My holey spirit

I have felt broken lately.  Like my life and heart are aching, like my marriage and the little life I have been building has holes in it.  And I have been searching for answers and trying my best to be a better person through all of this.  I have turned so often to alcohol for fun that I have lost my true self and my relationships with others along the way.  I do not know what it is like to have a night on the town not clouded by poison.  I don't know how to wake rested on a weekend morning and go outside to see the sun without a headache burdening me.  I had started to equate bring drunk with being me, and that should not and is not the case.  I am a good person and have plenty to offer the world without being tipsy.  I want to appreciate the quiet life. I want to achieve a simple supportive relationship with my husband.  I want to be someone who C wants to be with forever.  I want to enjoy the company of others without the crutch of alcohol to lean on.  I want to go to church on Sunday and not have to ask repentence for my actions the night before.  I was God in my heart and in my life and I want to show him my devotion through my actions as a human being.  I want Him to shine through me until people take notice and ask what it is that I do to be so happy.  I want to fill the holes in my holey spirit with His Holy Spirit.  I am going to try.

Hope?

I argued with C tonight about his coldness towards me.  I told him that I would do everything in my power to be the wife and woman that he fell in love with but that it takes two to make a marriage work.  I have been am emotional wreck throughout this week and a half and this journey is just beginning and will get harder before it gets easier. 

This weekend is a huge test of our relationship.  My reunion and our town festival are this weekend and there will be copious drinking at both that I will have to avoid to keep my faltering marriage in check.  I know that I can do this and I look forward to proving that to him, but he will be drunk all weekend and this will be hard for me.  Why do the happy drunks have all the fun?  How sick is it that I envy his addiction because it is more functional than my own?  I think that it is a testament to the struggle that is this disease that I look at him with jealousy since he will get to drink longer in life before he hits rock bottom.  I should be happy that I am saving my liver and relationships now and somehow avoided being thrown in jail or divorced (so far) and yet I look at him with longing. 

I will miss the drunken laughter between us, the sloppy kisses like teenagers out at the bar and the crazy knock-your-clothes off wake-up-with-bruises sex that comes with two people being that perfect level of drunk when you are both uninhibited yet funtional enough to get the deed done well.  Drunk sex sucks with one sober person.  I will miss sitting in our truck in the garage sappily belting out Journey and love songs while looking into each other's eyes. 

What I won't miss?  The aftermath.  Waking up at five in the morning feeling my heart race and skip beats because I am so dehydrated that it literally is having trouble functioning.  Cracking one eye open and not darking to look sideways because that will bring on the splitting headache right behind the eye socket.  The headache that brings the nausea and wretching up the stomach acid in an effort to stop the pounding.  My eyes and lips so dry that when i finally get dressed I wear eye shadow and lipstick to cover the circles and the chapped colored lips.  The purple spots sprinkled across my eyelids from thowing up.  My hands shaking voilently and the inability to go back to sleep to make it somehow better.  Struggling to appear normal - getting up and sneaking advil and downing water all while letting the dogs out and attempting to fool my husband into thinking he was wrong and that I was not that drunk the night before afterall.  To make him eat his words.  My heart seems to jump out of my chest when I remember the fight the night before and I struggle to remember how it started.  It doesn't matter that I can't remember or who started what.  All I know is that the night is in pieces and the ones that I can see in snapshots are of me screaming horrible things, getting in C's face, him throwing a stool (probably to avoid doing the same to me) and the look on his face when I say that perfect cutting remark that causes him to storm off.  Sometimes I am crying, sometimes I am mad when he leaves.  I somehow end up passing out and waiting for the horrible day after when my hell starts over.  That is what I hate and that outweighs every drunken singalong or sexcapade.  This is the reality of alcohol and what it does to people - their bodies, their minds and their relationships with everything and anyone around them.  Alcohol is poison and I want it out of my life.  I pray that I am strong enough to set myself free. 

Pot Kettle Black

I am sitting here in the kitchen watching the food I made for C get cold.  It is a Tuesday and he is out having a beer.  Again.  He had some yesterday while helping out a friend and came home exhausted and barely said three words to me.  He was asleep two seconds after hitting the pillow and I laid there for fifteen minutes before I had to go to work and thought about how one-sided my relationship is now. 

I know that I created this, that I would have a leg to stand on to fight his behavior if I had not been the problem first.  But now here I am and he is out there in the middle of the damn work week and even thought I told him that I did not think he should be out drinking tonight he ignored me and I am left alone in the current mess that is my marriage.  I want to say to him, "How can you expect me to choose our relationship over alcohol when you choose alcohol over our relationship all of the time???"  But he is blind to his own actions or at least he thinks they are justified because of my actions.  So despite this complete injustice I have to keep wading through the much until I have won him back.  Because only then will I have a say, a fight, a chance to help him.  I will keep wading.

A Letter to my Husband

There is a rift between us and I want to fix it.  You are distant and cold are have been spending more and more time away from the house.  I hate it.  I want to feel connected, like you care about me and that you want this to work out better between us.  I want you to look at me with love, not resentment.  I want you to respect me and I want to respect you in return.  I think that all of this back and forth about your issues has stemmed from you not respecting me.  I think that you keep all of that from me because you don't care about me enough to want to be a good guy for me.  I want you to want to be kind to me, laugh with me, spend time with me.  I will do what it takes to earn that back.  I will work at this until is becomes second nature, until you respect me enough that I can finally deserve your love.  I want a happy future and I want it to be with you.  I want a husband that will hold my hand and that gives me praise instead of cutting me down.  I don't want it to be a tug of war anymore.  I am too tired and sad to fight.  I cannot stand the indifference.  I want hope.  I pray that time can give us that.  I will do everything in my power to make that happen for us.  I love you and I am sorry that I was not the person you thought I was and I want to be that person again for you.  I will find her, I promise.  I will do work if you will only hang on long enough to see it happen.  Please love me. 

Indifference

My husband and I are broken.  All week I have been quietly devastated, just moving through my day like molasses, putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to engage him or to tip the ever-so-delicately balancing boat.  For three days we basically coexisted.  By Thursday evening C kissed me goodnight as I went to work.  On Friday he came home after I was in bed and cuddled with me.  That brings us to Saturday night, my first attempt at making true amends.  We went out with friends, thankfully to a restaurant and not a full-fledged bar.  I ate dessert instead of drinking and no one asked me why.  We all chatted and laughed and generally had a decent time.  But C was cold.  He did not touch me or laugh with me.  We walked from the car three feet apart and I was too scared to try and hold his hand for fear of rejection.  And because part of me wants validation from him that he still loves me and still wants this to work.  My only inkling of hope was that he let me decide whether we should go out after dinner or go home.  I chose home and he went without protest.  I kissed him on the cheek as we went to bed together.  We have not said I Love You this week and it hurts my already squashed heart...

Fuck me and him and all of this

Here I am again.  Thought it would be longer before typing this but nope, C is pissed at me again and I am back at square one.  I drank this weekend because I thought we were having fun and things were going well, and once again that triggered C and we fought and he is looking at me with disgust again.  I have decided that this has gotten bad enough that I don't even need to do anything stupid while drinking to upset him anymore - the act alone is enough to set him off and after that I can do no right in his eyes.  He has said horrible things to me in the past few weeks and my heart is broken.  He has said multiple times that he wants to divorce me - no, that he can't wait to divorce me.  He has said that he does not like who I am and that he does not want to have kids with me.  Tonight he ripped on our sex life and went on and on about how i think I am perfect and an angel and verbally attacked me with such resentment that nothing I could say or do sofened the look in his eyes.  I was sitting on the floor bawling in front of him and he called me a child and told me to grow up.  I don't know how to deal with this or how to fix this.  We resent each other so much right now that going back to a normal relationship seems impossible right now.  I feel so lost and alone.  I want to feel loved and protected and I don't.  His love is conditional and I know the condition.  Why does giving in to it feel like giving up?