Beautiful touching song.
Alcoholism is a terrible blight. It blinds the alcoholic to the damage they do to those around them, while the one being harmed is always accused by the alcoholic as being the problem.
Love then causes the sober partner to start believing they are not properly handling their drunk spouses problem, so they continually give in. Almost becoming a slave to the alcoholics desires.
The alcoholic then continues down their self destructive path, while the sober one becomes almost self deprecating to the point of hiding the problem form others. Which in time turns to depression, to the point that they lose their own self identity.
Others outside the sphere of knowing the truth, begin wondering what happened to the once happy, outgoing wife/husband married to the alcoholic. Mainly because the sober one has so expertly helped the alcoholic hide their problem from the World. So they never realizing how big of a problem the drinking is, which creates an illusion that the problems of the one who is sober is what drives the other one to drink.
Which is exactly what the alcoholic wants the World to see. Thus so many outside the home never realize how depression brought on by a spouses drinking can destroy the sober partner.
Al-Anon is a great group, but it is more difficult at times for the family of an alcoholic to go to those meetings than it is for an alcoholic to go to Alcohol Anonymous meetings, because the drunk is always creating a situation of fear in the sober one. A fear, not of physical abuse, but a fear of emotional abuse that creates the depression. This, often times, can be more destructive than physical abuse.
Physical injuries can heal complete, but emotional physiological damage can scar for life.
To love one so much that one will abandon their own sanity is hell. Something the alcoholic seldom if ever realizes they have caused.
I’ve been there. But I did get help and learned how not to be an enabler of the abuser, from Al Anon. It’s a great organization.