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~ Life With An Alcoholic Husband

QuietRagingWaters

Monthly Archives: March 2016

Almost Like Normal

28 Monday Mar 2016

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alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, alcoholism, co-dependent, married to an alcoholic, wife of alcoholic

Yesterday was Easter.

The kids, though probably “too old” for such, still enjoyed a morning Easter egg hunt.

I (finally) managed to honor my own self-imposed “do nothing” for the day and had a nice hot bath followed by a long nap.

My husband spent the day cooking dinner, including many thougtful sides to indulge my vegetarism.

Of course there was beer but it didn’t seem to be the bride, as it is on the week-ends.  More a bridesmaid.  It seemed almost innocous, that tell-tale bottle, on the kitchen counter next to him as he lovingly cut, chopped and sauted raw ingredients into Easter dinner.

It seemed almost…

Normal.

And then near the end of dinner, it erupted.

Oddly, this time not my husband or even my husband and me.

This time it was the kids.

But I can’t help but feel my children are more canaries in the (drunken) coal mine than the real problem.

Because where does normal sibling rivalry end and the stress-of-living-with-an-alcoholic-father “rivalry” begin?

Who’s Fault Is It Anyway?

12 Saturday Mar 2016

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alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, funtional alcoholic, married to an alcoholic, wife of an alcoholic

No one prepares us for how fast our lives fly by.

Oh, they try.  They tell us things like “enjoy it while you can” and “it goes by in the blink of an eye” but we don’t hear it…

Until we are ones saying it.

I’ll be 50 this year.

50. Years. Old.

And if it feels like my 50 years have gone by fast, it’s nothing compared to how fast it seems 17 years of marriage to an alcoholic have flown by.  One is a crop duster; the other is a jumbo jet.

17 years!

17 years?

And so now as I face the “second half” of my life and I think of the years past and all I wanted to do or be but never did or was, I can’t help but ask,

Who’s fault is it?

Is it my own fault?  Is all this soul-searching, therapist-seeing, blogging-effort, going-to-finally-write-my books effort a middle-aged thing? Did I, like so typical of the human condition, fall victim to, simply, the inertia of life?  Was I the one who let my dreams down?  Let books go unwritten? Let art go uncreated? Let passion for living fade?  Is everything about me and my life – from being 50 pounds overweight to eating crap to not writing to failing to live up to my potential – all on me?!

Or is all on him – the alcoholic who I married?  Do I get to lay everything that is wrong, compromised or flawed in my life at his (intoxicated) feet?

My first thought is to say, yes, why yes I do.  It’s hard to overstate how deeply and utterly completely the alcoholic affects your life.  It doesn’t seem like it should be that way.  It seems somehow one should be able to at least partially separate herself out from her alcoholic husband but if that’s even possible to do, it’s very, very hard to do.

Everything about the alcoholic’s condition – from his compulsive drinking to the volatile and erradic behaior to the emotionally vacancy – compromises your life.  How do you fly when a weighted cape has been laid across your shoulders?  How do you soar to the heights of your potential when the storm of alcoholism rages all around you?

You don’t.

Not really.

You survive today.

And then you survive another day.

And then another and another and another.

You just keep surviving while an idea, a feeling, a fear – a question – lurks unanswered in the back of your mind:

Am I just simply surviving my Life?

It taps, taps, taps, taps so lightly it seems until it builds to the thudering roar of a cresendo, refusing to be ignored.

What?

Am?

I!

DOING WITH MY LIFE?!

I suppose if you’re smart…

And you’re prepared to work hard (HARD!)…

And there is still a sliver of your soul left…

A cinder that smolders in that fire in your belly…

A tiny flame flickering in your darkness…

And if you can come to understand (accept!) that it doesn’t really matter who bears responsiblity for the state of your life and being…

You might just be able to fly again.

 

 

 

 

 

How Did I Get Here?

07 Monday Mar 2016

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alcoholic husband, wife of an alcoholic

The story of how my husband and I met is so cliche as to almost be obnoxious.

Or the story line for a Nicholas Sparks’ novel.

I was almost 30 and teaching writing and art at one of those private, progressive schools where students sit on the desks and call the teachers by their first names.

He was a buttoned-up (or is it buttoned-down) professional on the fast track to (relative) fame, fortune and a corner office.

One night we were each out with our own group of friends at a restaurant that looks out over a picturesque body of water.  And has a band that starts playing at 10 pm. One of his friends knew one of my friends and so two people – the free spirit writer/artist and the suit and tie professional – who would probably have never crossed paths did, indeed, cross paths.

Once the band started playing, the two groups morphed into one and he and I found ourselves sitting next to each other.  Conversation was easy between us (of course that I found him hot-hot-hot didn’t hurt) and somewhere during the night, I started doing what women do: I began thinking about how I could orchestrate another “accidental” meeting.

The band played until 2 am and though he and I had talked all night, I still had not come up with A Plan.  As everyone was getting their coats on, downing the last drop in their drinks and saying the requisite good-byes, he looked at me and said,

Can I take you out to dinner next week end?

I was shocked.

He would later say he immediately regretted his “impulsivity,” interpreting the look on my face as one of “Oh shit. He’s asked me out. How do I get out of this?”

I would say no that is was most definitely not that but rather the look of, “Holy shit! A guy who actually knows how to be a man and ask a woman out!”

We fell in love.

He loved my creativity, spontaneity and the renewed “zest” for life he said I ignited in him.  His soul had become bland, he said.

I loved his focus, direction and the committment he brought to his life’s goals.  His soul may have been “bland” but mine was eratic, sporadic and hopelessly un-directed.

Together we would take on the world.

He would save it with his philanthropic endeavors.

I would awaken it with my writing and art.

We would live in an old farmhouse with a studio “in the back” for me.  We’d buy a summer beach cottage and watch our babies played naked in the sand.  We would fight and make up and have sex on the kitchen table, even when we were “old,” like 50.

It was all to be so perfect.

There was no mention of or plans made for the Beast of Alcoholism and yet it came busting through the front door within the first year of our marriage.  I’ve come to learn this is quite typical, the Beast willing to be hidden away in the closet or shoved under a bed,  temporarily but never forever.  Once you are living as husband or wife, the Beast is none too remiss in making itself comfortable in your home… your life… your soul.  It’s a most unhospitable house guest and one who doesn’t taken kindly to the notion of its leaving.

My husband and I have been married for nearly 20 years and he’s been drinking for every single one of them.  How is it “just now” that I am seeing a therapist?  How is it “just now” that I have looked up and realized there is little (if anything) left of who I once felt myself to be?

Where has the time gone?

Where have I gone?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m A Writer: My Husband Is An Alcoholic

05 Saturday Mar 2016

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All my life I have wanted to “be” a writer.

Or, more accurately, I have wanted to “be” a published writer for the truth is being a writer and being a published writer are two vastly different things.

To be cliche, writers are born.

Published writers are made.

And so when I was at my therapist and she asked me what my dreams were, I said,

To be a published writer.

And so she asked why don’t I write.

I said I write all the time.

All.

The.

Time.

What I don’t do is write and get published.

She said in this day and age, I have no excuse for not being published.

Start a blog, she said.

Does that really count as published, I said.

She assured me it counts though for me the jury is still out on that one.

What will you write about, she asked, though I suspect like a lawyer, therapists don’t ask any question they don’t already know the answer to.

Unfortunately, I said, I suppose the obvious.

When I majored in English as an undergrad, when I went on to get my Masters in writing, when I applied (but never went) to a PhD program in Writing, never once did I imagine that my focus would be alcoholism, much less my own husband’s alcoholism. I anticipated  (and for a long time wrote – or at least began) creative tomes filled with the sort of lyrical language, colorful characters and deep story lines that lets one feel justified in calling herself A Writer.  I saw books piled high at the front of bookstores, while I sat signing copies and humbly accepting readers’ accolades and praise.

I didn’t see myself siting alone in front of a keyboard 2am  recounting how the love of my life, a man highly (HIGHLY) respected in his field, a man who no one (NO ONE) in his professional circle would ever (EVER) guess, had spent the evening screaming about fucking dishes or fucking dogs or fucking bills or fucking noise or fucking ANYTHING for that matter. I didn’t expect to be writing about how there are years (YEARS) old memories that still haunt me – like racing out of the house with my then-babies at 10 pm to escape his verbal wrath.

As the tried and true adage goes, write what you know.

I didn’t expect what I was going to know was slowly drowning… in the sea of my husband’s alcoholism.

 

 

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