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QuietRagingWaters

~ Life With An Alcoholic Husband

QuietRagingWaters

Tag Archives: alcoholism

BUT…

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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alcohlic husband, alcoholic marriage, alcoholism, wife of alcoholic

I hope you’ve had a chance to hop over to my new website – WrenRWaters.com. I’m excited for this new venture and pretty proud that I managed to build a website because despite how “easy” the Internet world proclaims it to be, maneuvering your way through the website-building process is not so “easy” for those of us who grew up with four channels on television and car windows you had to actually roll up and down yourself.

But I did it.

I did and for that I am proud.

And the reason I did it is because I am at that place (finally? Finally.) where I realize (finally? Finally.) that “it” as in getting my life back, getting me back, living the life I want to live, being the person I want to be has nothing – N-O-T-H-I-N-G – to do with my alcoholic husband, my alcoholic marriage, the soul-sucking effects of his behavior, my grief over what was suppose to be and on and on and on. The fact is, we all have or come from “something.” A loss, a tragedy, a disadvantage, a challenge. It could be an alcoholic husband. But it could also be losing a husband to cancer or a freak car accident. It could be losing a child. Or it could be never having had the chance to have children. It could be chronic illness and/or pain. It could be something major with our parents or other family members. It could be an emotionally and/or physically abusive past or childhood. It could anything. No one gets to ride this ride called Life for free. But whatever path we have been trekking, eventually we converge at the same point on the trail where there is a sign that says “this way” and an arrow pointing to one singular path. Eventually, it is of no matter our different pasts because the way to our new futures is the same.

That’s what my new website is about.

Focusing on what I’ve learned – and how well I am implementing it – about how to move myself past the alcoholic husband path and onto the universal take-my-life back path.

But…

But I don’t want to totally ignore whence I came.

I don’t want to totally forget or abandon those of us, women in this suck-butt club, who haven’t yet found their way to the arrow. It’s been a long time coming, this awakening of mine but not so long that I forget what it’s like to feel completely mentally and emotionally debilitated by the behavior of an alcoholic husband. It’s been a long time but not so long that I have forgotten what it is to sit in my car in the driveway and cry or to hide in the basement and scream or to feel like I don’t even know how I can possibly survive the toxicity and chaos One. More. Day.

I don’t know if there’s a way to move faster down the alcoholic-husband-trail to the your-life-this-way trail head. We can only hear what we can hear when we can hear it. We can only do what we can do when we can do it. But perhaps there is a way for me to help you walk a little faster or jog for a bit or even full out run on occasion as you do move forward.

You are my peeps. You are my tribe. You are the reason I have found my way to the arrow. So I can’t just abandon you on the alcoholic-husband path.

But…

Eventually you have to leave that path.

So you can follow the real path.

The Your-Life path.

The Embarrassment of Procrastination

20 Monday May 2019

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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alcholic husband, alcoholic father, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, alcoholism

Thank you to those who have reached out to check on me.

I am fine.

Fine as in the kind of fine you are when you’re married to an alcoholic.

I want to leave.

I need to leave.

I make small steps toward leaving.

And yet…

I seem to always backslide.

I seem to always be fooled by his momentary niceness.

But I’m not fooled.

I’m not.

But still somehow he weakens my resolve.

It’s not easy breaking up a family.

Even one that is already broken.

This is what leaving you alcoholic husband looks like, I guess.

Two steps forward.

One step back.

How do you gain your focus?

How do you maintain your commitment?

 

 

The Irony (And A Little Keith Urban)

13 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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alcoholic, alcoholic family, alcoholic husband, alcoholic marriage, alcoholism, children of alcoholic

You know how you hear a song and most of the lyrics apply to you or a situation you’re in. Or the lyrics apply but only in a way you understand, not necessarily in the way the song writer intended? Rarely does a song represent your feelings 100% or in exactly the same way as it was written.

But sometimes a song does.

Sometimes it’s 100% spot on.

Like Keith Urban’s “The Fighter.”

I think of myself, my life years down the road and the words, the emotions, the meaning in this song fits so completely.

Which, ironically, is one of the thing that holds me back.

The knowledge (knoweledge!) that I could leave my husband and have a whole new life, complete with a healthy, happy and fulfilling relationship.

I think the outside world would be surprised, shocked, (angered even?) by the idea that a woman could regret her own happiness at the expense of her “no good drunk-ass husband’s” pain. But it’s true.

And I think as the wives of alcoholics, we have to really understand this and how it can play out in the efforts we make – or don’t make – to reclaim our lives. No one wants to leave someone behind to die – be it physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. Even if the “leaving behind” is simply moving forward with our own lives but not necessarily divorcing our husbands.

Of course the fallacy and real tragedy is that even if we are to deny our own happiness, our own potential, our own chance at living a fascinating, creative and interesting life in the name of protecting our husbands from their own pain, we aren’t protecting them at all. We aren’t taking away their pain or insulating them from it. We’re just perpetuating and creating more pain for ourselves.

I can’t be a life preserver for his life.

He’s still going to drown.

And I’ll drown with him.

Almost Like Normal

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by quietragingwaters in Uncategorized

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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?

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