I always never understood why people
relied on alcohol because they had to relieve pain. To my best understanding, I
didn’t see the correlation between the two: drinking to let go off pain. Well,
anytime people drank because they needed to relieve pain from loss or something,
the alcohol only aggravated the situation. I believe it only made them shy away
from reality for but a moment. In my case, it was not my loss that caused me to
drink but the pressure that accompanied it. Indeed, when times change, people change
too. Three years into my construction business, I lost everything. It happened
so quickly that I could hardly figure out what triggered the collapse and the
loss. Losing my job meant severe hardship since it was the only one my family
depended on for a living. With my responsibility as the man of the house, my
wife didn’t have to work for any reason. She only stayed home to take care of
the children and the necessary house chores. Having a house wife wasn’t a weird
thing to do especially in the town we lived in. However, what became weird was
when I asked my wife to search for a temporary job that could sustain the
family for the time being as I continued to look for a new job. With the little
money I had left, she started petty trading in foodstuffs at the town market. We at least had some money to survive with her
work until things changed. She could rarely find market for the goods. Some
went bad overtime which meant a loss to her. Things became harder than ever and
having to live to be blamed for everything that happened was heartbreaking for
me. She blamed me for her loss. She blamed me when we had to eat once a day. She
blamed me when the children were sacked for fees and when the landlord
threatened to throw us out if we didn’t pay for rent. Having to be blamed for our
every misfortune was a blow to me. I could no longer live in the reality of my
loss and unending blame. To shy away from the reality, I started drinking.
I spent every little money I got from
friends and what I stole from my wife on alcohol. I drank so much that, I no
more had an ear for insults from my wife or anyone. But when I wasn’t drunk, I
regretted that life that I lived. Alcohol gave me a temporary shield where I
got away from the blames and pain of reality. Deep within me, I knew it did no
good to me, my wife or my children. But it put me in a world where I could live
without blames, a world where my loss could be seen as restorable. I try, but
it gets even harder coming out of this world.
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