For so long now – for SO! LONG! “All” I have wanted is my own house!

My own house that is filled with color and over-stuffed furniture and whimsical art and…

Laughter and emotional safety and joy.

I just want my own house!

It’s a lament that has been echoing through my brain, heart and soul for years now.

And now something has happened…

Something that means I can no longer hide in my procrastination.

Something that if this doesn’t push me, I fear that nothing ever will.

My kids had friends over last night.

They got loud, as kids will do.

My husband told them to quiet down and they did.

Temporarily.

As kids will do.

My husband told them again to be quiet.

And then as he was walking away, past my daughter, he hissed in her ear,

“You guys are fucking pissing me off.”

She told me she wasn’t going to tell me “at first” because she fears me confronting him because he then yells at her for “tattling.” She was crying as she told me.

“Mom,” she sobbed, “he thought he was whispering but everyone heard.”

She was mortified.

I don’t know who this man is anymore.

He is not the man I married by a long shot.

How am I suppose to wrap my head around this kind of treatment?!

I promised her last night.

Promised, promised, promised…PROMISED her this was our last holiday season in the same house with him.

Now to make that happen.

“Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.” (George Bernard Shaw)

Sometimes I think about it.

Being with someone else.

Not now while I’m married.

When I am no longer married.

I think,

Could I?

Could I even be with another man?

I can’t imagine.

Wanting to even kiss someone.

I can’t imagine wishing someone was here when he’s away.

I can’t imagine going to Starbucks or Home Depot or the grocery store with someone.

I can’t imagine someone wanting to do those things with me.

It’s not I have “low self-esteem” or that I am bitter.

I’m just so dead inside.

when you’re married to an alcoholic.

At least I do.

I used to sit in there and cry.

Sometimes I would leave the house, get in my car and drive around the corner before I let myself cry.

Other times it would be when I was coming home from somewhere and I’d sit in my car and cry before going into my house.

I seem to not do that anymore.

The crying in my car.

Have my tears all dried up?

I don’t know but I still sit in my car.

Often.

Last night it was after I had gone to the grocery store.

I just sat there in the dark parking lot.

Eating chips and onion dip.

Yep, I am a car eater.  (As in I eat alone in my car, not I eat cars.)

It is 100% emotional eating.

I don’t need a shrink to tell me there is nothing healthy – emotionally or physically –  about sitting alone in your car, in a dark parking lot, eating copious amounts of potato chips and dip.  I suppose a well-lite parking lot wouldn’t be any better.

My car is both my sanctuary and my hell.

It insulates me from the realities of my life, temporarily anyway, when I just can’t seem to face them.

But it also invites out my demons.

Chips, soda, cheese danish from 7-11 that probably sat in a warehouse for months before making its way to the convienence store shelf.  Why don’t we ever self-medicate with fruit or vegetables?  Maybe a little “binge” eating of cucumbers and humus.

There is a fine line between seeking solace and hiding.

I cross it regularly in my car.

all the various and un-thought-of ways an alcoholic husband destroys his marriage, I probably wouldn’t have believed what they were saying.  I mean, afterall, isn’t there only one “real” problem when you are married to an alcoholic?  He drinks too much.  And if he stopped drinking, then there would be no more problem, right?

If only.

I had very little (zero!) experience or association with any sort of alcoholic before I married my husband.  (And in being married to an alcoholic, I have come to realize how rare a gift my innocence was.)  Alcoholics were people who drank too much.  And they needed to stop drinking too much.  What else would there be to that equation?

A lot more of course.

Because alcoholism poisons the whole person, it in turns poisons all who he (or she) has a relationship with.  It doesn’t matter if he’s not drinking one day.  It doesn’t matter if he’s on a bender.  Alcoholism is like the pesky kid sister who is always around, always there whinning to be included or she’s going to tell mom.  Problem is, pesky little sisters grow up.  The alcoholic beast grows – but only in strength and magnitude.

I had lunch with a friend the other day.  She commented that for her birthday the day before, her husband had taken the day off and they went hiking.

I nearly gasped.

Not so much because my husband would never take the day off to spend my birthday with me but because I can’t even imagine wanting him to!  I sat there thinking, there must have been a day when I wanted to be with him, right?  There MUST have been.

THAT’S how much the alcoholic destroys those who love (or loved or try to love) the alcoholic.  I don’t simply no longer want to spend time with my husband; I can’t even REMEMBER when it was that I did.  But you want to hear something even worse?

I can’t imagine EVER wanting to spend time with any man.  By the time I get out of this marriage, I feel like all I will possible want is my own little cottage, my books and journals and solitary days waiting for the grandchildren to start being born.

I’m not sad about it though.

I’m actually looking forward to it.

Quite a bit.

Before I was married – and right up to just a few years ago – I felt I would never, ever have an affair.  In fact, I didn’t understand how people could have affairs.  I mean, how do you do That with someone else and NOT be thinking about your spouse?  The betrayal?  The consequences should you be discovered?  The pain you are causing for what can only be considered purely selfish reasons?

Then this marriage of mine happened but I still wasn’t convinced.  Sex is just so…intimate.  I mean, even in a bad marriage, an unhappy marriage, a dead marriage, how could you…I mean it’s not like I’m 25 (or 35 or even 45) and especially excited about the idea of frolicking all naked between the sheets.

But I’ve had some old friends, old boyfriends, old crushes, old “flames” (ok, actually one of each) contact me and each made it clear that…

And I was tempted.  Especially by the old crush! I mean, the chance to finally…that guy I secretly pined away for all those precious years back.

But besides feeling old and out-of-shape and like the poster child for “she let herself go,” there is something else that just won’t let me venture down that ill-trodded path.

And it has nothing to do with my husband.

It’s my children.

I thought about could I…would I…should I.

And then I thought about my children.

And what if they found out?  I would be beyond embarrassed.  Beyond horrified.  Beyond humiliated.  Oh, of course my children would forgive me.  They’d put it “out of their minds” and maybe even one day, as fully grown adults, understand.

But I would never forgive me.

I could never put it out of my mind.

I have lost so much of Me to this marriage.

I won’t lose the respect of my children.