October 30, 2008

This morning, I had a long talk with my wife and told her that her drinking was hurting our kids, destroying our marriage, hurting her, and hurting me. That I didn’t know how much longer I could stay with her if she kept drinking. That I have apparently wasted another year and we are right at the same place we were last year at this time. She told me to wait and not leave. That she needed me to stay. That she was going to quit. I told her I’d heard it all before and I didn’t really believe her anymore. She said again that she would quit and that she wnted me to wait before I did anything.

Guess who bought a bottle on her way home from work. I’ll admit, she stayed under control and we didn’t fight and she didn’t go psycho. I guess she is making an effort to not go nuts and fight with me or be mean to the kids. But it is a balancing act she can’t, or at least never has been able to, keep up. Plus, she just isn’t herself when she drinks. She really isn’t there with me or for the kids. I am very disappointed and it doesn’t look good for the future, not for our future.

I have to stay positive for my kids and for myself. I will get through this and if she can’t get her head out of the bottle then I will have to leave her behind and move on. I still don’t want to, but how long do I have to wait? It has been almost seven years since I stood in front of our house in St Pete and told her she had a problem and needed to get help or it would end badly. Isn’t that long enough?

October 29, 2008

Another night, another bottle of rotgut vodka. This time it was a night for arguing. First, she went off about this horrible tragic and eminently preventable death of an eight year old boy who shot himself in thehead at some gun demonstration. He was allowed to fire a Micro-Uzi on full auto and apparently the gun popped up and he shot himself in the head and died.  Of course, all the anti-gun people are screaming that laws need to be passed to prevent this from ever happening again. While I believe this was a horrible tragedy, I don’t think passing a law in an emotional knee-jerk reaction is the proper way to handle this situation. However, I know that no woman (sorry if this sounds sexist, but I am pretty sure it is true) will ever accept that. And I made the mistake of telling my drunk wife that when she was ranting about the story. She got really pissed and I just said that we’d have to agree to disagree on this one. I let it go, but she didn’t.

Shortly after that, she somehow started talking about the salt water aquarium I had, only she swore I didn’t have it set up in our house in St. Pete. I did, and I told her exactly where it sat, how I did the water changes and dumped the water in our driveway, did the cleanups there and eventually showed her in our bank records where I had spent the money for live rock, sea salt and fish and fish food. None of that mattered. She swore we didn’t have the aquarium there and started getting really worked up about it. Psycho worked up. Yelling and shrill screaming worked up. Finally I had to just stop talking to her and I told her okay, whatever you say honey and tried to just stop arguing about something that really didn’t matter any more. The sad thing is that she really doesn’t remember it any more. It was right inside our front door and she can’t see it at all. I think that memory loss scares her someplace deep down where she won’t admit it.

For the rest of the evening, she was just cold and angry with me. Glared at me when she couldn’t just ignore my presense. Finally passed out around nine but did the thrashing and swearing thing until almost midnight. Real pleasant to try to sleep next to. I would have slept on the couch (and eventually did) but our son was scared again and came downstairs and was already on it. He and I finally switched places after my wife stopped thrashing and finally went to sleep for real.

October 28, 2008

After her performance on Monday night, I was upset with my wife. This morning, I told her that nothing seems to stand between her and the booze. Not our marriage, not hurting our kids, not hurting me, not even hurting herself. I told her how disappointed I had been when, last Thursday, I told her what our son had said about her drinking stressing him out and being part of the problem that led him to talk to a social worker at school. I said that we always knew that her drinking was probably hurting our kids, but here was proof and even that didn’t stop her from getting a bottle that night. She swore up and down that she wouldn’t drink, she wouldn’t get a bottle.

Surprise! She got drunk again. No fights, no real problems, but she reeked of vodka and I could tell she was drinking. Once again, the only really important thing to her now is her access to booze. It doesn’t matter if her drinking hurts herself, hurts our children, destroys our marriage, or hurts me. As long as she can grab up her bottle of rotgut vodka, it is good enough. 

I am still in a quandry. I know her drinking is hurting the kids. But I also know that depriving them of their mother will hurt them too. I just have to figure out which is best for the kids and for me. I know the only good outcome would be if she would quit drinking, but that is apparently beyond my control and may be beyond hers. I have tried to get her to get help and if she looks at all, she doesn’t look very hard and doesn’t push to get into treatment. Plus almost all treatment programs around here are based on AA’s twelve steps. AA has an abysmal success rate. I am convinced that the only reason it is used at all is because it appeals to conservative christian types and it is dirt cheap compared to any real alternative. What does it cost to find an ex-alchy who has done AA and managed to quit drinking and set him up as a ‘therapist’?  Compare that to the cost of a real doctor or therapist and present both numbers to an insurance company accountant and guess which one he will say is more cost effective. Plus my wife and I are atheists and the whole “higher power” thing as a major turn off. It is clearly christianity with just enough window dressing so they can pretend that it isn’t. Calling god your higher power and then saying the lord’s prayer at the end of the meetings pretty much shows what a sham that is. AA is a christian alcoholic support group and nothing more. If it helps some, that’s great, but to pretend that it is a viable treatment method is not okay. Score another victory for form over substance.

October 27, 2008

I knew she couldn’t keep up her little balancing act. She got stupid mean drunk. First she was nasty to the kids. Then she got mad at me.

She sat on the couch and drunkenly hissed at me that our marriage was dead and it was all their fault (said while sitting next to the kids on the couch and pointing at them.) Then she said that she didn’t get any respect from the kids. No shit. Maybe if you weren’t drunk five nights out of seven and being an unresonable mean bitch to them and to me they would respect you more. What a concept!

Shortly after that she went to bed, which used to mean that she would go sleep it off and I could breathe a little easier. No more. Now it means she tosses and turns and occassionally jumps up to go into her lounge for a smoke (and a snort?) or she squeezes by us pushed up against the bookcase as hard as she can so she is as far away from me as possible while she goes upstairs to the bathroom. Usually this also means that she comes to a sudden stop at the top of the stairs because she hears her father upstairs and she doesn’t want him to see her staggering around drunk. So she sits up there yelling “fuck” over and over again until she works up the nerve to go pee. Or when she lays in bed, she will suddenly erupt with profanity, generally directed at me and telling me that she can’t handle “it” any more and wants me the fuck out of her life or to go away. Plus, she gets caught up in the covers with all her thrashing around and she occassionally gets up and “remakes” the bed which usually means ripping it apart and piling all the covers on her side leaving me with very little for when I go to sleep. And if she passes out early enough, the kids get to hear it all, too. Sometimes she passes out at six and then comes to before seven or eight and demands to know why the kids are still awake. Like I am supposed to sent the kids to bed because she got stupid drunk and passed out hours before their bedtimes.

On this night, it was pretty much the same. She did all of the above, except remake the bed and yell at the kids. She did, however, start snarling at me as she went up to go to the bathroom. First she asked me what I was doing. I was watching “Heroes” on the idiot box, like I do on Monday nights. It was nine thirty. She sneered, “Typical.” Then went on to declare that she had to go to work in the morning and stated that my getting fired was really just a big vacation for me. How she had to go to work every day! I told her to go fuck herself and then got myself under control and just ignored her.

Then our son came downstairs. He has been having nightmares. He keeps wanting to watch scary movies, and the TV schedule is overloaded with them as Halloween is coming up. But then he gets nightmares and can’t sleep. I haven’t let him watch one in a while, but he is still scared at night and keeps waking up with bad dreams and then he won’t go back to sleep unless I let him sleep downstairs. My wife heard him come down and went ballistic. Yelling at me, like it was my fault the boy was scared. Fortunately, she ran out of steam soon and I was able to get the boy to sleep.

So that was my Monday night.

October 23, 2008

I had a little incident at work. My boss had a problem with the quality of my work. He demands perfection, and I understand that. However, in this case, he worked with me on the part and he made the same mistake I made on the rest of the parts. He later found the mistake and started yelling at me. When we went through the parts and I saw that he had done the same thing, I told him so and he got mad about that, too. I was supposed to have caught the error and fixed it, and that he made the mistake too was no excuse. To make a long story short, I knew that I had worked my last day for this guy. (The next morning I walked in and we decided that it wasn’t working out and I had to leave. Of course, I had to sit still for another five minutes or so of his lecturing before I could get my stuff and go.) Naturally, I would have liked to be able to talk to my wife about it. But she wasn’t really there. She was off in the land of vodka, again. Fifth day of the week, fourth day drunk.

In addition to simply not being there for me to talk to, she was neurotic about the kids toe and finger nails. She made them shower (okay, they needed them, and the nail clipping, too. She isn’t always wrong when she is drunk!) Then she demanded that I cut their nails. But I wasn’t fast enough and she cut our son’s nails before I could. She cut him while doing his toenails and I heard him say “ouch” several times during his ordeal. She also went up and nagged at our daughter as she showered about washing her face better. My wife then came downstairs and bitched at me that our daughter doesn’t listen to her any more. That she has lost our daughter. The only answer that would be truthful would have been for me to point out to her that our daughter would listen to her if she weren’t drunk and she wouldn’t have lost her, and could regain her, if only she would quit drinking and being a drunken asshole. Somehow I didn’t see the point in saying that to her. It never is well received and always leads to a nasty fight or a situation where I have to walk away from her insane rantings.

The rest of the evening, she was just nasty as she ranted about her crappy job. The idiots she works with. The idiots running for office this year. She threw the net pretty wide, and while she was often basically right about what she said, she was pratically foaming at the mouth and was very agitated about it. A lot more so then was really necessary. More vodka talk. I let her run on and didn’t argue with her, so we never got into an argument ourselves.

October 22, 2008

I spoke to my wife before I left for work this morning and told her what our son said. That we were hurting our children. She said she would talk to our son about things. I really hoped that this would be the final slap in the face she would need to wake up and take some steps to quit drinking. The only steps she appears to have taken were the steps to the liquor store from her car. She is drinking again tonight. We aren’t fighting or anything, but I am very disappointed by this.

I am at the point where I just don’t think she is ever going to actually quit or even really get her drinking under control. She may think it is okay to drink as long as she doesn’t fight with me or be mean to the kids, but that is a high wire balancing act that she won’t be able to perform. She almost lost it Tuesday night, and as long as she drinks, it is just a matter of time before she loses it again and we have a big stupid drunken argument over who knows what? Often, the things we fight over only happened in her head. And they can be the meanest, most vicous fights, all over something that never happened. In fact, if I tell her that whatever she is mad about never happened, or she only believes whatever it is because she is drunk, she really goes ballistic. Or when she stops making any sense, I stop talking to her and she gets mad about that.

So what should I do? She isn’t going to quit. Her drinking hurts our kids. Leaving her will hurt our kids.

October 21, 2008

She is drinking tonight. And she has hit her OCD stage. She went up to shower and while there, cut her hair and pulled the plugs out of the drain and obsessed about the black slimy gunk on them. We almost got into an argument over whether or not it was necessary to ever pull the plugs up and look at them. My take is that if there isn’t a clog you never need to pull those up and look at them. It is gross down there, but it is also downstream from the sink and why gross yourself out if you don’t need to? But she obsesses about it when she is drinking – the only time that I have ever seen her decide that it is necessary to pull them out and clean them. I just wish she would put them back in the pipe when she is done. She invariably leaves them on the counter. Yuch!

There was a more serious development, however and I wanted to talk to her, but her drinking made it impossible. This afternoon, my son asked me if it were okay if he talked to the social worker about the stress he felt when Mommy drinks and she and I fight. He said the little incident last week was partly caused by his being stressed out by her drinking. I think he heard us making love and thought I was hurting his mother and it freaked him out. So I wanted to talk to my wife about this development, but she was drunk and there was no way I was openning that can of worms while she was drinking. I am very upset that we are hurting our children. Up until now, I knew we were hurting them, but there was no evidence. No there is a clear sign that we are damaging our children by this crap. But I know that it will hurt the kids if I leave my wife, too. My son acquired optical migraines and saw black spots in front of his eyes when I took them to Carolina in January. The doctor decided that was likely caused by stress, too. The only good outcome I see here is if my wife quits drinking and rejoins the world of the living. But I see no sign that she is ready or able to do that.

October 20, 2008

Drinking tonight, but no problems, for a change.

October 17, 2008

Drunk again. Still haven’t been able to talk to her. I knew it as soon as she walked in the door. One look at her and I knew she was hitting the bottle. The night wasn’t bad, but talking to her when she is drinking is difficult as vodka seems to lower her IQ by a lot and she is touchy and argumentative. I have to watch what I say around her and I never know what is going to set her off. As the evening wore on, she got madder and meaner, although it wasn’t directed at me or the kids for a change. She launched into a diatribe about the unfairness of the bosses at her job and how stupid their policies are, especially in regards to their work at home selections. She also went off about her mother. Both of these topics it would be completely right and normal to go off about, but there is just something different and wrong about the way she does it when she drinks. As I have said before and even told her many times, it often isn’t that she is wrong about some of the things she says when she drinks, it is how she says it and the degree of anger, meaness and ignorance that goes along with being a mean drunken bitch that makes it wrong.

October 16, 2008

I got a phone call at work about my son. Apparently he exaggerated (okay, he lied) and told some of his friends that while he was at a friend’s house, someone broke in and they had to call 911 an d the police came. Well, his teacher heard this and then the social worker got involved and my son stuck to his story long enough for it to become a big deal. I got called at work and calmed things down, but of course, I was going to have to have a little chat with my son. I called my wife at her work and told her what was going on. Would it really have been to much to expect that she would stay sober when we have a (fairly silly) situation to deal with? At the least we needed to talk to our son about the importance of being truthful and make sure he knows that he can’t tell stories like that and get his teacher and the social workers all upset. So I was really hoping that she would stay sober – and of course she didn’t. I have been trying to talk to her since Tuesday night, plus here was a pretty good reason to stay sober, maybe at least until she found out what was going on and we dealt with it, but no. No reason is really good enough to count on her being sober.

And she wasn’t bad. I mean we didn’t get into any big fights and she wasn’t horribly obnoxious. But she did badger our son about this nonsense. I talked to him twice before she got home, she talked to him at least four more times about it. The kid was embarrassed enough and we didn’t need to keep on about it. Especially not drunken rambling lectures from my drunk wife.  And she gets really stupid when she drinks. We were watching Survivor, not exactly an intellectual show and she couldn’t understand the challenges the players were expected to perform. And she was going to give an intelligible talk on the importance of telling the truth to our son? And did, several times, some of them when I didn’t know she was still doing it.