Vincit Qui Se Vincit

Adhering to current professional plans, I need to learn a third language and I can’t decide if it should be Latin or Italian.  This is a privileged white girl dilemma—I’m aware—but keep in mind that a short two years ago I couldn’t decide between booze or everyone I love and any chance at a future… so… perspective, people. 

If I understood Italian, I could translate The Decameron and The Divine Comedy for myself.  Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Da Vinci (yes—he was a writer too—kind of a “Jack-of-all-trades” situation)—I could read their works exactly as they had all intended them to be read.  Latin, however, is the etymological skeleton key.  It’s the foundation of the Romance languages.  Latin is used constantly in British literature, French literature, German literature, Italian literature… it has all the components to words that I don’t even know, and I know a lot of words.

                I sought advice on the dilemma from two of my professors and both reiterated that Latin is a dead language.  It may be a great morphological tool to holster, but unless I switch professions and move to the Amazon to look under rocks and give scientific names to funky new beetles… Latin’s usefulness is limited.  My French professor informed me that, since Italian is still spoken, I could use it to branch into translating and transcribing. 

My response: “Mmmm.  No.  I can’t.”

                I am already a translator between to different cultures and I am terrible at it.  It’s one thing to be able to express a sentiment in two different languages—its another to have two different perspectives, a multi-lingual lexicon, and still not have the words to make one person understand the mentality of another.  I have been trying for almost two years to interpret addict behavior for the confused, unafflicted non-addicts and so far, I have failed.   

                I can list the many ways that someone becomes an addict.  I can describe how they got to their current low point.  I can tell you what they are probably thinking/feeling/hearing/seeing when they are in full-blown active addiction.  I can explain why they continue abusing drugs and/or alcohol after they’ve been told, begged, scolded, and pleaded with to STOP!  I can even tell you why an addict is sitting in an alley way smoking meth out of a pipe made from a light bulb instead of being at home, sober, making meatloaf and helping their children with their homework—there actually is a reason.  And it’s not “because they’re a piece-of-shit person.”

                I’ve mediated delicately because it’s a sensitive and volatile deliberation.  Some people will listen, but not understand.  Some people refuse to listen.  Some people listen, hear me, understand me, then negate everything I say and revert to their original observation: that addicts are just terrible people.  I get it.  Addiction is invisible, but its symptoms and consequences are obvious and as vivid as Monet’s “Water Lillies.”  Convincing people to embrace the psychological in lieu of the visible is exhausting.

                Remember, I speak both languages.  I am not in constant defense of addicts or addiction.  They get a much harsher strike from my dueling advocacies.  I don’t bother with the ones who aren’t yet sober—there really is no point.  They won’t hear me.  The ones who are sober, however, need a constant reality check (myself, included!)  They have to be reminded not to blame anybody but themselves.  That amends and apologies should never include a “but…” To not overuse the “it’s a disease,” defense—that one really gets me.  If I see one more 60-year-old man rest on his laurels and smugly absolve himself of all accountability with the excuse of “well, it’s a disease…” I will tell them to “get fucked.”  In four different languages.  On a related not, did you know the word “futile” is the same in English as it is in Italian?

I was supposed to be the therapeutic vertices where addicts and non-addicts would meet.  With honesty and understanding, they could both acknowledge the damage, acknowledge the hurt, and extract the viable human parts of the addict from the decaying shell of addiction they’d been living in.  Condemn the abhorrent actions, retract the cruel words, apologize sincerely and accept that trust and belief will have to be achieved over time… but it can be done, if both parties want the love back bad enough. 

I’ll say this in English because it’s easier for everyone--  Addicts, listen, I know you feel like the victim.  Life and genetics have not been kind to you.  You don’t feel like any of it is your fault.  The world is unforgiving.  The work of sobriety is grueling, and it will never be over.  Here is the hard pill you need to swallow:  You absolutely are the one who fucked-up.  You are the one who has to fix it.

Non-addicts, listen, you’ve been savagely beaten by someone you loved.  You watched as their face contorted into one of a ravaging demon who only wanted booze, drugs, or money and would push you off a cliff to get it.  Their mood changed, their body changed, their character dissolved and was replaced with a brutal selfishness that they adamantly defended.  You did everything you could to stop them, help them, save them… and they wouldn’t do a damn thing to stop, help, or save themselves.  You spent years in that Hell—so long that addiction stopped being their struggle and became their identifier.  Their constitution.  The hard pill you need to swallow is this:  That addict was not your daughter.  Not your sister.  Not your wife.  Not your friend.  That was just a monster who looked a little bit like someone you used to know.  Someone who used to love. 

I’ve made my decision.  I’m going with Latin.  I just spent 900 words trying to say what Latin can say in a few lines.  If spoken English isn’t the best medium for addict to non-addict communication, let’s try reviving dead relationships with a dead language.

Addicts, listen again:  Damnant quod non intellegunt.  They condemn what they do not understand.  And you can’t blame them.  You have to live through addiction to understand addiction and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, certainly not on someone I love.  They’re mad.  Take it.  They’re hurt.  Take it.  They’re condemning you. Take it.  Keep taking it—you deserve it.  Do the next right thing and pactum serva (keep the faith.) 

Non-addicts, you listen too:  Acta non Verba.  Actions, not words. Trust is going to be hard to muster, especially if you’ve seen one too many episodes and one too many relapses.  When you see the change—a real change—in behavior, in attitude, in action… embrace it.  Its real.  And it takes a lot of work, so that means they want it bad.  Don’t be stupid and don’t be duped, but don’t be done with them.  Not before it gets good.

To everyone, I say this:  Addiction is a hard, long road with no answers and few solutions.  It doesn’t have to be perpetual.  It doesn’t have to be a death sentence.  Success is real, I can prove it.  Not every tragedy will be forgotten and not every fence can be mended, but its worth it for what can be gloriously salvaged when we all work together and do our best to understand each other.  

Ubi amor ibi fides.  Where there is love, there is faith.