Down the Rabbit Hole

My "Blue and Lonely Hell"

"No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't.” ~ Stephen King
Do you agree or disagree? Give us an example of that blue and lonely section...}

Nearly ten years ago I went through my own "blue and lonely section of hell". My then-boyfriend of five years was slowly, agonizingly losing his personal battle with addiction. It felt like we had already come through hell together, our affair having been the badly needed catalyst to free me from an abusive marriage. It had felt like my life was beginning again, having found love with someone who's gentleness and kindness had been magnified in the wake of my ex-'s rage and cruelty. The reality was, as I would painfully come to realize, was that I had merely left one bad situation for another. I would come to learn that despite his loving nature and zest for life, Seth was a high-functioning alcoholic trapped in a serious downward spiral.

We talked about marriage and children and our new life together, as he battled the shakes and went to imaginary AA meetings and counseling sessions. I wanted to believe so badly, that I failed to recognize the truths that were right in front of me. He was slipping away and not at all "in recovery" as he would have his family and I believe. First came the repossession of his car, the lost of his management position and then his job of more than 10 years. When Seth really began to fail me, the wheels came off the cart.

I remember that day, the day it was all supposed to begin. He was going to meet me at my old house, we were going to tell my ex together that we had been having an affair and I was going to demand a divorce. Seth didn't show and I ended up with a smashed cell phone, and an irrevocably broken heart. I drove aimlessly for a while, pressing a package of frozen peas against the side of my throbbing face and praying to God to save me from my own shame. It was the first of many broken promises and aimless drives. The damage had been done and my love was wounded to a point I feared it would never recover from.

It would be almost a full year late the morning when I found Seth bleeding to death in our bathroom. What followed was a truly horrific roller coaster ride of long and critical hospitalization, a last minute life saving procedure, a year of slow recovery and finally hope of a return to a quasi-normal life. I think that this, more than anything, was the most heartbreaking because after all the hope and support and promise, Seth would be dead in less than twelve months. The last checkup at Yale, the team of doctors had all come down to see him. They smiled, clapped him on the back, kissed and hugged me. They promised we could still have a normal life, babies...happiness and health. All Seth had to do was never drink again. I know now that he must had started again that very afternoon.

My blue and lonely hell feels like it lasted five years. I felt scooped out, as if someone had simply gutted the person I was. I had spent so many nights on my knees, in an uncharacteristic show of faith I hadn't even know I possessed. I had once prayed that God would save Seth's life, and now my prayer was that he would take away my love for him, wipe it from my heart so that the hope and despair would not destroy me. I felt my soul breaking off at the brittle places, the important pieces flaking off with each late night phone called punctuated by slurred words of devotion and the dull ring of denial. I prayed for numbness. I prayed for an antidote to the toxin of my own heart. I was lost.

Then, there came a moment that I distinctly remember. I woke suddenly with a pounding heart from a sleep induced by a nightly cocktail of Benadryl and too much wine. It felt like all my nerves were on fire at once. I knew that I was going to go down with him, he was going to take me down with him after everything. It had become Seth or me now. That night, and for each and every day after, I chose me.

"You just come out the other side. Or you don't"

I came out the other side. Seth would have turned 45 years old today.






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