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~ Life With An Alcoholic Husband

QuietRagingWaters

Monthly Archives: October 2016

Happy Halloween

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alcohoilc holidays, alcoholic, alcoholic and Christmas, alcoholic and Thanksgiving, alcoholic family, alcoholic household, alcoholic husband, Halloween

I love Halloween.

When my first born/oldest son was little, he loved it too.  He always wanted to decorate and fully immerse himself, our home and our lives in it.

Except back then I loved CUTE Halloween.

You know, happy little jack-o-lanterns and haggy but friendly, witches.

My son, just a little guy, loved the gory, scary, spooky, macabre Halloween.

You know, the skeletons, skulls and meat cleavers sort of Halloween.

I tried to marry the two, sort of ease myself into his Halloween while encouraging him to love my version of Halloween.

He was having none of it.

Precocious from the start, he stated with such conviction I had no choice but to be swayed,

“Halloween is about scaring the undead back to their graves.  How are fairies and unicorns going to scare anything back to its grave?”

Now, how close his then-five year old interpretation of Halloween was, I don’t know but it seemed pretty convincing to me.  I had to concede his point and ditch the happy Jacks and smiley witches.

I think I have been collecting skeletons, skulls and meat cleavers ever since.

Holidays – as in Thanksgiving and Christmas – tend not to go well in the alcoholic household but Halloween seems to escape the alcoholic’s wrath.  Maybe ’cause no one is going to notice his drunken slur or lop-sided stagger amongst the zombies and skeletons walking down the street.

Either way, before we get into the full-blown alcoholic, uh I mean holiday, season, I want to wish you a Happy Halloween.

I hope it was frightful in only the best way.

 

 

You Could Win A Pony!

29 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Ok, well probably not really.

I mean I actually don’t have any ponies to give away.

Or the means to get ponies to people that might win them.

But if you happened to buy my book that’s available on Amazon  (The Alcoholic Husband Primer: Survival Tips For The Alcoholic”) and would be so kind as to write a review, I’d be the kind of grateful that makes you want to give away a pony.

And please feel at liberty to be honest with our review.

Writers always want feed back on their work and the more honest, though it maybe painful, the more helpful.

Now go win yourself a pony!

 

The Truth Is He Can’t

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

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Tags

alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, functional alcoholic, happy, living in an alcoholic marriage

Yesterday my husband screamed at me,

“I CAN’T MAKE YOU HAPPY!”

And in that moment, I realized the saddest thing.

He was right.

He can’t make me happy.

I know he said it as an accusation.

As in, I am a bitch who will never be satisfied no matter what he does or how hard he tries.  But I heard it as a confession.  A plight.  As pain.

He can’t make me happy.

As in he doesn’t have the emotional skills, the understanding or the ability to make me happy.

The truth is there are times he tries.

I know he tries.

But how do you tell your husband,

“Yes, I know you cleaned the kitchen tonight but there is 20 years of other stuff (alcoholic stuff!) that can’t be erased so easily.”

How do you tell your husband that bringing home your favorite ice cream one time hardly negates the countless times he has told you to shut the fuck up?

How do you explain to someone – who feels that by cooking your favorite dinner he is really putting himself out there – that there is more – so, very, very much more that you need from the marriage?

My husband can’t make me happy.

This is a truth that is as equally sad for him as for me.

 

Even On A Good Night…

20 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

My husband’s cousin and his family are in town.

It was a work trip for him.

A tag-along trip for his wife and two sons.

His wife and I arranged that part.

They got into the city last night and tonight I drove in and picked up their two boys.

You might think my husband would have gone.

Or at least we would have gone together.

But there was “no way” my husband was driving back into the city after he had driven home for the night.

Don’t worry.

His cousin doesn’t find it “weird” or some kind of social faux paus.

He’s from the same family.

And frankly an alcoholic himself.

But he’s a different kind of alcoholic.

He – and his wife – still like to do things together.

Even alone together, as representative of this week end.

I can’t figure it out.

He’s actually a “worse” alcoholic than my husband in terms of the degree to which he drinks, his sense of fiscal responsibility and the way he speaks to his children.

Yet, she still wants to be with him.

Be alone with him.

?????

That’s ok.

All the kids are excited to be with each other for a long week-end and I love having a houseful of family.

When I returned home, my husband had been, shocker, drinking.

But he was in nice-drunk mode.

His “I want to be loving and present” drunk.

So he talked to me while I made dinner and we acted like it was a real marriage and he pretended he wasn’t swaying and I pretended I didn’t notice.

I got the food on the table, the kids seated but by this time he had gone to the basement.

I called down, was he eating?

“No.”

No, that was all he said.

But what he should have said – what that no really meant was:

No, I am already two sheets to the wind. I couldn’t possibly eat anything at this point and anyway, I can just sit down here in the quiet and drink some more.

See, with the alcoholic husband even on a good night…

It’s still not that good.

The Alcoholic’s Wife: Part Of The Problem or All Of The Solution

18 Tuesday Oct 2016

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My family is broken.

Broken, broken, broken.

My kids do not get along with one another.

And please, no one say “that’s siblings.”

This is deeper.

More tragic.

The direct result of living in an alcoholic war zone.

They take out on each other what they can’t hold their parents accountable for.

Anger.

Yelling.

Hostility.

Stress.

Resentment.

Trepidation.

And this is living with a “functional” alcoholic.  (One reason I reject that theory or idea!) What is it for the children with falling down drunk, losing jobs, no money for food, abusive alcoholic father?

And the truth is, I am just as broken.

I am just as angry.

I yell too much.

I am hostile, stressed, live with resentment and cause trepidation in my children when they need to come to me with an issue.

We are a family of fractured, broken pieces.

And the only one who can possibly fix any of it is…

Me.

The alcoholic’s wife.

I am not playing the martyr.

I am not being melodramatic.

It’s really simply the truth.

The only one who can possible save, help or fix the household with an alcoholic father/husband is the (non-alcoholic) wife/mother.

And I have no idea how to do it.

 

 

Hiking With A Broken Leg and Therapy

14 Friday Oct 2016

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Tags

alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, children of alcoholic, funtional alcoholic, living in an alcoholic marriage, married to an alcoholic, wife of alcoholic

I want to find a therapist.

I’m sure a lot of people – a lot of people outside the world of the alcoholic marriage that is  – would think along the lines of “duh?” Maybe even, “about time.”

People inside the world of an alcoholic marriage – that is you and me – understand that like everything else in the alcoholic marriage (everything!!) the decision to seek and finally see a therapist is complicated.

The reasons I want to and the reasons I hesitate are actually one in the same.

I saw a therapist once.

I told her my husband was an alcoholic but that was not what I wanted to address in my own therapy.  She proceeded to ask me questions about his alcoholism, which I answered for about 20 minutes and then said,

“But his drinking is really not what I want to deal with in my therapy.”

To which she replied,

“Then why have you been talking about that?”

Uh, because you kept asking me questions about it!

I view where I am in life, in my marriage, in dealing with my alcoholic husband something like this:

I’m on a month long trek through a dense, mountainous forest.  I fall and break my leg.

Bad!

This SUCKS!

It hurts!

A LOT!!

I curse my bad luck.

I curse my pain.

I curse God.

Several times maybe.

But then?

But then I have got to patch my leg up best I can and proceed on getting out of the forest!

I told the first therapist my husband was an alcoholic just as I’d tell someone who happened upon me in the forest that I had broken my leg.

It’s information that would be necessary for anyone trying to help me.

It sucks being married to an alcoholic.

It hurts.

A LOT!

I’ve cursed my bad luck.

I’ve cursed the pain.

I’ve probably cursed God a few times as well.

But now it’s time to get moving.

Whether that is literally out of my marriage or to a better place within myself within the marriage, I don’t know.

I just know the time for cursing is over.

 

 

 

How Long Does It Take…

10 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Before you admit to yourself, you really have nothing? (In your marriage/relationship).

A Night Out

09 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Saturday night my husband and I went to an event for his work.

I don’t want to give you the impression that we go out often together.

We don’t.

But on the rare occasions that we do, I am always a little saddened by the experience.

And it starts before we even arrive at the event.

It starts at home.

Often in the bathroom.

As in I am in the bathroom alone putting on my make up or he is in the bathroom alone shaving.

Or I am struggling to hook a necklace behind my neck.

Or he is ironing his pants.

Can a woman put on her own necklace?

Can a man iron his own pants?

Of course.

This isn’t about what we can do.

This is about what “historically” husbands and wives do for one another.

But we don’t.

Nor do we “trip” over one another in the bathroom or darting down the hallway.

We don’t shuffle and sidestep one another playfully.

I can’t tell you the last time my husband said (notice?) “you look great.”

We just get ready.

Separately together.

Like our marriage.

My House

07 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

I went to a friend’s house yesterday.

A house that doesn’t have crap laying all over the backyard and half finished projects and clothes everywhere.

Oh, of course she could have “cleaned up” knowing she was having me over but it’s more than just no clothes everywhere.

It’s a nice house.

A really nice house that is comfortable and roomy and clean and reasonably organized.

Everything my house is not.

I had a dream one time and it was SO TELLLING in its symbolism.

My friend came into my house and I took her upstairs and through this door she knew nothing about.  When she walked through it, there, before her was this entire other part of the house with nice furniture and books lining the walls and a lovely kitchen.

She said, “Wow, I never knew this was here.”

When I woke up, I knew the dream was telling me there is so much more to me, so much more potential then people see.

Then I am allowing.

I don’t know how to fix Me.  I really don’t.

I am so angry and frustrated.

It nearly defies words, trying to explain what it does to the human soul, living with an alcoholic.

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