Boiling Frogs

I am not faring well in the new spring heat. For the nth night in a row, I still can’t sleep. I get a couple hours, then BANG! I’m up. It’s probably my hormone shifts causing mini hot flashes. Whatever it is, it means long nights of being awake yet chronically sleepy.

Sometimes, when I’m up in the middle of the night, I text Bob. I don’t do it often anymore because Bob has gone full-blown alcoholic again. Alcoholics in the midst of their disorder are not fun to talk to. They ramble. They’re self-flagellating. They make no sense. They’re stupid. And these days, not working, Bob drinks all night. Sometimes days too.

If he’s up, Bob usually texts back. With the warmer temperatures, he sits outside his country home that he moved into with his re-girlfriend Tracy a year ago, and has a bonfire going while he listens to music. He often sends me a picture of the bonfire and compliments the weather — and the 12 or so beers that he’s consumed (so far). And tells me to get some sleep (knowing I have insomnia). It’s meant to be a running joke — “Go to bed!” he’ll scold.

I have accepted that Bob and Tracy have chosen their lives together and that it’s permanent despite my misgivings. But I admit it still stings when he complains (ad nauseum) about how miserable he is, telling me tales of Tracy’s abuse. I’m trying to switch to the role of supportive friend, but knowing he chose her over me — and always will — smarts.

To be fair to Tracy, she works in health care in management. It’s a good position for someone with no degree nor a license of any kind, but she works at least 12 hours a day — often closer to 18 — multiple days per week. She may be a bitch, but she’s a hard working one.

And Bob is her reward — he is what she comes home to every night. Someone who is unemployed, has no car, no money, whom she doesn’t trust at all, and who gets sloppy drunk every single night.

Don’t feel too bad though. Like Bob, Tracy chose this life knowing full well what she was getting into. Now, they both pay the price.

This is a daily occurrence. Tracy might come home from work late at night to find him drunk yet again. In her rage, she starts nagging about something small which balloons quickly into a full blown knock-down drag out argument. She comes at him with a knife (crazy), and rather than leave — which is what a normal person would do — Bob retreats, sulking outside at his bonfire to drink away his problems and grumble about how awful his life is (also crazy).

And the more drunk he becomes, the more his core issues come tumbling out into the haze of intoxication, only to be denied again in the sober light of day.

And quite often, they come out to me. I’m his doormat sounding board.

But in truth, he and I aren’t that different. We are both boiling frogs. You know the parable. If frogs are put into hot water, they jump right out understanding the danger. But when put in tepid water and heated slowly over time, the frogs don’t notice the heating water until it’s too late.

Bob’s been in this relationship with Tracy on and off for almost ten years now. They’ve argued so much over the years that it’s become a comfort zone. Despite the fact that the water’s boiling, they know only that it’s been hot for some time and that’s “normal” for them. Even though it clearly isn’t.

I have sat on this Bob situation for several years now. The water’s boiling, but I don’t notice it. It’s just another day in my life where Bob is hurting my feelings and I let him — holding the door open and putting out the welcome mat for him to step all over. Why? Because I’ve acclimated to these crazy surroundings.

It’s not just relationships either. My house is a wreck, yet I don’t clean it. My body is fat, but I don’t stop eating.

The Boiling Frogs parable has been around for so long because it’s so universally true. Consider chronic illnesses of lifestyle — the drug addict/alcoholic. The diabetic. The obese. All caused by small decisions or compromises chosen and then re-chosen over time until they snowball into a massive problem. So much suffering that we all put up with that can change on a dime if we only choose to change it one day at a time.

Instead we wait for something tragic to happen.

With Bob and Tracy, a tragic end might not be far away. How long before that knife she wields so frequently finds purchase?

Last night, I received a string of stream-of-consciousness texts from Bob that laid out a half-hearted plan to leave.

“I’m gonna pack my shit get the fuck out its been fun and its been real.”

He always says he’s gonna leave, but he never does. There’s something vaguely threatening in that though — as if he’s not addressing her, but also addressing me.

“Just way it is and way its been im not dumb i played the game and put myself in the game. It’s not a different out come surprise. No matter what its me accept it or not.”

He’s talking about Tracy here. I’ve said to him before that he and she knew what they were getting into. But he insists she can’t accept him for who he really is: an alcoholic. With Bob’s history of being adopted and chronically feeling like an outsider, he’s a bottomless pit of need when it comes to the acceptance he can never feel.

When he gets drunk, he rambles about how he can leave anytime he wants to, and dammit, as soon as he’s done being drunk, this time he’s gonna do it! Yeah. Sure.

“I can go anywhere.”

Asserting his right to freedom (which he never takes.)

He follows quickly with a qualifier: “Just know I don’t need a gf or a mom to tell me what is right or wrong.”

Is he addressing me? Saying that because he knows I’m attached to him? That I’m so much older, that I could be a gf or a mom figure in his life? But that my interference in his life comes across as judgmental? Or his he talking about his contentious relationship with his parents as well as the re-girlfriend? (probably the latter)

I tried to get him to explain further but he refused.

“Nvm. Nothing I’ll understand it not u. No need to explain it. One day I’ll get it more than u lol. Pretend happy simple I’m not enough for her duh.”

Okay. I have no idea what he’s going on about except for one overarching theme — he loves her but feels no love/acceptance from her.

And whatever I offer isn’t worth anything. Because I’m not her.

Ultimately, however, these are just drunk ramblings. No different than the sorts of pity party bullcrap he says or thinks EVERY time he gets drunk. If hell exists, this is the one he has chosen for himself right here on earth. Perpetually in love with a woman who cannot show him the kind of love he wants in return.

Understand that I grew up with an alcoholic mother. This behavior — again, like the boiling frog — is something I’m accustomed to despite the fact that I hate it. I really hate it. Nothing an alcoholic says is about anything except themselves. They are selfish and self-serving to the core.

I want out of the water.