One year's difference...

This was a post I made about a year ago. I wanted to re-post and show the difference a year can make -- OR that a year and sobriety can mean no change at all.

May 14th, 2011

One of my very first needlecraft projects was to embroider a set of kitchen towels. My mother bought seven blank “flour sack” towels and ironed a transfer onto each one (do they even make those anymore?). The lines were to be stitched using brightly colored embroidery thread in several different stitch styles.

There were seven towels – one for each day of the week and each day had a specific task: Monday-Sweep; Tuesday-Dust; Wednesday-Laundry; Thursday-Ironing; Friday-Mend; Saturday-Shop; Sunday-Rest. It took me a while to get them completed, but I was sooooooo proud of them when they were all done and neatly hung on the handle of the oven. For months I changed them daily so they matched the appropriate day of the week.

My little girl mind would often drift into believing that maybe this is how life was supposed to be lived. Was there a time for each chore and was always to be done consistently each and every week? I wondered if this was the way life was suppose to be lived and the fact that my family didn’t operate in that manner meant that we were somehow not living the “right” way.

After a few months, I forgot about putting the right towel out for the day and just grabbed one when needed for drying the dishes without concern for what day of the week it was. But, I did, however, carry over a bit of “neatish” behavior through my teen years. While other teens had rooms resembling the city dump, mine was neat and clean. My closet was divided by dresses, skirts, tops and pants and in each section the clothes were organized by color. For a teenager – I was definitely not normal.

As I have gotten older, I have digressed… Fast forward 40+ years… left to my own devices, I would have a house that was livably clean but not spotless. You might find yesterdays coffee cup still on my desk and the newspaper might be thrown about the sofa. In my room there is a stack of clothes that needs to be hung up or put away. If I lie down during the day, I do not re-make the bed. My toothbrush doesn’t always make it back into the holder. My bedroom slippers never make it into the closet.

I know I have a point here somewhere in the clutter of my mind… In Riley World there would be a kitchen towel for every day of the week and each would have a list of tasks. He would adhere to those tasks as though they were the holy grail itself. The towels would be changed at 12:01 A.M. every single day. They would be clearly hung on some special hanger in view for all to see. There would be no deviation.

Imagine the frustration he must feel when comforted with the fact that the pile of things… *#!% ...as he calls it… accumulates on my desk and my attitude is “I’ll get a round to it this week.” It must cause extreme stress for him when he gives me a grocery list and I come home with only seven of the ten items. Riley lives in an absolute black and white world. I live with approximations and shades of gray with an occasional absolute thrown in.

Riley says he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – I’m not so sure. The absolute routine of Riley’s world has a purpose. He has told me that if he gets everything done that needs to be done, his time then becomes his own do to with as he pleases. And what he pleases is alcohol related. In his mind, it’s OK to be drunk to the point of peeing your pants, if the kitchen counter is spotless. It is OK to be oblivious to the end table having rings from his beer cans if he vacuumed the floor this morning. That doesn’t sound like OCD to me. It sounds more like alcoholic behavior.

There is a jagged sort of logic in his thinking. It’s not one I agree with – but it belongs to him and I have no right to try to take away his thought process. As he – again – progresses towards end-stage, he needs those daily reminder towels to keep him on task because he sometimes confuses Monday with Wednesday. He has difficulty remembering his self-assigned tasks and when he is to do them or even if he has already done them.

I know that part of it is the memory loss from the stroke. But I am also acutely aware that most of it is that his frontal lobe is saturated with ammonia and therefore not truly able to agree to anything for a long period of time. I also know that he finds some kind of “pay back” in creating minor difficulties for me. If he is not happy in the living arrangement, he will not let me be happy either. Or, if he makes me miserable enough, I’ll send him away.

Whatever… I just want to give fair warning… if I see that Tuesday Towel around here, I will promptly burn it and then claim no knowledge.

March 10, 2013

Now that Riley has been sober for almost a year it would be easy to assume that the Tuesday Towel scenario would be in the past. But, that is far from reality. I still don't like living in a sterile environment and Riley is even more determined to drive me crazy with his little cleanliness endeavors.

When I have my morning coffee, the spoon I use to stir in the cream and sugar is washed, dried and put away before I finish my first cup. And evidently I have a two cup requirment because Riley asks me every morning "Have you had your second cup yet?" The question is really "Can I clean up the coffeemaker now?" It has nothing to do with me getting my fill of caffiene. So not only is my spoon no longer on the counter, the coffee pot is no longer holding coffee. That's all before I finish my first cup.

I like to lay on the sofa and watch my soaps. During this wintertime season, I cover with a fluffy throw. If I go to the bathroom during a commercial, when I return, my throw is neatly folded and returned to the back of the sofa. He must fold up that throw a dozen times a day.

The cleanliness level feels rather false to me. He goes crazy over sweeping the floor, but refuses to use the vacuum cleaner on the carpet. He pesters me to clean out the fridge, but will leave his chicken out on the counter for several days -- telling me not to put it away. And get this -- he eats it and never gets sick. He keeps his beard neatly trimed and reminds me he needs to get a hair cut, but never takes a shower or washes his hair.

Not all things are resolved with the advent of sobriety. Sometimes the little things that we find exasperating during alcoholic drunkenness become overwhelmingly intolerable in sobriety.
I have to stop writing now because Riley wants to clean out my "to be filed" bin.