THE INFERNO

I Survived Alcoholism and Spousal Abuse

By: Patricia Oshier Bruening

A few quiet years passed. Bill had enough raises in pay to bolster our finances. We bought a house, along with its requisite mortgage and other responsibilities, and I was able to stay home, be a full time wife and mother, and spend my time writing. My first published story, Always a Warrior, was electronically published in May 2000. I began working on other stories but this first one was my baby. I had based the hero on what I believed to be Bill’s Navy SEAL/combat background but with a significant fictional twist. My created hero is a real SEAL and still active duty, a man of honor, when he meets the heroine. To my everlasting regret, my hero turned out to be the villain though it took me the next several years to realize and acknowledge that.

Settled in the three bedroom house we owned along with the mortgage company, we decided at my instigation to have another child. It may seem silly and old-fashioned to some, but I was happy then. I wanted my daughter to have a brother and I wanted to give my man a son, a boy who’d grow up to be just like his Daddy. These days, while I would never wish my son had never been born, I’m so glad he isn’t like his father.

For two years we tried to get pregnant, but during this time Bill’s alcohol consumption steadily increased proportionate with his discontent at work. More and more often he came home from work, ate dinner, and started drinking. He stayed up later and later, always griping about the job and the company. A job he had enjoyed for the better part of ten years now irritated him. the new department manager in particular. HE complained, often and loudly about how much work was loaded onto him, how office personnel couldn’t do their jobs right, and about the new manager. He didn’t just voice his discontent. He repeated the same complaints over and over again for several hours a night. The drunker he got, the more he repeated his complaints until he began to sound like a sound loop on replay. The more he drank, the more he complained; the more he complained, the more he drank. It developed into a pattern and then into a never-ending cycle. Nor did he confine his drinking to weekends, Friday and Saturday. He drank, getting drunk, more frequently during the week until it became every night. Sometimes we didn’t go to bed until three or four, or even five o’clock in the morning. If I wanted to go to bed before he did, I was told “No you’re not.” And made to stay up. The one time I went to bed anyway, he rummaged through CD’s talking loud enough for me to hear. “No, I won’t snap that one. My wife likes it.” Or he’d say things like, “You don’t care.” That one became a constant litany over the years until I got so sick of it…anyway, that comes later.