A Brand New Canvas

"As of today, my life is a blank canvas.  I can choose to paint it black every single day from here on out.  Or I can paint it with bright colors.  It's my choice."

A good friend of mine declared this to me this morning.  She's laboring through a difficult divorce which has totally flipped her entire domestic existence on it's head.  Her marriage of over a decade has had its share of typical issues one would expect to encounter in a household with three young boys, in-laws, a mortgage, bills, disagreements and the stress of suburban life.  Pulleys and gears which could be reworked and counseled.  Things tough at times but fixable if desired.  But in May of this year, things went from seemingly manageable to flat out impossible. 

After trying to help her husband seek therapy for a prescription drug addiction -- I'll leave you to envision what accompanies such a problem and how that ravages the family dynamic over a period of time as the addiction slowly unfolds and the addict's core behaviors are altered -- she was forced to tell him he was not welcome back into their home until he had made the necessary steps to truly deal with the monkey on his back.  He decided that it was she who had the problem, she who was the problem and she who should shoulder the blame for the shipwreck things had become.  In his mind, his wife had kicked him out of his home for no other reason than that she was a controlling vitriolic shrew of a woman.

He found himself an apartment.  Opened credit accounts with which to furnish this apartment with new furniture.  Purchased big boy toys to fill his spare time: an expensive video gaming system and a big ol' widescreen TV among them.  Filled his belly with restaurant- and fast-food fare.  Hooked up with his old party crowd from his high school days.  In essence, a family man unable to deal with his old reality created an alternate life, a life skewed by a full 180 degrees, a life which could enfold him like a coccoon, thus cushioning him from the hurt unfolding in his absence and muffling him to the cries of those who could not comprehend his choices.

At varying points, our antagonist gave lip service to the idea of reclaiming his old life.  As if stepping back onstage into a major role in a play already in progress was a perfectly reasonable way to go about things.  As if the other players and the audience should suspend their disbelief and allow him to simply reinsert himself without memorizing the lines.  As if ad libbing his way through a work of art wouldn't alter the character of the storyline.  But his wife didn't cave.  Not this time.  She insisted her husband complete the work necessary to ensure their life's production would not fold on opening night ever again.

For an addict unwilling to admit to his or her problem, it's fairly easy to see where this will end up.  When blame is levied upon every other person in the equation except for self, the brokenness can not be fixed.  It soon becomes incumbent upon the courts to sift through the paperwork and search through the 'he said, she said' and arrive upon a solution to break through the impasse of a collapsed marriage.  It isn't pretty.  But the trail of crumbs left by an addict in crisis, a jittery path of paperwork, doctors, multiple pharmacies, hidden bottles, poor performance at work, detachment from friends and family, the trail is more visible to the naked eye than the addict realizes.  And there is no court willing to jeopardize the well-being of three young children, regardless of how many tears a father cries on the stand about his desire to be a father, even if in that moment he means it. 

Because when he steps out of the courtroom and returns to the arms of his first love, that love which infuses his blood vessels and brain cells with a false sense of comfort for an elated moment in time, the selfish choices he makes, those broken promises, those blatant lies, those hundreds of dollars spent on recreation instead of family, those weekends spent at bars and sporting events with people who care nothing for the wife and active trio of blonde-headed energy he left in that big house, THOSE actions become his truth and his words.  While he finds himself a new 'friend' to ease him through these hard times, his bitchy wife is engulfed in a full-time job, an incredible blessing of higher education employment which opened up to her at just the right time and requires her to be on-point and up-front from AM to PM.  When she's completed her day of work, she picks up her boys from an after-school program or relieves the babysitter at her home, and wades into the fray of dinner and homework and baths and laundry and dog and any other number of chores and To-Do's that she once kept busy with all day and every day without the full-time job.

Needless to say, the second half of 2011 was not a pleasant passage of time for my friend.  And to be fair, it was doubtless not so comfortable for her soon to be ex-husband.  Playing emotional games and keeping up with a string of lies, fighting the truth of addiction, knowing in the back of his troubled mind that he has lost the better part of himself and is unsure just exactly when and how that happened, it's got to be exhausting.  Wearisome.  Depressing.  But he's filling those holes with artifice and recrimination.  He is a friend lost to me.  It is unfortunate but I have seen his colors, or the lack thereof, the black canvas of his present life. 

And I have watched as the woman he married and brought from back East with her gaily painted canvas, where she left her family for his, to his home state of Tennessee, I have watched and listened and witnessed, and listened again and again, as she has struggled to understand.  As she has struggled to work through the anger and disappointment and bitterness.  Sometimes with grace.  Sometimes with clumsy steps.  But always with the attitude of surviving and eventually thriving.  And I have watched his boys come to terms first with his initial absence, and then with his withdrawal from their schedules at school and in sports, though none of it was ever kept from him.  From personal experience, I know there will come a day when these boys must grapple with all that has happened since May of last year.  Each of them will at some point force a day of reckoning with their father.  And he will one day actually listen to the noise of his making and break.  Then, and only then, will he stand a snowball's chance in Hades of making amends and rebuilding those invaluable relationships with his sons.

When and if that happens, I hope he will have the inner reserve and self-worth to forgive himself . . . and to sincerely apologize to the woman who, despite her very human flaws, tried to be a good wife to him and a solid role model to his children.  Perhaps he could wear her shoes for a day or two and wonder if he could have made the same choice for his sons if his wife had fallen into a pit similar to the one in which he presently resides. 

I despise the enemy that is addiction.

But I love a new canvas with its promise of the rainbow.