornly resisting anything that brought her even the smallest amount of happiness. Now that several weeks had separated us from Christine's death, from her funeral and all that had followed, I wanted my daughter to understand that she couldn't just stop living life altogether. She needed to learn to keep going. It would certainly be a painful process to try - that was inevitable, the harsh truth about our grief that we couldn't afford to ignore any longer - but it was also an absolute necessity; she had to understand that it was actually possible to survive the worst of it.
She couldn't end up like me.
Because for my part, I was still struggling more often than not in order to maintain a relatively stable facade, to carry on if only for my daughter's sake. No matter what, the last thing that I'd ever wanted was for her to have to witness me falling apart - even as I was very much doing so just the same. I was suffering, and once again I was setting myself up to experience that suffering in near-complete isolation, all because I truly didn't know what else to do about it. Quite frankly, none of us knew exactly how to approach this situation anymore. Rather, we all coasted, waiting for even a faint sense of recovery to arrive somehow.
In the meantime, I consistently felt myself breaking apart, sensed a downward spiral looming in a way that hadn't occurred for several years by that point; I didn't know how to get out of it and stay treading water for good, certainly not this time around. I had never been in so much pain before - nothing that I'd ever been through compared to having to watch my wife die. When I thought about the darkness of that day in the weeks that followed - when I became lost in my mind during the endless hours of the grief that I couldn't find a way to leave behind - I also continued to regularly thought about everything I believed that I'd done wrong, everything that I could've done differently, regardless of how unrealistic I was being. Altogether, it was suffocating to go through.
The night that Josephine spent away from home hadn't allowed me any variation from that pattern of regret whatsoever, either. If anything, being alone had worsened it substantially - though I would be lying if I didn't admit to expecting as much from the outset. It made complete sense. I really never was able to be trusted to remain by myself with my own thoughts for long, and this night proved to be no exception; instead, it had increased the severity of that problem tenfold. I was depressed, I was incredibly restless, and all to the point that I was having a fair amount of trouble finding something to do with my time that wouldn't ultimately turn destructive. It was only when Tulula began to whine and nudge me that I realized exactly how anxious I'd gotten, and mindfully noting that, I then fought for the ability to find and rein in the chaos that was happening inside of me. Because the alternative was dwelling on my problems further, and what I'd had to dwell on was steadily threatening to ruin me. I missed my daughter terribly, missed my wife more than I could describe, and I only wanted everything about our lives to return to how they'd been before the car accident in October, before what peace we knew had reached that swift and devastating end.
However, that was impossible, and I damn well knew it. And so, I had no choice but to resign myself instead to my restlessness, deciding all at once that even just keeping my hands busy was better than the nothing that I was doing for the time being. Quickly determining that the piano had been neglected for far too long, I immediately made my way over to the instrument in the corner of the living room, taking out the first set of music sheets that I'd found on one of the nearby shelves, and diving straight into the notes on the pages. As it turned out, I'd inadvertently chosen a collection of songs that I didn't know very well, and I was grateful for the coincidence - I had to concentrate on the lines in front of me, on delving into the patterns and the intervals and the measures that built up and sustained the music. For a while, that was all that I knew of the world.
Even that relatively constructive activity had to come to an end, though.
Eventually, I'd just worn myself out completely, and in turn, I couldn't play the music in front of me effectively enough to continue the distraction. Once the sound had ceased filling the air in the room, my restlessness came back to me as quickly as I had stalled it. And so, beyond frustrated by then, I stood up from the piano bench so fast that I nearly knocked it over, and once again Tulula appeared at my side in her attempt to hamper my rising anxiety. And I'd honestly had every intention of actually trying to manage the anxiety appropriately - but even so, when I knelt down to sit with my service dog on the floor and settle there, something on one of the low shelves of the bookcase caught my attention. When I stood upright once more in order to get a closer look at the object in question, I instantly recognized it to be a brand-new fifth of vodka.
For a moment, I truly wondered if I'd finally just gone completely insane, wondered if mourning had somehow dissolved into absolute madness, because despite how bad I'd felt in the time leading up to this instant, otherwise I was still entirely certain then that I hadn't been the one to purchase the vodka. The bottle didn't even belong to me at all, in fact, nor had I sought it out to begin with - at least not at any point that I could easily remember. Rather, it was only when I concentrated on thinking back over the last few weeks that I finally come to realize that the alcohol was likely left behind by one of the guests that had attended the wake. I hadn't outright banned alcohol inside of the house that day, nor had I really thought to, and I remembered a number of people mentioning that they had given several memorial toasts for Christine throughout the course of the occasion. I hadn't thought much about it at the time - had barely been present for it anyway - but instead just assumed that any of the drinks they'd had were long-gone once the gathering was over. Whoever had left this one behind obviously hadn't done so on purpose, but I sincerely wished that they hadn't made that mistake.
It would've been so easy to down the vodka then, every last drop of it; and it would've been too easy to fall back into the kind of oblivion that so many years had separated me from, that my wife had once fought so hard to keep me away from for good. A part of me had distantly realized how wrong it was to entertain the feeling that the pull of alcoholism was reigniting in me, how horrible even vaguely considering this was. Throwing away years of sobriety wasn't worth it, I knew that - I knew that - but at the same time, I had to actively force myself to care, because forfeiting meant relief, even if it only lasted for a moment. And I was already in the kitchen when I remembered myself again, when I found myself wondering whether or not I was really about to open the bottle and take a drink, or if I was strong enough to pour it out and never look back on this spark of weakness. Everything had spiraled away from my control so fast.
But I have no idea whether or not I would've gone through with it either way, had I not been so suddenly interrupted - although, in being perfectly honest with myself, in the end that interruption was probably for the best. Because in the flitting instant right before I could think for even a second longer about making any irredeemable mistakes, a distinct and heavy knock at the front door had thoroughly captured my attention once again.
That solitary noise was the only thing that forced me back into reality for long enough to set down the bottle, leaving it before me unopened and otherwise intact on the countertop.