Well, That Hurt.

Dear God,

When I first started going to meetings, every time I tried to speak up all I could do was cry. I hated myself so much that trying to make words hurt my throat.  I really thought that somehow the pain would be over when I stopped hating my self and turned to hating my addict.  That turned out to be bullshit. Apparently, I am in for a world more hurt than I thought I would have to bear and today I stumbled over a great big pile of it. Oh well.

So I was talking to my youngest daughter (YD), and was getting honest with her about my shock at discovering that my husband P didn’t really understand just how bad my drinking had become.  Immediately YD said “Oh yeah, no kidding. Like, we figured that out when OD (oldest daughter) went to him two years ago and said ‘What the f*ck?’  She was really worried about you.”

It took my breath away.

Two years ago…two years ago, when I thought no one had noticed how bad my drinking had become, OD actually said something to P and he said absolutely nothing to me and did nothing about what was happening.

Okay, God, I get that it wasn’t his responsibility to save me or to stop me. But honestly, I started expecting him to say something, to call me out and tell me that my behavior was unacceptable, basically ages ago! I really thought that he would get sick of me being drunk, of me sleeping through our Saturday nights watching TV together. I knew he didn’t like how much I repeated myself and whatever things I thought I should tell him over and over and over when I was drinking. I guess I just thought that at some point he would say “Enough! Knock it off!”  I can’t remember when I started waiting for him to confront me, but I know it was several years ago.

And he finally did confront me…he finally said something the night before my first day sober, only 20 days ago. By then I’d already made a decision to seek some help and was waiting for the group to start meeting. I’m still waiting, as they don’t start meeting until this coming Thursday. I’m still going to join them. I just joined AA first.

I don’t know why it hurts so much to know that someone had said something to him, that OD had pointed out that I obviously was NOT okay, and that he did nothing. It makes me feel somewhat invisible to him.

The funny thing is that I’ve been asking myself for the last two weeks why I felt like I needed to erase myself with alcohol.  To a certain extent, that’s what I had been doing. The first drink made the sharp edges smooth; it made it easier to breathe. The next drink made it easier to cry and let out all the pain. Every drink after that erased everything including me, until I was in the room but didn’t really exist in the room.  Blackouts will do that for you—they erase everything, leaving nothing but a blank where time was supposed to exist.  

I have been asking myself for the last two weeks why I felt the need to erase myself and I still don’t have any answers…

However, I have figured this out: the reason that my husband couldn’t see that I was drowning was because I taught him not to see. I erased myself from the room.  That was my goal in drinking—to not be there even as I was sitting right there. And he got very good at being patient with his erasable wife; he never once accused me of abandoning him to solitude and loneliness even as I sat next to him on the couch, soaking myself in alcohol. He never once asked me why I didn’t love him enough to be present to him and whatever he was going through that day. He never once told me that he was tired of being married and simultaneously alone.

I guess that I got what I deserved, erasing myself and leaving him alone, but it still hurts and I don’t know how to deal with that hurt…and since I used to deal with all the hurt by drinking, I’m kind of in a pickle.

I hurt and I don’t have anything to relieve the pain. I guess this is where I have to learn to do things differently, to believe that I don’t have to drink in order to be able to handle this. And this is why I’m writing you right now, God. I have to be honest, writing this hasn’t relieved the pain one bit. But I also know that I writing this down helps me clarify my thoughts, and maybe even avoid blaming and resentment. And if this isn’t enough, I can text my sponsor, and maybe a friend or two from the program. They won’t necessarily have answers that will relieve my pain, but that’s okay. I just need to know that I’m not crazy and I’m not alone and I’m not going to feel this way forever.

I also need to know that I can feel this and continue to be sober, because it’s only day 20 and I am gunning for that first chip at 30 days…and the one after that at 60 days, and then at 90 days, and then…

I really want those damn chips.  All of them.

So, God, if you can see me (and I know you can), your daughter down here feels like crap and isn’t able to be invisible right now. I could use a little help. I could use a lot of help.

Oh hell, I could use a drink. But I’m not doing that today.

Thanks for listening.

UPDATE:

Okay, I realized that it was 2018 when P came to me and said “You aren’t okay. You are drinking too much. You are eating too much. How can I help?” I told him that I knew I wasn’t okay and said that I needed to start going to a grief group. MAJOR DEFLECTION THERE…yes I needed to deal with my grief, but he came right out and said that I was drinking too much.

SO…yes P did say something to me. I just didn’t want to listen.

All that hurt I felt on Saturday because no one said anything was my addict lying to me again.

I hate that lying bitch.

The End of Fun

Dear God,

My sponsor told me the other day that it would be good for me to journal. Honestly, I’ve never been very good at consistently journaling unless I had to do it for a class. You know how I am about getting good grades—I won’t let my distaste for journaling get in the way of my ‘A’. Well, this time no grades are involved, but my sobriety just might be, so let’s give this a shot. Maybe I’ll suck, maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll grow to like it. I’m pretty sure that you’ll like it better than the fractured prayers that come your way from me. I know, I know…every mom just wants her kids to talk to her, any way they can, for as long as they are willing. I get that. Still…good relationships depend on communication, and communication is not usually done in bullet style brief memos meant to reduce time spent reading and maximize ‘effective content’. So…

I’ve made it to 18 days sober so far.  I made it to 21 days sober a few months ago, and actually spent five months sober back in 2017. Back then no one knew that I was trying to get sober, so it was easy to start drinking again. This time I’ve gone public with family and a few friends. I’m trying to close down my escape routes. I really want to make it this time.

Yesterday I found myself thinking about how I pissed away the time that I had to drink, not appreciating how lucky I was to be able to drink all that I wanted to, especially when my husband ‘P’ wasn’t home. He used to go away for business or to go to sporting events, and some of those events are coming up again this fall. My addict wants me to believe that I have ‘screwed’ myself out of this fun now that I’m committed to sobriety, and that I didn’t truly appreciate how much ‘fun’ I was having while I was still able to drink.

I know that my addict is full of bullshit but that isn’t the point here.

I kind of got stuck on that concept of ‘fun’.  According to my addict, the weekends when P was out of town and I could drink non-stop, I was having ‘fun’…lots of it…and now that is going to be lost to sobriety.

I’m not really sure that my addict has any grasp on truth here.

Yes, I really liked drinking. I liked the taste. I liked the way it made me feel (while I was drunk). I liked the way it helped me relax.

I also like the taste of a good cup of coffee.

I like the way that dancing makes me feel.

I like the way that time with a friend or watching a cooking show helps me relax.

And you know, I never wake up in the middle of the night with crushing anxiety because I can’t remember what I did while I was drinking coffee, dancing, hanging with a friend or watching a cooking show. I never have embarrassed my husband or my daughters while drinking coffee, although I will cop to making my youngest daughter blush and roll her eyes when I dance like a ho, or making my husband shake his head at me when I’m re-watching an episode of my favorite cooking show for the, like, 40th time.

But none of those eye-rolling, head shaking moments have ever caused my husband or my children pain, or made them afraid for me, or made them wish I would STOP.  Only alcohol has ever done anything like that.

And what is this FUN thing that my addict keeps talking about? When was drinking FUN?

I had to think a very long time about the FUN thing because as an adult, I don’t have fun as often as I would like to. I don’t play as much as I would like to, and even my hobbies involve some level of work. Dancing is actually a thing I do to exercise. So is cycling. And while I love being creative, my chosen art form has so many variables where things can go wrong that it can be frustrating at times, which is more often than I’d like to admit.

On the other hand, I remember the last concert that I went to, and how joyful I felt afterwards, especially since my husband P was with me and he had enjoyed the show as much as I did. Our shared love of music and our joy at living in a city where we can see live music led to me feeling light and airy, filled with happiness and contentment with my life. THAT was fun, actual fun—fun that did no damage and left no regrets and added to the good in my marriage.

My guess is that fun is actually supposed to be a concrete good at all times, a good where no one gets hurt or endures damage for the sake of what is supposed to be fun.

So what did I actually think was FUN about drinking?

I thought about that for a long time. What did I look forward to on those weekends when my husband was away?

I realized that it all came down to a few small things, that when examined came down to one thing only:

FREEDOM.

When P was gone, I could start drinking at 10am if I wanted to without fear of being caught or being judged. I was FREE to do what I wanted to do.

When P was gone, I could drink as much as I wanted to, nap when I became too drunk, skip meals because I wasn’t hungry with a stomach full of alcohol. I was FREE to be drunk.

When P was gone, it didn’t matter if I snored because I went to bed drunk; no one was there to be disturbed. I was FREE to avoid how my drunkness impacted others.

When P was gone, I could hide the amount of my consumption and then throw the empties away in public dumpsters so that no one would ever know just how much I was drinking. I was FREE from shame from others.

You know what else I was FREE of?

  • Memories of what I did on those weekends, because at some point I blacked out.
  • Time to do activities that I wanted to do because I was too busy drinking and reducing my ‘effective’ time, which was limited by how drunk I was. (After enough drinks you can’t drive, can’t be truly creative, etc.)
  • Lack of self-loathing, because the more I drank, the more I hated myself.
  • Health, because drinking always, always, always reduces the overall quality of your health, even if you don’t end up having truly negative consequences like liver failure. Drinking heavily reduced my kidney function, and I am looking forward to finding out if my kidney function improves with long-term sobriety.

So my addict says that drinking when P was gone was FUN because I got to feel FREE of negative consequences, judgement, and shame…none of which would have occured if I wasn’t drinking at all.

That’s right: I can be free of negative consequences, judgement, and shame if don’t drink.

The same things my lost weekends of drinking brought me are also available in equal quantities in sobriety, and I don’t even have to wait for P to be gone for me to have those things, and as a side benefit, I get to keep my memories of the weekend, my time to be productive and creative, and to keep my self-esteem and ditch the self-loathing.  Oh…and my body is loving me for choosing sobriety as well.

It turns out that my addict is a fucking liar who doesn’t care what she destroys of my life, my marriage, my family, and even me, as long as she gets to keep drinking.

I hate that lying bitch.  I’m sorry to say that God, because I know that you love her just as much as you love me. I know that you never judged her for being a drunken, fucked up mess. I know that you don’t even judge me for hating her and everything she did to me, to my husband, and to my daughters.

In the end, though, I’d still like to keep her out of my life. I’d like to keep my life for me, and leave my addict out in the cold. Help me to let her on board just enough to be able to remember her story so that I can share it with others and help them get sober.  Never let me forget that she is always waiting for me to let my guard down so that she can hijack my life (she doesn’t have her own life…her life is alcohol.)

And God, please…help me remember that you and everyone in AA is right there if I need them, right there for me when I suddenly feel like alcohol is the best answer and the route to fun and relaxation. Help me reach out to You and to the fellowship, because waking up in the morning and remembering that I’m still sober and that I like myself feels very nice.

It feels very nice indeed.