You're Missing More Than You Know

The great irony (one of them, anyway) of being married to an alcoholic is it's not "that bad..."

And then suddenly it is.

You can manage, handle and mitigate their drinking and the accompanying behavior...

And then you can't.

You love him...

And then?

And then you don't even know what "love" is any more.

You don't know what a healthy, loving relationships looks like.

You can barely, if at all, remember what it was to love your husband.

And certainly, long forgotten and seemingly erased even from your DNA is what You are suppose to feel like when in a relationship.

I have a friend that I see almost every morning at Starbucks.

We are just Starbucks friends. He's married. I'm married. We know very little about one another's lives actually but just happened to start talking to one another one day years ago. Sinc then, our lives have intersected for a brief ten or 15 minutes each morning or so.

Sometimes a few days or even weeks will pass where we happen not to run into each other while getting our morning coffees. When we finally do run into each other again, he'll usually give me a hug.

The other day, as he was leaving, he came to where I was sitting and gave me like a "chair hug," for lack of better explanation. As he said goodbye, he kissed the top of my head.

I think it was just something accidental that he usually does to those truly close to him. You know, how you slip and say "I love you" to your boss or the mechanic as you get off the phone with them.

But no matter, it made my day.

Really.

I think of it as an "innocuous intimacy" because a kiss on the top of your head is not really a profound intimate gesture but it is something. A gesture of warmth and kindness, I suppose.

And so, with just the random gesture of a morning acquaintance, I realized how empty and void my life is of the emotional connection that makes me feel loved. And strong. And amazing. And...

As if I got "struck by fucking lightening."