Petals fall
Softly
On piano keys;
A Pianissimo.
They quietly
Play
Love’s measures.
Like the silence
Between notes,
Your memory
Is made real.
By Cheryle A Johnson
July 10, 2021
On the anniversary
of Mom’s death
“You’ve Got A Friend”
Pianissimo
Month: December 2021
Wednesday Turbulence
I don’t know why the interviews I read featuring Ben Affleck bothered me so much today.
They are, as all A-List interviews are, a prelude to some movie he has coming out. His comments were meant to be candid and, I guess, insightful.
The insight I got was that since JLo and he rekindled their romance, suddenly Jennifer Garner is the cause of all his great unhappiness and made him feel “trapped” and caused him to drink.
Except Affleck was already an alcoholic and had been to rehab before he ever dated Garner. And up until this moment, he has always been gracious when speaking of her publicly,
As the Adult Child of Alcoholics, I understand that Affleck, who also fits into this category, and I and others raised in the chaos of drink aren’t good at relationships.
That’s because we don’t know what to believe: what we were told or what we witnessed growing up.
Like Affleck, my Dad (really my maternal grandfather) was a bartender. He never left the family the way Affleck’s father wandered in and out of his son’s life, but “Dad” was never fully present, either.
My Mom (his second wife, my step-grandmother) was extremely depressed and reclusive most of my life. Drinking made her an angry person who would say the mean things that festered within her.
Still, most of my days with her were spent in companionable silence. She was the one person I had to go to when I hurt inside. She would hold me, and I felt loved for a time.
When you grow up in this family dynamic, you don’t have a clue as to what love really means. For me, it became a romanticized concept from what I read in novels and saw in movies. I. Had. No. Clue,
It has taken me most of my life to learn how to properly love someone. For example, I loved my son desperately from the moment he was born. But I think as a divorced, professional mother, my focus on work became my addiction, and perhaps I wasn’t as emotionally present for him as I like to think I was. I didn’t plan it. It just worked out that way. But I have to own it.
And I don’t think, especially from Affleck’s interview with Howard Stern, that he is “owning it” right now.
I was so upset to read he had said he was “trapped” in his marriage and that caused his drinking. Doesn’t he realize his kids are going to grow up and read that and wonder if that’s what family life was to him…a trap?
I rather think his drinking created a distorted reality for him in which he may have felt trapped…but like all alcoholics, it was a trap of his own making. And you can do a lot of damage when you try to chew your own foot off to be released from that self-imposed trap.
I know he had a rough childhood…but by his own admission, he has had more second chances than others. What he seems to be missing about his past adult life was that he was also incredibly blessed. Or maybe he wasn’t capable of being present to what was bestowed on him at the time. Which is incredibly sad to ponder.
But dumping on Jennifer Garner won’t change that…although maybe it makes JLo feel like the winner somehow. Like she is the “true” Jennifer of his life, so let’s start tearing down the one who was his wife.
(Okay I admit I am feeling very protective of Garner here; probably because I had a husband who distorted the reality of our marriage to make me the reason for something bad he chose to do. Affleck seems to be trying to whitewash his own accountability for what didn’t go right in his marriage.)
Frankly, it all just makes Affleck look like the biggest loser.
And a lesser father than he says he wants to be.
A Senior Moment 