Thursday, July 16, 2026
As time went on, my drinking slowly changed.
What started as two or three drinks a week became almost every night. Eventually, it got to the point where I wasn’t even remembering my evenings.
Then COVID hit, and life became even more complicated.
Miles lost his job with the state over a picture he had taken with our dachshund. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It really wasn’t about the picture. Someone at work got offended because he joked about his “wieners.”
Our dachshunds.
Not what they thought he meant.
It would almost be funny if it hadn’t turned our lives upside down.
Then, while Miles and our two youngest boys were on vacation in Florida, my second-oldest son, Eugene, called me.
He told me he was okay, but he had decided to move to New Hampshire with his pregnant girlfriend.
To say I wasn’t thrilled would be an understatement.
Eugene had his dad, me, Miles, his brothers, and his grandparents here in Arkansas. He had an entire support system.
She only had her mother in New Hampshire.
From my perspective at the time, I felt like she had manipulated the situation. She came to Arkansas, became pregnant, and then convinced him to leave everything behind and move across the country.
What hurt the most wasn’t just that he moved.
It was that he never talked to us about it.
He simply left in the middle of the night.
I was heartbroken.
I was angry.
And instead of dealing with those feelings in a healthy way, I poured myself another drink.
Looking back now, I can see that I wasn’t drinking because I enjoyed alcohol anymore.
I was drinking because I didn’t know what else to do with my hurt.
Things were slowly spiraling out of control.
The saddest part is…
I couldn’t even see it.
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