Here We Go ‘Round In Circles

My apologies to any Billy Preston fans out there for the misquote, but it applies.

Of course he’s drinking again.

If I say anything to him, he’ll just deny it.  If I tell him how I know, he’ll just move where he hides his vodka (yeah, I found his new hiding place – same cabinet, different shelf.  He obviously thinks one of us is pretty fucking stupid).

When he stopped, I moved back to our bedroom.  Not so much because I believed this time was any different, but mostly because I missed my bed with it’s Tempurpedic mattress and 600 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.  I also missed watching what little television I do on our big flat screen from the comfort of my recliner, and having ample room to work on my crafts.  It is MY house, too – why should I confine myself to the smallest of the bedrooms upstairs?

He was happy I came back downstairs and for a day or two things were quite nice.  It didn’t last, naturally; I guess my move back downstairs was some sort of, I don’t know, sign?  That he didn’t have to “behave” any more.  After all, he’d gotten what he wanted out of it, so why not start hiding vodka in the garage again?  It really wasn’t two days after my return that the tea and juice made their return to the garage refrigerator, and it was maybe two days later when I found the vodka in it’s “new” hiding place.

Last week, I told my therapist that I’d moved back and when she asked me if he was still drinking I told her I didn’t know – the tea and juice had made a reappearance but I hadn’t found the vodka yet.  She expressed surprise but I told her how careful he is at hiding it, and that I wasn’t all that inclined to go hunting down his new hiding place (turns out, of course, I didn’t have to hunt very hard).  Mostly, though, I was more than a little disappointed in myself, in what I view as my “weakness” in moving back downstairs.  I’d told him that if he chose to ignore the situation – which he did – that things were going to end between us.  I feel like a ninny, because all he had to do was act like he wasn’t drinking and be nice for a little while, and I bounced right back into the whole goddamn mess.

My therapist counseled patience on my part, and not to be angry or disappointed that he wasn’t jumping feet first into what was essentially MY solution to our problems.  Alcoholics do things on their own schedule; if he wasn’t drinking, she said, he was having enough trouble getting through his days without his major “coping mechanism” – how would I feel if someone told me I couldn’t knit.  I just stared at her for a minute and said, “I guess I’d find something else to do.”

Sorry, lady – as an analogy, that sucks.  HARD.

Well, I see her again tomorrow and we’ll see what she says about the fact that I know he’s drinking now.  I’m not sure she’s much help, though, and I’m going to keep going forward with my plans to get the hell out of Dodge, as much as it breaks my heart.  Because I really DO love him, and I know he loves me.

Which is the saddest, hardest part of all of this.

Getting Help, Getting Out

Well, my therapist appointment is this afternoon and I’m actually looking forward to it – although the depression has lifted for the moment, I have no way of knowing if and when it will return.  I want to see if I might need some anti-depressants for the short term, simply so I can continue to move forward.  There’s so much I need to do!

I’ve also been talking quite a bit with my sister-in-law (her husband is my husband’s brother), who went through all of this with her ex-husband.  She has been an amazing source of support, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.  She has been 100% behind my decision to seek therapy, which is going to be difficult for no other reason than my husband will hate it.  Well, let him hate.  If we’ve said 2 dozen words to each other since Monday, I’ll eat the baby blanket I’m knitting. 😛

One of the things my very wise SIL has stressed lately is the need for me to get the hell out of the house and do things.  And she’s right; like the spouses of many alcoholics, I’ve become marooned in my own marriage – cut off from the outside world.

It’s all well and good to tell me to get out of the house, but to do what? I wondered.  We live in a small, slowly dying, city.  There are things to do in Cleveland, but that’s an hour away.  Out of desperation, I began Googling “knitting groups podunk ohio.”  There have been knitting and craft groups here, but they all seem to be defunct; the emails I’ve sent out have either bounced back as undeliverable or gone unanswered.  Then, many pages into my Google search, there came a link…to my local public library.

I feel so incredibly STUPID for not thinking of this sooner.

Our local public library is on the small side, but it’s excellent – it even has a small art gallery that showcases local artists’ work.  My youngest son spent a great deal of time there between the 6th and 10th grade; he was not only active in many of the clubs and activities for young people, but a member of their Teen Council – teenagers who helped plan the activities, as well as approve new literature and publications for the Young Adult section of the library.

One look at their calendar was all I needed – they have a monthly Knitter’s Meetup (I missed September’s, I’m sorry to report), but have a reading group that discusses a different book every month, craft classes for adults, lectures, even a monthly “cooking club” that focuses on a different ingredient, and everyone brings a dish containing that ingredient (this month it’s pasta).  I’ve signed up for several, including the cooking club.

They also offer free, online courses for various things – they’re called “Gale Courses” – and I’ve signed up for one on how to start your own business that begins next week (after this, I’m going to be all over the digital photography classes, of which there are many).

And, do you know, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I’m feeling happy.

Maybe I won’t ask for those antidepressants after all.

Happy Labor Day?

It’s 7:30 a.m.

My husband is downstairs in his bedroom – what used to be our bedroom – getting stoned.  It won’t be long before he goes and has a drink.  I don’t know, maybe he has already.  I put off going down there as long as I can.  I’m going to have to, though – I have 3 pecks of tomatoes to turn into tomato sauce and can.  I used to enjoy it.

Is life with me so horrible that he can’t face it sober?

Therapy

Like most spouses of alcoholics, I’ve done a great deal of research on the subject of alcoholism – the effects, physically, mentally and emotionally (of both the alcoholic and those closest to them); what recovery options there are for the alcoholic – if they choose recovery (because you can lead a horse to water but you can’t force them to drink); what options there are for the families of the alcoholics, because we tend to end up just as sick as the drinker, if not more so, in the long run.

Frankly, not much of what I’ve found is encouraging; most marriages involving alcoholics end up in divorce, whether or not the alcoholic seeks help and becomes sober or not.

This has been dragging at me for so long. This last month has just been hellish for me – I can’t sleep properly, I’m having difficulty concentrating, and it’s so hard to find enthusiasm for anything, even this new business venture that has so much potential.  I joined a challenge on Ravelry to complete some unfinished knitting projects by the end of October, but I’m having trouble finding any motivation to do so.  The joy of this craft I’ve enjoyed so much since taking it up has just vanished. Even going on Facebook is a depressing experience – I see people I know going out, doing things with friends and having fun and I’m eaten with jealousy.

We don’t go places.  We have no friends.

I wrote him an email at the beginning of the week, telling him about something I’d found online called Behavioral Couples Therapy for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse that I hope we could try.  I told him I hoped we could use the email as an opportunity to have something approaching a calm, rational discourse about what we need to do to save our marriage.  When I hadn’t heard back after a day or two, I asked him if he read it; he said he had.  He’s not mentioned it again, and he hasn’t answered it.

My mind is stuck in this groove – I can’t think of anything, it seems, except how spectacularly shitty my marriage is and how my husband is completely oblivious to how horrible I feel.  How he doesn’t even seem to care that the whole damned thing is just falling apart around us.

I am so ANGRY at him.  Sometimes I wish he would just die.  How horrible is that?

I have a therapy session scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and I can’t wait.  I have to do something to snap out of this.  i just can’t handle it any more.