I am married to an alcoholic. My purpose in writing this blog is to unload my feelings about this situation, hopefully so I can get over the crap from the night before and move on. We have two young children, but they are old enough to know what is going on. They don’t remember my wife before she was an alcoholic. She used to be fun. Not any more.
I still remember the pain when the kids would ask my why Mommy was being so mean. And the pain again when they stopped asking.
My wife has always been a drinker, me too, but her drinking crossed over from being fun drinking on the weekends to guzzling rotgut vodka five or six nights a week about six years ago. I haven’t really seen her drink in six years except for the very occassional time we are out for dinner and have a cocktail. She buys the cheapest vodka she can and drinks it straight from the bottle where no one can see her. I just find the empties stashed all over the basement or garage. She has tried AA, it makes her crazy and just gives her an excuse to get out of the house and get drunk. She tried outpatient rehab – same thing. She did an inpatient stint and that worked for almost two weeks after she got out.
Her drinking has cost me several jobs. Not to mention all the nights lost to stupid drunken fights, most of which made no sense to me at all. Her drinking has forced me to leave Florida, which has been my home, to return to Connecticut where we live in her parents’ basement. She told me she would not be able to drink in front of her family. I bought it, it was either that or leave her and my kids were only three and six at the time. So we sold all our stuff at bargin basement prices, loaded up and moved up here to this frozen wasteland. Where I couldn’t get a job in my field so I lost my career, too! And any chance of getting out of the basement soon, rents as high as they are and wages as low as they are.
I mostly quit drinking in an effort to help her. It seemed hypocritical to ask her to stop while I was drinking. I remember my parents telling my sister to stop smoking, yelling at her with a cigarette in their hand. My sister still smokes almost forty years later. Now it seems like all I have done is deprive myself of something I enjoy for nothing.
So, I intend to mainly write about the nasty things she says and does to me and the kids. Just to keep a log of what is going on.
