HOLD ON, MY CHILD…

CHAPTER 17 MY WAKING NIGHTMARE As I relive the events of 1989, things seem so crystal clear in my memory that they could have happened just yesterday. Suffice it to say, this was the year our lives changed irreparably, for the worse. With our financial pressures mounting, Jake started spending more and more time at the office, sometimes missing dinner entirely, and arriving home late at night. Although I knew we were on a budget, I couldn’t quite figure out where all the money was going. Since I was so busy with the children and we lived outside of the city, Jake usually paid the bills and picked up the mail at our post office each day. He also did all of the banking since our bank was in St. John’s. I trusted him to look after things. One dark night in early spring, Jake arrived home in a foul mood. He seemed very angry with me for reasons I could not quite fathom, and out of the blue, he ordered me to take myself and both children back to New Brunswick to live with my mother. He went on to say he had booked flights for all three of us, which I knew could not possibly be true. He then laid down on the couch in our family room and fell fast asleep. I was not only stunned but was also in a total state of disbelief and confusion. As a result, I did nothing, since I could not seem to get him to wake up and talk to me about what was bothering him. Our stand-off went on for several days with Jake coming home late at night, refusing to talk to me, and then falling asleep on the couch. After a week or so of this strange behavior, Jake seemed to come around, and we never spoke of the matter again. Another time that spring when I went to get something out of my car, Jake locked the front door behind me, and I was stuck outside in the cold for at least an hour before he finally opened the door and let me back in. Once again, he offered no explanation for his erratic behavior and certainly no apology. In addition to all of his unexplained aggression toward me, there were two more bizarre incidents, both occurring at night; thankfully, our children were fast asleep in bed. One evening, Jake came home, late as usual, and headed straight for the living room. He seemed to be disoriented and announced that he was going to burn our house down in order to collect on the insurance money. He went so far as to get a barbecue lighter and some newspapers and then sat down in the middle of the floor to start a fire! I couldn’t believe my own eyes and ears, but eventually he calmed down, and I quickly snatched the items away from him. His eyes were glazed over, and he seemed totally spaced out. I asked him if he had been drinking, and he admitted he had. With a note of desperation in my voice, I told him he needed to stop right away, as the alcohol was severely affecting his decision-making and behavior. I knew there was a history of alcoholism on both sides of his family, putting him at an increased risk of falling into the same patterns. Looking miserable, he told me he could not stop drinking because he had already tried to do so, and he had, in fact, been drinking for over three weeks straight! Horrified, I was at a loss for words. The experts in addiction say it usually takes about three weeks for a habit to form, so that explained a lot to me, such as why he came home so late at night and went straight to sleep. The strange thing was that he rarely seemed impaired or even smelled of alcohol. I asked him once more where he had been spending his long evenings, and he insisted he had been staying late in his office, drinking by himself. I was adamant that he stop drinking right away, but I still felt something else was going on with him; I just couldn’t figure out what it was. The second incident was even worse than the first. A few days later, he once again arrived home late at night and seemed to be in a state of frenzy. This time, he went into the kitchen and took a large butcher knife out of the knife block, shouting at me that he was going to go to Topsail Beach to kill himself! He was so out of control that I could not calm him down. Frightened that he might come after me with the knife, I let him go, racing to lock the door behind him. Once again, I was totally out of my depth and unsure of what to do. I couldn’t follow him in my car because I could not leave the children alone, so I considered calling the police. Before I could do even that, he arrived back home, banging on the front door and shouting to be let in. After reluctantly unlocking the door, I made him put down the knife before he entered, and afterward, he went straight to the couch in our family room, laid down, and immediately fell asleep. Like his mother, Jake was one of those rare people who could fall asleep at the drop of a hat— anytime, anywhere. I eventually went upstairs, crawled into bed, and tried to go to sleep myself. Sleep was elusive, however, as I worried all night long about our safety, should he suddenly wake up and go off the rails once more. Having young children in the house, I considered all of my options, none of which were good. In complete desperation, I had called his parents to come over once, earlier that same year, after he had put his hands around my neck and threatened to choke me—again, for no apparent reason. He did it twice but then backed off after I called his bluff and told him, “Just go ahead and do it.” When Tom and Joan arrived at our house about an hour later, they assumed we had just had a big fight, and they soon went home again, very angry that I had called them in the first place. I knew, then and there, that I was on my own with Jake.