May 30, 2008

Another drinking night. Not bad, no arguments, but she just is distant and sullen. I can’t talk to her. We went to get stuff for the party we are goint to this weekend and the whole way home she wouldn’t look at me or talk to me.

May 29, 2008

Another softball game, another drinking night. She was off a bit and I knew she was drinking. Plus she smelled of vodka (always a dead giveaway.) She also kept disappearing to her car during the game, supposedly to smoke, but each trip she came back smelling more like vodka. Plus she made a big show of telling me the kids would have to ride with me in my car (she met us at the game after work), because she wanted to be able to smoke in the car. More likely she didn’t want them to see her swilling rotgut vodka straight out of the bottle in the car. After the game we took the kids to the local DQ for burgers and ice cream. We got the desserts to go as it was getting rather late.

When we got home and started eating our desserts, she got pissy with me for getting one. Another dead giveaway that she was drinking. She never comments on what or how much I eat unless she is drunk. Like I am going to take diet advice from someone who can’t stop swilling liquid poison! Plus she eats all day at work, when did corporate cube farms become day long grazing sites? Cakes, candy jars, left overs, the cafeteria, the roach coach, all the various parties all week long and my wife complains constantly about having to be sociable and eat all day long. I take a dessert maybe once or twice a week and I try to avoid junk food during the week. Usually I only munch and stare at the idiot box when my wife is with me on the weekends. About the only thing we do “together” any more is watch videos. And I am not sure that just sitting next to someone while you are both watching a video is really doing something together.

Fortunately, she reigned herself in after just a slightly nasty comment along the lines of, “What did you get?” as I pulled my ice cream out of the bag. She hadn’t wanted one, but she is rarely hungry any more when she drinks. Either she just isn’t hungry or she doesn’t want to dull her buzz. No other problems this evening.

The next morning, however, I went for a walk and found an empty bottle of Bukhof vodka in the size she usually gets, in the grass near a stop sign on her route home from the DQ. I can’t prove it is hers, but I know it is.

Another missive from the front lines of the battlefield that has become my daily life. Actually, it isn’t that bad any more. I have come to realize that I have to disconnect from the drunk. I try not to let it bother me any more. She has made her choice, even if she isn’t fully responsible anymore because of whatever warping the booze has done to her brain. I have tried to get her help, over and over again. She only goes along when I force her and as soon as I stop pushing, she drops it. And even when I do push, she drops it. I can only do so much. I wish she would stop and come back to me and be my wife and the woman she used to be, but I know I can’t make that happen and it doesn’t look like she is either. It would be one thing if she had outgrown me, if she had moved on to better things and I was the loser she left behind or outgrew, but becoming a drunk doesn’t quite fit in that category. I wouldn’t have held her back if she were moving onward and upward. Apparently I can’t keep her from moving down and out, either. I have tried to keep her from falling, but I am not going all the way down with her either.

May 27, 2008

We had a good weekend together as a family. At least, for Sunday and Monday.

Now it is Tuesday night and of course, she came home from work drunk. She was obnoxious towards the kids and made them take showers and made me cut their nails. Then she started telling me she just doesn’t get it, whatever that means. Then she asked me if I cut their nails when I took the kids to Carolina. Of course I did, we were there for a month. She retreated to her smoking lounge.

At 8:45, she came up behind me and told me she was going out for a minute. I asked her why, where was she going? The liquor stores here close by eight thirty. She got mad at me and told me she wasn’t going to have this argument with me every time she wanted to go get more booze. I told her the liquor stores were all closed by now and she had better not go anywhere. She backed down, but just barely. She spent the next hour sulking until she finally passed out.

The next morning I waited until she got up and then I told her that I was pissed at her. That whenever she decided that she needed to “go out for a minute” and get more booze it turned a bad night into a nightmare. Either she sits out in her smoking lounge and cries, yelling and ranting and raving or she comes in and picks fights with me. And if she thought I was going to sit and watch the kids while she went out to a bar, she could forget that right now. I am not doing that. She has no business driving drunk and I am not sitting around waiting for that phone call from the cops or the hospital or jail. Nor was I going to sit around wondering where she was and what she was doing while she disappears to go drinking. I am not hanging around waiting until it is a couple of hours after closing time and wondering where the hell is my wife? I told her that if she pulled that crap again I was going to pack up and go. Take the kids and leave. She would come back to an empty house. As it is, I can’t take much more of this anyway. She has a couple of months, maybe, until I call it quits and go. Either she quits drinking or I take the kids and go. I told her to take a good look at me. I am upset and angry. I can’t stop crying. And for what? Because she can’t keep her face out of the bottle? I don’t want to live like this any more. The sad thing is, I know she will be drunk again tonight. It isn’t as certain as the sun coming up tomorrow, but it is right up there.

May 24, 2008

She was drinking again, but she must not have had much left of her bottle. It just put her to sleep early instead of prompting a fight.

May 23, 2008

She came home form work drunk. Not falling over, but definitely drinking. Our daughter was over at a friend’s house and my wife came up with her purse as I was cooking dinner to say that she would pick her up. She never does this, and she never carries her purse. I knew it was just a bag to sneak booze into the house and she was using this trip as cover for a booze run. She went, picked up our daughter, so she was driving drunk with our daughter in the car. When she came back here, she just picked at her dinner. Afterwards, we sat down to watch the NCIS we recorded. By that time she was so blotto she couldn’t follow the plot. I’ll admit it was a little convoluted, but I think zoning in and out of conciousness had a lot more to do with her not being able to do it. Then she passed out hard by nine. The kids wanted to sleep down with us on the couches and I couldn’t wake my wife up enough to get her to move to our bed. Good thing there wasn’t a fire. I’d never have gotten her up and out. Our son had to sleep in bed with me since I couldn’t move my wife off the couch. Oh well, another fun night of drinking at my house! 

May 22, 2008

She was drinking again last night. She was fairly well behaved. She has been since last week when I got mad at her and told her I wanted a divorce. I didn’t set out to tell her that, it just came out one morning after a drunk night. But as well behaved as she has been (and this is very relative), she isn’t herself when she drinks and there is no connection between me and the person she becomes when she drinks. Not a good one, anyway.

Last night we were going to watch the NCIS we had recorded a couple of nights ago as the usual Thursday night lineup wasn’t on. She wanted to watch the whole thing because she didn’t remember the first hour that we had watched Tuesday as she ws drunk. In the end, we wound up watching “Deal or No Deal”. Another silly time waster of a show. Last night they had some special deal where they loaded up on million dollar chances. The woman had 11 out of 26 million dollar cases to choose from. She was doing really well at first and got some major high offers. I kept saying that she should keep going and my wife got pissed. Really took it personally that I thought the woman, who would never again have a shot at a million dollars, should keep trying until she got down to her last million dollar case and lost her safety net. The woman kept saying she wanted to spend the money she won on a family reunion and how much do you need for that?. My wife swore up and down that she should just take the first good offer and run with the money. But she refused to see my reasoning and took it very personally that I would say that the woman should keep trying for the million. She said a lot of unkind things to the effect that since we were poor it was stupid for someone else to keep taking a chance. And she made it quite personal and told me that since I wouldn’t do things the safe way and would continue to take a chance, that I didn’t understand her and shouldn’t be with her.  

She also said a bunch of nasty things about how we were never going to have any money. That she wanted to go to the casino they just openned and try the MGM Grand and the new restaurant there, Craftsteaks, but that we would never do it because we would never be able to afford it. Personally, I could care less about going to the casino, any casino, and dumping a bunch of cash in a slot machine or table games. I have done it a couple of times and really don’t see the attraction. So if I don’t go to something like that it is because I choose not to, not because I can’t afford it. I could be convinced to go to a good resturant, though. But it is typical of her to be completely negative and take things way out of context and twist them around to then prove that we don’t belong together. And then deny it the next morning, if I bother to bring it up. Which I didn’t today, what is the point? It is always the same thing. She doesn’t remember the nasty things she said and she doesn’t want me to leave, no mater how many times she said it the night before. That she loves me, even if she doesn’t show it.

May 21, 2008

 

Another softball game, another drinking night. She must have had a bottle in the car because she wasn’t herself at the game. The game ended early and we went to a new hamburger bar downtown. By the time we got to dinner, she was getting obnoxious.

 

She parked a mile away from the restaurant and decided she had to go ‘move her car’ after we ordered dinner. She came in visibly drunker, probably after some quick snorts in the car. I had ordered a beer and she had a couple of gin and tonics with her meal (they were on special).

 

When her food arrived, she tried to cut her burger in half and just butchered it and spent the rest of the time at the restaurant bitching about how big her burger was, what a mess it was and how salty it was. She was getting madder and meaner by the minute.

 

I took the kids home and told them not to antagonize their mother. When we got back to the house, she didn’t want to watch the NCIS we recorded and she put on American Idol, a show she knows I hate. But rather then argue, I laid on the bed and read. She kept cranking that sappy soporific elevator music that they favor on that show and every time she went out to the basement to drink and smoke I would get up and turn it down so I could read in peace. When they announced the winner, she shouted “woohoo!” like a sports fan and clapped and cheered. I got up then to change the channel to Boston Legal, a show we both like. Idol runs overtime and the winner was crooning out some crappy smaltz. She got pissed at me when I changed the channel and said something like, “He is one of us. He is old.” Okay, he is maybe thirty and that was twice as old as his competition, but he certainly is not “one of me.” I made the mistake of saying so and she got even more pissed and choose to go to bed, angry at me.

 

Once in bed, she started accusing me of liking bad TV (as though Idol isn’t the among the worst of the worst) and started saying something about how I shouldn’t yell at her tomorrow. I told her, “If you don’t start no shit, there won’t be not shit.” She started to fight about that and I just repeated what I said a bit louder and she shut up and passed out.

 

May 20, 2008

Tonight is our thirteenth wedding anniversary. She forgot it until I sent her an email at work. Not a big deal, really, she forgets a lot of things. It is how she makes it through the days. I was kind of hoping she would stay sober and be there tonight, but I no longer really expect that sort of thing. And sure enough, when she got home from work, she had been drinking. She wasn’t bad, really she was pretty well behaved. But she wasn’t herself, either.

At one point she said something nasty to the kids, but I couldn’t hear her and I don’t think they really caught it either. She wouldn’t repeat it and had that look on her face, like she knows we are all in a conspiracy against her but she is smarter then we are and she “knows” what is going on.  Our son had a ton of homework because he was making up for missing school to go to the funeral and it was pissing her off. I guess my anniversary present was that rather then get into a fight over that she choose to go to bed before nine.

All in all, an uneventful drinking night. But another night without my wife. I am tired of being with this stranger she has created. I am tired of sleeping next to a woman who smells like someone dumped vodka into an ashtray. I miss the woman I married, the woman I could talk to and laugh with. Now my confidences get twisted around and turned into something horrible and get thrown in my face the next time she drinks.

I guess this beats the hell out of our eleventh anniversay which we spent in the emergency room at St. Francis trying to get her into detox and then a rehab. I took her over to the hospital thinking we could get her in and get her started in a rehab somewhere. We pulled in to the emergency room driveway. She hadn’t eaten dinner and begged me to take her somewhere. There was a restaurant downtown we have always wanted to try so I told her if she wouldn’t argue with me and make a scene, I would take her there. She agreed and I pulled out of the driveway. Before we had gone a block she was yelling at me and trying to pick a fight with me. I went back to the emergency room. She begged for food again and promised to behave herself. So I tried again. Six times I tried to go out for dinner with her. Once we made it all the way to the restaurant. Once we didn’t even get out of the emergency room driveway. Finally I had enough and I took her into the emergency room. We waited for hours until they saw us and by then she had sobered up. The detox was full and they wanted to put her in a room with six men passed out in what looked like dentist’s chairs. I couldn’t do that to her and took her back home. So I guess this anniversay wasn’t to bad, all things considered.   

May 19

Today we went to my wife’s uncle’s funeral. She was upset, she had been pretty close to this uncle. Plus she is very uncomfortable with death. She did pretty well at the funeral and was good at the family gathering afterwards.

That evening we had to go to our daughter’s softball game. When my wife got in the car I could smell the vodka. At the game she was okay but talkative. We almost got into an argument when I told her that she had been refering to her cousin’s daughter by the wrong name, twice. She insisted that I just didn’t hear her correctly. I was sitting right next to her and I heard her clearly use the wrong name and she refused to believe it. I let it slide and she went to go smoke a cigarette. While she was gone I took a drink from the travel mug she usually carries soda in. It was vodka. It was cold and I choose to spend the rest of the game watching from the car, rather then risk a stupid drunken fight.

We pretty much avoided each other the rest of the night. She didn’t eat anything for supper after the game. After I put our kids to bed, she came up and got herself some water. She could barely stand up. She couldn’t stand still. She kept staggering and stumbling around. She went down and passed out by nine thirty.

We didn’t actually fight, but it wasn’t like I spent any time with my wife, either. 

May 16

She came home drunk. She was weird and not herself. She ate two bites of her dinner and then stopped. Just before the liquor stores closed she told me she “had to go someplace.” Meaning she had to go get more booze. I told her I didn’t want her to, but she didn’t care. I said she was already drunk, so she was going to go out in the rain and dark to go get more booze. Which would just lead to more her picking drunken fights with me when she got back and make the night a living hell. She said I was the one picking a fight with her and she had no intention of fighting with me. Like she ever does. SO she waited till I wasn’t watching her and took off.

She came back. Got hammered. I heard her crying out in her smoking lounge in the basement. I went out to see if I could make her feel better. Her uncle’s partner just dies and they were always friendly. I tried to be supportive and hug her but she turned on me and accused me of “not getting it”, not understanding her and not knowing her. I moved away from her and she started saying how hopeless everything was and how she had nothing. I tried to tell her she did have something and that there was hope but she wasn’t having any of that. More crying and carrying on and I finally just left the room.

She spent the rest of the night raving and crying in her smoking lounge. When she came out to go upstairs to go to the bathroom or get some water, she would stagger into the bookshelves and I thought she was going to fall down the stairs, again.

She got drunk enough that she couldn’t operate the iPod I got her for Christmas and threw it across the room. I had to find it for her and that just got her madder at me. She never did actually pick a fight with me, but the whole evening sucked.