I’m lying here next to my husband and it’s almost 2am. In the trick of the dim light, he looks like someone I only half recognize. Which is an interesting metaphor for everything else.
My brain can’t wrap around the fact that he drank. I saw him a couple times before he got sober–before we met–, but I didn’t know him. I noticed him while he was detoxing, but didn’t know him then either. No, the Chris I knew was the sunbeam who walked around making everything brighter. And he’d probably argue it was all me. He’d probably say his sunshine came from my existence.
I dunno about all that.
I don’t know him as an active alcoholic nor a drunk. I only know him in recovery and sober and clean. And so I look at him now, with the light hitting his face all wrong. And he is not the Chris that I know. He is not the Chris I experienced for the past two weeks. He is not the Chris of the last 34 hours, since finding out he had been drinking and is now detoxing.
I’m just not sure who he is. I’m not sure he knows right now though either. And I think maybe that’s okay. I don’t have to recognize him just yet. The caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly and isn’t recognizable through every stage. I don’t have to recognize him to know his value. His worth. His goodness.
What I do know is that I’m not going anywhere. And that’s all I need to know right now.