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Source: Elise C – Reel Archive Recording – Reel 0805-60B (1959) – 1959-10-15.mp3 File: elise-c-reel-archive-recording-reel-0805-60b-1959-1959-10-15.mp3 Duration: 00:29:01
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And now I want to bring you our speaker, Ellard C., from Laguna Beach. Thank you, Hazel. Wonderful to be here this morning with you. I'm really quite surprised to see as many of you out at nine o'clock. I didn't think any alcoholic ever got up and came to a meeting at nine o'clock. It's quite amazing, especially to hear a non-alcoholic speaker. This is quite unusual. I had an alcoholic gal not too awfully long ago say that she couldn't imagine anything more boring than to listen to a non-alcoholic tell what she used to be like and what happened and what she's like now.
So if I bore you this morning, just feel perfectly free to get up and walk out and get a cup of coffee if you want to. I suppose that I had better tell a little bit of my story. I read in your advance publicity that Elsa C. was going to tell about the heartaches and the suffering of the non-alcoholic member of the family. It kind of floored me a little bit because I don't do a great deal of thinking anymore about the heartaches and the suffering of those years gone by.
It's almost become a little bit difficult when I'm trying to help another non-alcoholic to dig up these feelings of the past. It's almost as if it had happened to another person. So I sat and thought about it for a little bit and tried to get back a little of the feeling that I used to have, and it goes something like this. You're young, you're full of life, you're extremely naive, you haven't seen much of the rugged side of life, in fact you haven't seen anything of it.
Life has been most pleasant, very happy, you've been quite popular, you've done a lot of things, you've been very active. And you meet a man, and he's quite a man, and you recognize in this man something that's a little bit different from any other man that you've ever met, and you fall head over heels in love with him. And you marry him and life is wonderful, but this man is a little bit strange, he's a little different.
And as the years go on, you wonder a little bit why this man has the ability, if you displease him, to shut himself behind a wall that you can't get through with a ten-foot pole. And this man likes to drink. In the beginning he doesn't drink very much, but it progresses as time goes on. And you find yourself wondering if perhaps you are a little inadequate, and if perhaps you're missing the boat somewhere along the line because you don't seem to be able to please this man.
Nothing you can do seems to please him quite. You find yourself on the defensive nine-tenths of the time. If you're criticized, you find that you must needs change his mind because you have to have his approval. And as the drinking progresses, you begin to wonder, have I made a mistake? Is this man less than I thought he was? You don't understand, and it makes you deeply unhappy.
[00:05:00]
And as it gets worse and worse as the years roll on, and you have a couple of children by this time, you begin to feel like possibly this man has feet of clay because you knew that you had seen a potential in the beginning that somehow or other is being buried under a terrific arrogance. And you don't understand, and you suffer. And you suffer a lot in silence, and then as things get worse and worse, you begin to suffer out loud, and I mean out loud.
And you find yourself screaming and hollering and yelling, not only at your husband but at your children. And you find yourself wondering, what have I done to deserve this? I've been a good woman all my life. I don't do the things that he does. I tend to my business, I raise my children, I take care of the house, I cook the meals, I shop, I take care of his clothes for me. But underneath all this time, this funny little feeling, is this my fault?
Am I not measuring up? Is he disappointed in me? Is this why he drinks so much? So about ten years go by, and it's getting worse and worse and worse. And finally it becomes a periodic thing, and the periods get closer together and the drunks get longer. And you find yourself in such a nervous state of mind and of being, that you have the feeling that if you once allow yourself to scream or to pick up something and throw it, that you'll go completely to pieces and you'll end up in patent loan before he does, because you're convinced that he's losing his mind, because by this time he's seeing things that aren't there, and having alcoholic convulsions.
You have threatened many, many times to leave, but each time that the sober period comes along you say, ah, this must be it, this must be it, this time he means it. Because I am convinced that when an alcoholic says, I'll never take another drink as long as I live, so help me, he means it. But you don't understand, you don't know anything about alcoholism. So you fight it every inch of the way, and every little characteristic that is not so hot in you becomes magnified, and you become a shrew, and I believe that your children take the worst of this, because you give them a bad time.
You take out on your children the grief and the frustration and the misery that you feel inside yourself. So the time comes eventually when you have to say to yourself, is it better to have a drunken father or is it better to have no father at all for these children? By this time the eldest son is about 16 and the youngest one is about 9 or 10. So you decide that, well maybe if I get very busy on the outside and get something to do that will occupy me, perhaps I can keep my sanity a little bit, because as Hazel said a few moments ago, I believe that we are as insane as the alcoholic, because we do insane things.
So you get very busy. You sing in the choir in the little church across the street. You do everything that everybody asks you to do in the Red Cross, in the community chest, and you get to the point where you say if he burns down the house, so what? Because you've sat there day in and day out and day in and day out watching him because he smokes in bed. And you get to the place where you don't care anymore whether the house burns down or not.
[00:10:03]
But you find that in this work on the outside that you have withdrawn so terrifically within yourself that you can't even carry on a decent conversation. You're so nervous when you have to sing a solo in the choir that you shake from the top of your head to the soles of your feet and you don't seem to be getting anywhere. So you finally say to yourself, I've had it. This is it. So you go to school, to a secretarial school, and this is real funny.
You take up bookkeeping and typing. And why bookkeeping? I'll never be able to know because you can't add two and two. Mathematics has never been your strong point. You think, at least you delude yourself, that you can become a good typist because you've played the piano since you were a little kid and your hands are trained. But you haven't counted on the state of being in which you find yourself at the moment and you get nowhere fast.
But you're doing a lot of practice typing at home. And you're doing it out in the breakfast nook and it's on a floor that's covered with linoleum and for some reason or other the sound carries into the bedroom. And that peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck drives the alcoholic nuts. And he dogs you and he dogs you and he stands over you and in his drunken stupor says, why do you have to make all this noise?
So you get nowhere fast. So you go out and you hire a lawyer and you say, this time it's got to be done. I've got to go through with it. Somehow or other I have got to put myself in a position where I can support two children and my mother. But for some unusual reason, and I think you alcoholics will understand this, it wasn't too long after this that my alcoholic came to AA. I've heard the alcoholics say over and over and over again, pull the rug out from under him, pull the rug out from under him.
And I'm inclined to think that a lot of us nuns are being a little bit too soft with our alcoholics possibly because we're giving them a home, a place to lay their heads, three square meals a day, somebody's shoulder to cry on. And why get sober? Where's the necessity? So possibly this may be we are being a little bit too soft with our alcoholic. So your husband comes to AA and for six months he won't even talk to you about it.
But fortunately he brings the book home and you read it from kibber to kibber and you believe every word of it because you see him on every page. And in the chapter to wives, it tells you some very wonderful things. It tells you that he'll be extremely nervous and on edge for a long time. And if you're wise, you'll keep everything as peaceful as possible. You'll keep your big mouth shut and you'll give him the opportunity to work out his own problem in his own way.
And you call the family together and you say to them, look, this is the first time that your father has ever been really serious about this thing and is really trying to do something about it. So for God's sake, let's do what this book suggests and give him a chance. And amazingly enough, the family cooperates. And even though they are annoyed to the point of where they feel like they want to explode, they'll go out of the house and walk around the block until they cool down.
The funny part of it is that after a certain length of time, I don't know how long it is, six or eight months maybe, you find that it is no longer necessary to be disturbed about anything because there isn't anything to be disturbed about. Something's happened in the household. No one is coming back with the quick retort. You know, the alcoholic has a rather strange sense of humor. I think that the non-alcoholics here will appreciate this very much.
here will appreciate this very much because I've known many, many, many wives of alcoholics
[00:15:04]
who have agreed with this. I used to call it a sadistic sense of humor, but I looked up the word sadistic in the dictionary and it doesn't fit really. But it's a sarcastic sense of humor. It's sort of a biting sense of humor. And I don't think anybody appreciates it but another alcoholic. This sense of humor has caused more rows in our household than you could shake a stick at. I didn't understand it all the years up until that time. But I began to understand it after coming to AA. And I realized that on many, many occasions when my feelings had been so hurt that we had gotten into a terrific row because I had come back with a nasty remark. And that started the ball rolling, the first thing you knew we were in a knockdown drag out. And I'd end up back in the bedroom in tears. Well, this is no good. Well, this happened, did not happen anymore after the family had gotten into the habit of being kind. You know, it's a wonderful thing to think about. If we could be as kind at home as we are to the casual stranger on the street, wouldn't it be wonderful? So you go along with the AA program. Finally, after six months, he takes you to a meeting. And then you go to every meeting with him. And you think it's wonderful. And you sit back there and the relief and the lack of tension is so terrific that you just can hardly stand it. And you sit back and you watch your husband grow. And you sit back there and keep book on him too. And don't think we don't keep book on you because we do. We sit back there and say, oh dear, I wish he wouldn't say that anymore. He said it so many times. I don't think he's ever taken a written inventory. Why doesn't he do this? Why doesn't he do that? But fortunately, you keep your big mouth shut. And pretty soon you find that he has grown so far ahead of you that you beginning to feel like a piece of the wallpaper on the wall. You've backed into a nothingness that is tremendous. You're at peace and you're content. But you're not accomplishing anything. You're not doing anything. You're just there and that's all. And then you find Al-Anon. And you find something so terrific that it's beyond words because this is a program for you. Here is where you can do something for other people yourself. And you find that the hunger within you has been one for a want, wanting to serve, wanting to do something for these poor, tragic women and men who have been through the very same thing you have been through. And it is so true that only a non-alcoholic can talk to a non-alcoholic. Just the same as it takes an alcoholic to talk to an alcoholic. And you form a group and it begins to grow. And you're sort of the grandmother of the group. And you hand out these wonderful platitudes and you tell them how to work the steps and you give them all of this lengthy information and you, the group is quite successful, believe it or not.
And all of a sudden it dawns on you that you're talking off the top of your head, that you're just repeating the things that you've heard your husband say and the AA say and that you've heard in the AA programs and that you're not applying any of these things to yourself. You've never taken an inventory. You haven't really seriously worked the steps. And this makes for a great change in your life because you then are able to turn around and look at yourself and find a lot of things that you don't like. And you begin to try to change them. You don't do a very good job, but at least you're trying. And the amazing part of it is that the home life is better. Your contact with your children
[00:20:06]
is better. You're learning to release and let go. You've told this to people on many, many, many occasions, but you haven't done it yourself. Your husband talks a great deal and you're quite burned up at the fact that you haven't had him for so many years and now that he's NAA, you still don't have him. So you go one Christmas Eve to a meeting down in Santa Monica, very much against your will because you're a little burned up to think that anybody would ask you to talk on Christmas Eve. This is a family night. The family should be together. This should be their time. So you go to this Christmas Eve program anyway, and there are a couple of boys or men, I should say, that have just been pulled out from under the bridge down there in Santa Monica, a couple of winos. And they sit there at that meeting and nothing much happens. But a year later, he's asked to talk again. And you go with him again, more or less under protest. And one of them is leading the meeting and the other one reads the steps. And they've been sober ever since. And from that time on, you take hands off and you really learn to release and let go. You even learn to release your children, which is something that is very, very difficult for a mother to do. I think it's even difficult for a father. Okay, I think really, in fact, that it's more difficult to release your children than it is your alcoholic partner. But this release and let go is one of the finest things that I have ever learned to do. I'm not perfect at it by any manner of means, but life is so much better and so much easier now that I can give the other fellow the right to his own opinion, the right to make his own mistakes, the right to live his life as he sees fit, and to put my attention to doing something about my own. Then along comes a rather strange thing. All of a sudden it dawns on you that here are the alcoholics standing up in front at these meetings, laughing uproariously and having a wonderful time at the awful things they used to do. And you're laughing along with them and for years you've enjoyed this thoroughly. But it suddenly occurs to you that we don't do this very much in Al-Anon. We take ourselves very seriously.
We look back on our lives and we look back with horror. Where has your sense of humor gone? Why can't you laugh about the things you did like the alcoholic does? So you think about it a little bit and you start looking at the things you used to do. And you see a woman who is pouring bottles of whiskey down the sink. And you see a woman who is hiding bottles. And you see a woman who hides the car keys. And her husband dogs her hour after hour after hour, give me my keys, give me my keys, give me my keys, give me my keys, until you finally throw them in his face. And you think, well, what a stupid idiot you have been.
You've done this over and over and over again for 15 years. Won't you ever learn? And really it gets to be awfully funny. And you can laugh. Strangely enough, you can laugh at the stupid things you used to do. You can even laugh at the fact that you used to scream and yell at him at the top of your voice. In fact, someone has told you a while back that you're yelling like a fishwife. And you have always thought of yourself as being such a lady. And you have said things that you wouldn't say in your right mind. It was the last thing you ever did. Insane, yes. I think we were insane. But now I can laugh at it. And it's the most wonderful therapy that has ever happened to me. It is simply
[00:25:06]
terrific. Now I can laugh. Life has been very, very wonderful. The work in our Al-Anon groups is most satisfying. I've just a year ago started another group down in Laguna Beach. And it has grown now from 3 members to about 15, 16 members. And the most rewarding thing that I think you can have happen to you is to see a girl come in like the one that came in last week. Fit to be tied. Just two jumps ahead of a fit. And get enough out of that one meeting to come back the following week looking like an entirely different person. So you see we get the rewards of this kind of service just like the alcoholic does. Because I believe, as Hazel said, maybe we're sicker than you are. Because someone has said that the alcoholic only shakes now and then when he's sobering up. But the non-alcoholic member shakes all the time. Because we're aware, you see, all the time. And the alcoholic is out like a light a good part of the time. You know this, the feeling that we have during the drinking years was expressed so potently by a gal from Canada down in Winston-Salem when Chuck and I were down there this year. In so few words she said, I wished he would die and then I was afraid he'd get hurt.
Now that sums up in just a few words how we all feel. Many, many is the time that I have felt as though if I had a weapon at my hand I would beat his brain out. And this horrified me when I thought of it. And now I can laugh at it. Because I was just a stupid, stupid woman. It's so wonderful to be here with you. I was here three years ago with Chuck and enjoyed meeting all of you so much. And I can't express to you what AA has meant to me. Because it has actually given me back my life. When I look at the picture and see how far we have come in 14 short years from nothing to our lovely home in Laguna Beach up on the hill, which looks out over practically everything as Chuck says that God ever made, my gratitude is so deep that it's almost impossible for me to tell you. But I love you all and I hope that not too long hence we can come back again. Thank you very much.
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