It's Hard Sometime To Reconcile...

Genuine.riend of mine was in town the other day.

When we met for lunch, she handed me an envelop full of old photos she had found while purging her closets. (As we are all doing these days.L

They were from my wedding over 20 years ago.

It was hard looking at them because when I looked at them, what I saw was nothing of what I am living today.

We were happy.

Big smiles.

Geniune.

Some people look back at their wedding pictures and remember "knowing." Knowing it was all wrong. Knowing it was a mistake. Knowing they are going to wish they hadn't.

When I look at my wedding pictures, I think,

"I can't remember feeling how these pictures clearly show I felt."

I can't remember loving him.

I can't remember wanting to be with him, wanting to be touched by him.

I can't remember being loved.

There is much written about what alcoholism does to a marriage but even my own words seem so flat.

It's like writing about what a forest fire "does" to a 200 year old forest.

It destroys it.

To the point where you look and you can't even see a hint of the beauty, the life, the joy that was once there.

It's hard to reconcile the people we were, the love we shared with the people we are now, the venom and vitriol that lives between us.

How did it get this bad? SO bad?

It's like asking how did the forest become a barren land of pathetic charred stumps.

"Somebody threw a cigarette butt on the ground."

How did my marriage become a barren land of charred emotions?

Somebody is an alcoholic.