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Lost in the Liquor

Grief is a powerful thing, it evokes emotions from the deepest parts of our hearts especially when it is a close loss. Death is unexplainable but it's part of life and losing the ones we love happens more often than we like. Imagine how difficult it would be to lose the one person that you felt so connected to and loved the most just to disappear from existence. The person who knows you to your core, can no longer have conversations with you and be there to hug you when you cry. Charles lost his wife to a car accident only a few years after they had gotten married.

She was the love of his life, who he was planning on spending the rest of his life with, and having children with, he fell into a great deal of depression. Most days he couldn't even get out of bed in the morning. It felt as though his life had stopped without her and he didn’t know how to continue without the other half of his being. His heart was constantly heavy as if a piece was removed when she passed that night. He could not believe life was real without her, he needed her. Months continued and everyday he felt the same, that he needed her to live and could not live without her beside him. Life started to catch up to him and he needed a way to continue on without thinking about the loss of his life because although his life stopped, the world was still revolving. The day he decided to return to work he needed help to even step foot out of the house, and there it was on the cart in the living room, glimmering in its glass bottle just waiting for him to pick it up.

 It was tempting and taunting him, so he decided that one sip of whiskey couldn't hurt and so he sipped and went on his way. Even just after one sip he felt a sense of relief and finally made it into work. He felt like he was putting the pieces back together again. If one sip provided him this much then how much could more do? The next day he took two sips. Every day after that first, he kept adding to the amount he needed to forget and give him the ability to be a part of society again. As time went on Charles hadn’t realized how bad his drinking had gotten, it was at the point where there was not a moment he wasn’t drinking. He used liquor to get through every living moment and provide a sense of personality to him. He relied on the alcohol to get up, to go to work, to have fun with his friends, he drank so much that it was no longer him talking and acting but instead the alcohol controlling him so he could get through the days. He thought he didn't know who he was without his wife but the real tragedy is that he lost all of himself in the liquor he was drinking. 

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Is Love all Sacrifice?

When Susie was a little girl she always dreamed of the perfect wedding and moving into her dream house with her handsome husband. They would have the cutest kids and grow old together. She wanted to own a clothing store and play dress up with other girls all day. She wanted to make her own money and design clothes even if that was out of the norm, she had dreams and aspirations. She couldn’t wait to grow up.

When the day came to get married she was only twenty but she was so excited because this is what she was waiting for her whole life, to finally be independent and have her own life. After marriage her and her husband fell pregnant and she had to put her dreams aside to look after her children. Years passed and she was still a stay at home mom, cooking and cleaning during the day then waiting for her husband to come home. She knew he enjoyed her being at the house and he always thought she was the perfect wife. She was happy that she made her husband happy and suddenly her dreams did not seem that important anymore. He often told her that she was made to be a wife and mother and that she was good at it. She started believing this herself. She let her dreams pass away and she tried everyday to be the best housewife her husband could ask for because when he complimented her, she felt so wonderful. Her whole life now revolved around making her husband happy, whenever he was happy so was she. 

Now she hadn’t seen her family in quite some time because her and her husband moved miles away for a recent job promotion but she was on her way to visit her parents with her kids in the back of the car. She was so excited because her mom was very close to her and she was the one who taught her how to sew. Her mother was the one that suggested she start her own clothing brand when she was young and her father had always supported that idea. When she and the children arrived her mother had snacks on the living room table and the bright sofa she remembered so vividly but hadn’t seen for some time. As they discussed her life and changes her mother’s face dropped, a look of disappointment and despair. “Mother? What is wrong?” Suzie asked promptly. “Well you just… I don’t know, you don’t seem like yourself. And you're not designing like you always dreamed. What happened to that?” She was shocked at her mothers response. “Mom, that was a silly kid's dream, I am doing what I’m supposed to. I am a good wife and I’m happy making my husband happy.” Her mother sat quiet and staring at a woman who looked like her daughter but knew that the person her daughter was is now gone and her once bright smile has changed to something of a fakeness. 

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Does Acting Turn into Reality?

With some of the greatest films emerging, Hollywood was the place for young actors to be in the fifties. Some struggled to make it big as there was a huge competition in the TV industry, but Dean Harper made magic on screen and was part of the five biggest productions in the last 10 years. He glowed on screen and had the ability to transform fully into the character he was portraying. Every producer wanted him for their movies and were willing to pay him huge amounts of money as he was able to bring their ideas to life and make it seem as real as possible. It was unbelievable that he had no connection to any of the roles he had gotten, no experience in life that made him grasp the role so well, yet he had mastered the ability to become the person he was given on any script. He played a poor man struggling to survive when he was handed everything in life. He played a teenage football star when he was in his twenties and hadn't played a sport a day in his life. With every new role he found a way to make it seem so natural for him to be in this position and it showed on screen. Eventually he got to an age where the roles were slowing down, he had so much more free time on his hands as he wasn’t flying from place to place, starting to film right after he had just wrapped. There were nights where he sat on his couch completely alone and he didn’t know what to do with himself because he wasn’t busy being someone else. As time went on he continued to have more and more time alone. The loneliness became overwhelming, he did not feel comfortable being with himself. As he attended various events, he found it hard to be the same person depending on who he was talking to. Although so many people were there he felt lonely without the definition of the character he was supposed to be. One of those nights alone he started to wonder who he was as a person, what defined him? His thoughts pooling into a cloud of worry that brought a striking fear within him. He did not know who he was. He remembered before he started acting, he had values, interests, and life experiences that so clearly made him who he was. In highschool he was confident in classes, he knew he was good at math because he loved changing equations to be something new. He was able to laugh at himself for funny moments like tripping over his words. He longer finds joy in mistakes and instead spends time craving attention and perfection. Now as he sits in silence he realizes he has spent so much time being good at morphing his personality and pretending to be someone else that he lets himself slip away and he sits as a form waiting for the next identity given to him by a director to shapeshift into.