Now that I am truly committed to leaving my marriage, I thought the resentment I have toward my (to-be-x) husband would go away. Disappear. Leave me alone. I thought it would do so just sort of “naturally.” Automatically.
I thought very, very wrong.
Yesterday my kids were fighting.
A HUGE trigger for me.
One (ONE!) of the problems in an alcoholic family is that normal, to-be-expected, conflicts or incidents take on a beyond-normal signifigance. Kids fight. Especially teenagers. But because our household is so fraught with tension and unrest, my children fighting is a dangerous trigger for me.
And yesterday that trigger was pulled.
I started yelling and it was like I couldn’t stop. The laundry. The dirty dishes everywhere. The coats on the floor. The trash left on the counter. All of the “usuals” and then some I didn’t even know was brewing within me came spewing out. In my head, I kept telling myself, “Stop. Just stop.” But I didn’t.
Couldn’t?
I won’t say I couldn’t.
I will it was more like a release I wasn’t interested in arresting.
I’m not proud or even “ok” with my outburst.
I am deeply saddened.
I thought that was all behind me.
But I see so clearly now that resentment doesn’t simply go away – even if the cause of the resentment is removed. It is going to take work on my part.
There is no way (or need) to make a complete list of all the ways the alcoholic husband creates resentment in his wife. The loss is so extensive. Everything a woman thought her life was going to be is destroyed by an alcoholic husband.
That depth of resentment does not just “disappear.”