What Kind of Person Does That?
The Thanksgiving episode shone a brief spotlight on what my life with Larry was really like.
Up until then, I’d believed I had the best of both worlds: a family who loved me (and allowed me to watch our dog) and a boyfriend who satisfied my every desire: a safe place to sleep and eat, a semi-functional gigging band in which I could sometimes sing, a boom box to play my favorite music, and enough alcohol to completely anesthetize me 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the rest of my life.
But watching Larry chase my beloved childhood poodle down the street caused something inside me to snap – a veil lifted and I lost my already errant feelings of security.
I saw Larry in a new light for the first time. I suddenly recognized that the man I was dating wasn’t actually a beacon to freedom. I was dating a highly fallible human being. Whereas I once trusted him with my life, I now doubted him completely.
I didn’t know the man I thought I knew. And I couldn’t believe in this new guy.
Larry scared my dog – my tiny, short-legged, aging brown poodle – for absolutely no reason. Who does that? What kind of person does that? What would make Larry turn his rage on a helpless animal?
Larry had always treated me with so much kindness – and I’d always believed he had a kind heart. Now I wondered: was Larry actually an abuser?
I flashed back on the “instinctive” black eye that I’d gotten for my drunken misbehavior. I’d written that off as a “mistake,” something he’d never do again. I blamed myself for slamming the car into park during an otherwise pleasant drive. And I reasoned that, since I didn’t remember being hit, Larry could have lied to me – but he chose to be honest.
Because Larry was a good guy. He wouldn’t lie to me.
But on Thanksgiving, I entered into my tiny stockpile of evidence: one traumatized dog, shaking and afraid, and a neighborhood full of strangers who saw us as the white trash we’d become.
Maybe Larry wasn’t the savior I’d believed him to be. Maybe he was some other kind of person entirely.
And if he was, what could I do about it? I couldn’t change him; he was old.
I’d left my family – twice – to be with him. Bonnie was my best friend in the world but she was at the University of Akron now, with new friends. I couldn’t move in with her there, and I sure couldn’t wreck the lives of any of my college friends, who hadn’t graduated to become full-time alcoholics.
And I couldn’t go back to my parents while continuing to drink – certainly not comfortably.
And I definitely wasn’t going to give up alcohol.
So, unlike in Florida where I blamed my environment, I started to blame Larry for the way I felt.
But I couldn’t leave him. I was stuck. For the first time, I realized I was stuck living with Larry.
Yet it took me a very, very long time to figure out why.