Top 100 - The Man With The Child In His Eyes, Kate Bush # 46

Story by Anon

I'm sending you a song that resonates intimately with me and so succinctly represents the feelings that I have for my man.  He is a poet.  When we started going out together, 18 years ago, he was 23 and I was 29. 

I had a 4 yr old daughter and had just come out of a bad relationship/marriage and was not looking for another man - but it just happened.  There was a connection that most people could not understand.  He looked like a grunge tragic, drank copiously etc, and I was pretty straight, already a mother.  But he was so smart, funny and most of all, we enjoyed each other's company.  We spent the next 9 yrs on a roller-coaster. He had a sad background, having come to Australia from England when he was 12.  He lost his dad, who remained in England (and he hasn't seen him since then), had a distant mother and a domineering, nasty grandmother as well as a pedophile step-father.  The one man, he had in his life that gave him love and direction, his Grandfather, died when he was 16.   

So, in our relationship, he drank too much, stopped writing poetry and we had so many break-ups that I can't even remember the number.  Then, after many years, the tragedy of losing 3 pregnancies and my mother (who adored him), we had a little girl.  He was so happy but conversely, he started drinking more heavily.  It became apparent that I had ignored the fact that he was an alcoholic.  It culminated in, what I thought, was "the break-up".  I told him to stop drinking and he didn't want to so I told him to leave and he did.  We spent 10 days apart and during that time, the only communication I had with him was sending him emails with info about alcoholism (you see, I wanted him to be there for his child and being an alcoholic made that extremely difficult) and once, when he came to see us, unannounced.  I asked him what he wanted but he was so deep into his drinking that I he couldn't articulate anything.  He did ask me what I wanted and I told him "my husband, not drinking here with me and his children".  He left and I thought that was it.  Three days later, he rang me and said he wanted to come home and that he would stop the drinking. I was happy and terrified in equal measure.

He came back and the first thing he did, was call a rehab centre.  Then he tried to stop drinking on his own, but couldn't do it without getting DTs.  To cut it short, he did a home detox, using valium and then going to see a psychiatrist and he hasn't been drinking for 6yrs now.

I think that the most amazing thing was watching the man that I had glimpsed over the years, the one that kept me in a situation that, ordinarily, I would have walked away from, emerge.  He started reading again and then started writing.  He found a new appreciation of life and I saw "The Man With the Child in His Eyes", the man I'd always loved.  He was there, finally there after a long journey where he'd been drowned by that other guy.  Unlike him, I can't express the depth of my love for him and the admiration for a man who was able to overcome such overwhelming odds.  The one thing I never doubted was that he loved me.

Artwork by Karin