The Grafted Family Tree

The week before last, when I was at a new level of rock bottom, I reached out and talked to so many people about what I've been dealing with. I cried at an Al-Anon meeting, I talked with a friend (who before I would have considered an acquaintance) on the phone about alcoholism and saying "fuck" to God (as in, "This is a really fucked up plan" - my most direct connection with my higher power in years). I had coffee and cried with another friend, who only recently became a very close friend, and I received supportive emails from long-distance friends. I honestly felt that over the course of a few days humanity became my family.

I do not have family living within 5 hours, driving distance, but I felt so much love and support coming from so many people that day, last/last Wednesday, that I honestly believed in a human family as deep as any blood ties. I say "believed" but the truth is I still feel this way, it's only that now that the wounds are not as fresh (I felt all of this love alongside a good deal of anger and animosity from my husband), now that things are not quite so hostile between us I find myself reaching out less. This is really stupid. We, I, am no where out of the woods with alcoholism and its effects. Actually, it seems that just now I am finally beginning to understand how long and difficult a recovery this is going to be (no matter what my husband decides to do). It's just hard to communicate the in between stuff, the work and suffering that happens even when the drama and trauma are not on the surface. Still, I am writing this as confession and also as a reminder to myself. Talk about what's happening, how you are feeling with supportive people. People who are not the alcoholic.

This extended, extended family that I am just beginning to tap into is also vital for another reason. My family is not only long distance in regard to physical space, they are also long distance emotionally. My mother and father know a rough outline of what I'm dealing with - they know that my husband drinks and lies, but they have never called to check up on how I'm doing. To see if I'm okay or in need of someone to talk to. I've been disappointed by this - the way they've responded to this problem with my husband as opposed to when he had major back surgery and had to learn how to walk again. And my husband's parents have been the same. I assume he has told them about his drinking and hiding, his lying and inability to stop drinking even after I explained it was either alcohol or us (me, my daughter, our family life). I know he has told them the general state of things, and they have not once reached out to see if I am okay. I have had a hard time with this, I've struggled with the fact that they don't seem to want to acknowledge the problem (they skyped with my husband and daughter today, for instance, but did not take time out to ask my husband about how he is doing with alcohol. It seems like the problem is not real if they don't talk about it, while I find great wisdom in the phrase, "We are only as sick as our secrets").

I have had a hard time accepting their disregard, but tonight, in writing about the "family" I have here in the town I live in, in the form of friends and colleagues, and the long-distance but emotionally close friends I have dispersed throughout the globe, I'm starting to get that I should spend less time focusing on what my parents and/or in-laws are not doing and more time being grateful for all the people in my life who are being supportive. I have no control over how much love and support someone, anyone offers me. So, it seems a whole hell of a lot better to be grateful for the loving people rather than disappointed in those who are not meeting our expectations. And why not make a family out of those who do love and care!

Moving forward, I want to try to keep in mind my family of humanity, my human family full of friends and misfits and even some blood relations. The cobbled together group I believe in and cherish. I want to concentrate on them, what they are offering and what I can offer them in return.

“The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.” ― Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages 

Suffering from a Hiatus

Photograph by John G. Wilbanks, I've added this image to the blog because
last week it felt like I was just sliding down this rock, aptly named  Devil's Tower.
I was a the delusional top when my husband confessed (again!).

It has been over a week since my last post. I wish I had some fantastic reason why I could not find the time or voice to write but the truth is I just suffered. While I was finishing my last post, of Monday, June 23rd, my husband came into the room and told me he had drank the day before. Between dropping my daughter and I off at home and going back to watch the second half of the U.S.A. soccer match he stopped and got a beer. He drank, he hid, he lied about it - for a day, another day. I read almost verbatim an email a friend had send me explaining that he drinking and lying had to stop now (I just changed all the "he's" to "you's" as I slowly read it aloud). I read this to him because I felt that it accurately and dispassionately summed up the situation. That if he chose sobriety then I would support him, but that what he was doing now was making himself the enemy of me and our daughter.

You would think that all the other times there has been drinking and lying I would not have been so shocked by this new confession. I should have half-been expecting it! But I guess I thought that me being so calm and serious about him moving out would kick into some sort of recognition that his behavior had to change. I was wrong.

So, the rest of the week, mainly and most heartily (if you can move into despair heartily) the next two days I let myself go into despair. I couldn't eat. I had a ball of fear in my gut that kept me from feeling any peace or appetite. On Wednesday, after my husband new I was serious about him leaving, he was so angry. He acted just like a cruel ass whole. I hate to be coarse, but that's the only way to describe it. He even neglected our daughter.

I believe that he felt so bad about himself that he couldn't stand to let himself be near her, but the fact that he did avoid her for almost a whole day, that he closed his office door in her face (although on accident, I like to assume), well these facts remain. Things got better from that day, and he has made plans to move out, although they are not yet definitive.

Now, he is more caring and attentive, he is going to meetings. But he still hasn't apologized for his recent behavior, the cruelty that he showed to me last week and he's yet to say anything that convinces me he is fully aware of the problem he faces and prepared to do whatever he can to get himself and his drinking under control. I can't imagine that he believes good behavior now is going to excuse his past actions. I won't move forward with him unless I get more assurance that he is set on mending his ways. So far, proof of that is pending - and his living apart from us seems more of a certainty than any marriage saving revelations. Possibly, I am still on Devil's Tower, just near the bottom.

Doing Nothing

The cartoon to the right is really not a joke. It is seriously difficult to do nothing when you are near the life of an alcoholic.

When consulting the Index of Subjects in my daily reader, it's clear that lots of time is spent discussing detachment, changing what I can, and controlling. It must be because what so many in meetings have told me is true - you can't do anything. The slogan goes something like, "You didn't cause it, you can't cure it, you can't control it." This is very hard to accept when you see someone wreaking themselves and your family. This is especially hard to accept when you have a little one you feel you need to protect. I feel the need to control things more than ever since becoming a mother. I need to make sure my daughter has a safe and happy home to grow up in. I don't want just functioning for her. I want stability and joy, honesty and peacefulness for her. I know it can not always be roses and chocolate cake, but it shouldn't be cigarettes and alcohol. 

So when my husband drinks and lies, when he smokes, I want to control him, more than ever before, because I want to control the environment my daughter is exposed to. And I can't believe I find myself in a situation where the person who is supposed to be my partner is acting as a saboteur. I just find it unbelievable! And because I find it unbelievable, I also can't believe that my husband does not know the damage he is doing, realize the risks he is taking. It takes all my energy to go through a day not pointing this out to him. But I succeeded in getting through today without doing so. For that, I congratulate myself, we'll see what comes tomorrow. 

While I am doing nothing (saying nothing) in regard to his choices or actions (or lack of actions). I am doing something for myself. I'm talking with friends and getting a clearer head about him living in our house or finding an alternative place to live - as we've discussed. Most importantly, I know that in the life I want to make for my daughter there is no room for lies. 

Coriander

In the south, cilantro can live outside through the winter. That's when it does best. When the weather warms it sprouts up and turns into what it always is, coriander.

We had a bunch of these plants along the edge of our vegetable garden. They were tall and gangly and heavy at the top with seed ponds. I wanted to keep them there and harvest the fresh pods for cooking (because you can't buy that flavor, apparently), but I never told my husband this and he pulled the plants out to clean up the garden.

Still, I harvested some of the pods off the pulled plants, catching them just before or as they were drying out. I started doing this as I pushed my daughter in her swing and soon enough she didn't want to swing, she wanted to help me pull coriander ponds. Her fingers are the right size, but she didn't quite get the leverage you need to establish by holding on to the stem.

Today we went to church as a family. And although this may seem to have nothing to do with coriander and coriander may seem to have nothing to do with alcoholism, stick with me here, there is a point. The church we went to was new to us, we'd never been to this church or a church of this denomination (strange how that word almost has the word demon spelled outright inside it, a bit uncanny). Anyway, during the reverend's sermon she talked about how she always imagined the manna that came from the sky to feed the Israelites as a ready to eat feast that was easily received with quick joy and gratitude, but that the truth she had read of earlier this week is that the manna was actually ground coriander combined with a sticky substance that the Israelites had to work and sweat over before they were able to consume it as food.

Being mostly (entirely?) outside the faith, this explanation of the story made a lot more sense to me. It de-miraclized the story. Now, instead of food falling straight from god to the people's mouths, there was human effort involved. This also sheds some light on a topic I've written of in the past, about what to take personal responsibility for and what to "Let go and let God". Essentially, the story - and the reverend's retelling of it - tells me that God (or my version of a higher power) does not spoon feed me or give me a finished product. Only the materials are offered. And aren't we all offered these materials when we are offered life. We've got the coriander and the sticky what-ever-it-is and if we make something edible, make a life that will nourish us, then all right. If we don't make lumpy bread-ish stuff then we cannot blame anyone but ourselves.*

Additionally, even when they had the materials it took the Israelites a while to make food from it. So the word patience, comes rearing its' continually present head. You have to see what you've got to work with and have the patience to turn it into something that will sustain you. The vision and fortitude necessary for seeing and making the best of your reality are not always easy to find or develop. And not everything in life can be made into manna.

For example, in some ways I can see and appreciate that my husband's alcoholism is an opportunity for me to take my life into my own hands, develop the strength that I will need for life regardless of what he does or if we stay together. But just because I can use this as an opportunity does not mean that if he continues to drink and lie that I need to stay with him and continue to try to make a family life with what he's offering as a partner. Because the fact is coriander is quite nutritious - has many health benefits - so the Israelites were given something they could work with and survive by. With beer, although it is called the "sweet nectar of the Gods," there just isn't as much to sustain - the best it's got is 1% of your daily value of Niacin.



*(although, I do realize that I am writing this from a very privileged background and that in some places, many places, in the world, food or lack of food is much more a dire battle with reality than a convenient metaphor).

Light on My Problems

Art work by: Adam TLS

Today was not a good day. Earlier this week, my husband drank again, and lied about it again, tried to cover over it again. At first, I stuck to the modo I've heard several repeat in Al-Anon - "Do nothing, that is the only thing that will help." I didn't say anything to him about drinking that night, I just went to sleep. Magically, I was actually able to fall asleep without needing to confront him. That really is progress!

But two days passed, and I couldn't stop myself from asking him, "Have you drank since you started 90 meetings in 90 days?" He said yes, and admitted to drinking the night I knew he had. I was able to take this calmly, for the most part. I said I was glad he was honest, but that I needed to read for a while, I wouldn't be able to fall right to sleep.

He went to the couch.

I did read and I did sleep. Then in the middle of the night I woke with such anxiety. I started thinking about our future, if it would be an "our" and felt the weight of needing to take things into my own hands, not count on him at all as a partner. I started to agonize over my lack of trust in him and how this would affect summer plans, day-to-day life, our marriage in general.

Luckily, instead of staying in that cycle I was able to just turn on the light and start reading until I felt sleepy again. But the next day and the rest of this week my anxiety over his having a relapse strengthened and strengthened. When I read an email from a friend checking in on how I was, I broke down crying at work. Clearly, everything was not okay. I was not coping with my husband's additional drinking and lying as well as I would have liked.

Things came to a head tonight. During a conversation about how I was "trying to do nothing" but that it  didn't seem to be working, he said that it had. Well, he admitted to feeling worse about his drinking when I said nothing than when I brought up the drinking and what he was going to do (or not do) about it all the time. I get that - it makes sense.

But at one point in the conversation he said, roughly, he'd done wonderfully with his drinking since January. Hearing him say this really higlighted for me how deep of denial he is in. He lied about drinking and drove us both home drunk from the airport in February, he hid and lied about drinking in May (and who knows, maybe before), he has twice in the past month gone to AA meetings and then drove around drinking afterwards yet in his opinion he's done wonderfully. And all of this when I've told him he cannot drink and lie and expect myself and my daughter to stick around - that it IS NOT okay with me, even if it is okay with him.

He pushed me over the edge and I said, finally, that we should not live together, that it is not helping. I told him that either our daughter and I would get an apartment or he could start looking for one. He said okay. I went to take a shower.

Useless Resentment

A friend of mine who is now very successful and happy was once going through a terrible divorce and working at a crummy furniture store. While she was working at the crummy furniture store, a co-worker shared this nugget, "Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere." I'd like to revise this by switching out worrying for resentment. Something like...

"Resentment is like a bag of cement. It weighs you down and frustrates you but at least you build arm muscle." 

No, that's not quite right. Maybe...

"Resentment is like a suitcase full of clothes the wrong size. They may cover you but you're not going to look good wearing them." 

Okay, so, obviously it is much harder to come up with these pithy sayings than it is to read them (or find pictures illustrating them) online. What I'm trying to get at, however inarticulately, is that this evening I finally discovered resentment does absolutely no one any good. This seems like something I should have already known, that everyone should kind of know, but the truth is before tonight I only knew it logically, intellectually. It wasn't something that my whole being believed as true. 

What happened to bring about this wonderful discovery? The 4th Step. Yesterday I read, "Will I blame others for what I do on the ground that I am compelled to react to their wrongdoing?" And then more about taking an inventory of my faults. This is not fun. Mostly, it is not easy. Being objective and honest about your shortcomings can sometimes seem almost super-human. You have to step outside yourself to look at yourself and you are constantly getting in the way of your own view. 

But one thing I could quickly identify within myself was resentment. I don't easily let go of the hurt that comes into my life. I think I hold on to it in hopes of being able to demonstrate, somehow, how much pain someone has caused me. That's crazy. Basically, I keep pain around, to show pain, to cause pain, in order to protect myself from future pain. Yeah, that makes sense, keep pain to avoid pain. Right. And the icing on the cake of this ridiculous logic: the person who I want to pick up on this pain (mainly, my husband) never does! And if, by some off chance, the resentment I'm carrying around does really make an impact on another person, it causes an argument not reconciliation and understanding. 

These lines helped me realize something about resentment: 

"I must go on day after day trying to face myself as I am, and to correct whatever is keeping me from growing into the person I want to be." 

Suddenly, it hit me. Resentment is not only causing me turmoil and annoying (at best), enraging (at worst) others in my life, it is actually keeping me from growing. Now, that, that I can't put up with. I suppose I am a selfish person. Well, I am. But when I think of letting go of resentment (that I feel my husband caused) for my husband's benefit, I'm not so entirely motivated. I think he caused this resentment, he deserves it! That would make a teeny-weeny bit of sense if (big IF) he were the one suffering most from my resentment. The awful truth is I suffer the most from my own resentment. 

I feel like I should have really fully learned this lesson when I read The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time, but it's taken 15 years to sink in. The bright side in realizing that I suffer under resentment that I impose upon myself is that I am also the one who can liberate myself. I may have been captured and locked-up in my resentment in the past, but realizing now how truly futile and self-defeating this resentment is has loosened its hold on me. I am not there yet, but I can imagine a future where I've let go of a lot of the weight I've been carrying, still am carrying. This gives me hope. Seems like I just need to be sincere (with myself) and patient (with myself). After all, as Dumas explains in his novel: 

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words--"Wait and Hope.”

I Didn't Invent the Piano, Neither Did Schubert

Tonight my husband and I went to a piano concert. Joseph Kalichstein played selections from Beethoven and Schubert and it was phenomenal. Kalichstein's performance made me remember how much about life can be communicated in sound - and how nice it is to not have to talk (or write) about everything.

Really, the wordless version of "I married an alcoholic" might draw a bigger audience, and more tears. But aside from regretting my medium, which I am really just doing now while I write about the concert, another important--at least personally important--thought occurred to me. It has to do with what I've been writing of lately, "Letting go and letting god", releasing more of my life to a power outside and superior to myself.

I thought, Schubert did not invent the piano. He created some amazing art with it, but he was not the instrument's inventor. Joseph Kalichstein neither invented the piano, nor was he the first to discover Schubert's genius. He can expertly, really fantastically, play the piano and Schubert's work upon it, but in order for this to have happened tonight. First, the piano needed inventing, Schubert needed birthing, Kalichstein needed touring, etc. etc. All of this in order for me to be able to hear Schubert's Sonatas this evening. More plainly put, I could not have orchestrated this evening if I had tried, the whole lot of it is too complicated. Still, I benefited from some complex orchestration, spanning centuries and continents, so that I could hear, and be moved by, the piano, the music, the man playing. This is something like the pooling of human intelligence. Everything working together to create something beautiful. This is something I can believe in. Not a personal god, but a collective intelligence that is much bigger than myself and scope of knowledge. So, I have decided to give it over to Schubert's "Hungarian Melody". If life can sound as sad and hopeful, ernest and solemn as this piece, then I think we'll all be alright.

Power Beyond Imagination

In tonight's Al-Anon meeting I made the real confession that I'm at Step .75, somewhere very close to Step One, but not there entirely, not yet. And later someone shared a C.S. Lewis quote:

This got me thinking about how humility could be part of the problem. Admitting the powerlessness part of, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol" is not easy. It's human nature to think we have power over things, over ourselves or at least certain aspects of our lives (like what we eat for breakfast or whom we decide to marry). But I wonder how much control I really do have. Right now, it seems like not much. And the upside to this is, if I give up some of my ideas about how much power I have over my life, then I can start to take some responsibility off myself, and consequently some guilt! I am bolding things tonight. I think I'm doing this because they are things I need to remember or convince myself of.

In some sense, powerlessness can be a good thing. That is, as long as it's not being used as an excuse to not deal with reality. But that's the trick, knowing the difference between when you are healthily admitting your powerlessness and when you are claiming powerlessness to attempt to hide from a situation or reality. I suppose that when you've mastered this you can declare yourself an expert on the serenity prayer. I am currently stuck on not "knowing the difference" but at least this is a step up from just having the courage to change the things I can or cannot change and not attempting to see any difference.

And there's a decent amount of humility needed to accept things you cannot change. It seems to mean you have to look at certain aspects of the world and say, that is beyond me and my abilities. That's not something many stubborn people like to admit, and I'll admit I am very stubborn.

Step 2 says "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." And it reminds me of someone at Al-Anon speaking of how when they began Al-Anon, they started, by chance, with the second step. They said it was fate because if they had tried to start with the first step, they probably never would have continued with the group. In their case, hearing and learning the second step before the first helped them along. I wonder if this might be the route for me, too.

I have done enough mental gymnastics, turned the gears on the mechanical monkey enough times, to know that I am not the one who will restore myself to sanity. I've tried! It doesn't work. It actually leads to more sanity. So I can accept that what could restore me is something, some Power, greater than myself.

In One Day at a Time's reading for today, it says, "My despair may have been so great that I had lost the faith I once had--the complete, surrendering faith in something beyond myself." And although I haven't had a formal construction of God, with a capital G, for quite some time, I have, for most of my life, held some innate faith in an organization that was beyond me and my simple or complex, immediate or future tense desires. I knew I was small, specific and not insignificant, but minor in the scheme of the cosmos. In some ways, I realized I was along for the ride. And I could enjoy the ride.

I'm not sure when this changed. I think it had something to do with marriage and the birth of my daughter. Both events seemed to change my perspective on agency. I chose to marry my husband. Although, typing it out, I can tell I am not being completely honest, I did have misgivings about marrying him, we fight, we are opposites, he can be cold, etc. But something in my gut told me that I was going to marry him, and that it was not the wrong thing to do. Something bigger than me seemed to decide it. This has been true of every major decision in my life, and I haven't been led too far astray, yet. Thank, 'a higher Power'.  I suppose I am answering my own concerns about Step 2 here. Maybe it will be as easy as admitting that deep down I already believe a higher power is at work in my life, in all life. I could accept that and realize I don't really need to convince myself. There's a comforting, if not effortless, idea.

4 Weeks on Step One

So strange that they are called steps, as if you simply elevate your foot, put it down on a solid surface a bit higher than the one you picked it up from and voilà, you are better off than before you started. But what else would you call them? The twelve stages? - This seems to leave out the work that's involved. The twelve actions? - It is hard to think of all the spiritual change, the adaptations of your psyche, you must inevitably go through as actions. And steps infer that you end up someplace higher - at a new level of your life - if you follow them. Assuming, that is, that you are ascending, rather than descending, the staircase. Though, depending upon how you look at it, descending might be necessary. You might need to go down twelve steps inside yourself, to explore the basement of your being - to put it in a bad metaphor with alliteration. Anyway, the point is, people who have already done these steps assure you that if you work them you will end up some place better - or in the same place with a better version of yourself to work with.

I think everyone who finds themselves at an Al-Anon meeting must have consciously or unconsciously accomplished the first step.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol---that our lives had become unmanageable. 

You just don't get to an Al-Anon meeting unless some shit has really hit the fan. The thing is, though, at first you think it is just somebody else's shit and you're tired of the smells. Someone is ruining your life with their alcohol. So, yes, you are kind of powerless, but in the back of your head you are thinking... they are the ones who are powerless, I'm just being subjected to their problem. A problem that they might not be willing to fix, so I've got to figure out how to fix it through Al-Anon. Well, then you actually go to a meeting and everyone says you can't fix it - unless "it" is yourself. Yourself is the only it you can fix, and it's your shit that's hit the fan. 

This first denial (that the problem is someone else's and not your own) must be the hardest to get past. I say this because I still haven't got past it. I blame my husband for the problems we have now. It is just so hard to distinguish between which problems to take responsibility for as a partner and which to assign to the other, as a personal challenge they must work out. 

I know that when I told my husband, "AA or divorce" I wasn't thinking about Al-Anon and how much my recovery would mean to the possible success or failure of our marriage. It's now been four months since I issued that ultimatum and he's been in and out (and now back in) AA. He's trying to do 90 meetings in 90 days and I hope it works for him. I do.

Meanwhile, I am on step one. Realizing that there's this thing (alcohol) that's bigger than my ability to control it. That I am powerless. It is difficult to even type the four words. I'm not accustomed to realizing and accepting powerlessness - about anything. I mean, I'll hardly admit to myself that I'm mortal. The evidence is everywhere, but the jury is still out! Of course, after the birth of my daughter, when I almost died from hemorrhaging, I felt very close-to and aware of my vulnerability - my powerlessness - but as I healed, the omnipotence of that feeling slowly dissipated with my physical symptoms. I became, once again, the powerful, living human. But what allowed me to live? It was not my own will, I can tell you that much. I was so exhausted from the delivery that when I began to go in and out of consciousness I felt only along for the ride, not "fighting for my life." 

I suppose that same type of surrender is needed now. Only it's complicated by my desire to protect myself and my daughter from my husband's drinking. I am in a situation where I need to both admit that I am powerless to an element in my life, and also guard whether or not I want to allow myself and my daughter to be subject to the would-be drinking. Because I am not entirely powerless about whether or not I stay in this marriage.

Aw! But I guess the step is about admitting your powerlessness to alcohol, not to the person who drinks or your marital state. Alright, fine then, I admit it. I am powerless to alcohol. My life is unmanageable!    

the Universal Good

Reading One Day at a Time in Al-Anon alongside Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties is a real trip into the deep. One day at a time asks me to "cancel out my thoughts of grievances against others" and Rilke says, "The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them." I am truly a beginner at love and getting rid of grievances.

But I fear Rilke has gotten to me a bit late. All the preparation of self he explains as necessary to be able to really love, well, let's just say I drank through that stage in my twenties. The whole decade when I could have been strengthening myself as an individual, instead I was drinking heavily and doing what Rilke says young people too often do: "that they (in whose nature it lies to have no patience) fling themselves at each other, when love takes possession of them, scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their untidiness, disorder, confusion. . . . And then what?" Well, Rilke, my friend, I am at that very then what? My life leading up to marrying my husband and giving birth to my daughter was a roller coaster of travel and self-exploration that had the potential to be liberating and maturing except for that it took place in a fog of alcohol and was daunted by a loneliness I looked to fix by scattering myself amongst friends and lovers.

Writing that condemnation of my twenties makes me think that maybe the first grievances I should 'cancel out' are those I hold against my past self. I'm in this undesirable predicament of having a young child and being married to an alcoholic in denial of his alcoholism and I suppose I want to blame my past self. I want to blame the person who made the choices that brought me to where I am right now. Some good that will do! Right?! But it's the truth. I blame my husband for his actions, but more than that I blame myself for becoming attached to someone who could do these actions -- who could lie, and yell, and tear things from the wall.

I want to go back in time, about ten years, and read Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties then. I want to really learn from the first alcoholic/addict I dated. But last I checked, a time machine for the emotional and intellectual late-bloomers has not been invented. Knowing this, that I can not go back and make the past Miriam better than she actually was, leaves me with really only one option (in time and space) moving forward. I suppose that's why One Day talks about these grievances, because you can't really move into the future with them. Of course, you will wake up and tomorrow will calendar-wise be tomorrow no matter what you're still holding on to. But if you're still holding on to it - to whatever it is - then emotionally and intellectually you will be in the same damn place. And I've been in that damn place too long!

I am ready for the serious truth and difficult work Rilke talks about - I just wonder how possible it is to do this work while tangled in the mess of marriage with an alcoholic. Guess I'm destined to find out.

Fulfillment in Itself

"Today's Reminder" in my Al-Anon book is about giving as opposed to getting. It talks about how people come to Al-Anon because they want to get relief, essentially. "By and by I found that 'getting' depends largely on my willingness to give--to be of service to others,...". And there is a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote to finish the passage: "Has a man gained anything who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? He is great who confers the most benefits."

Agreed! That it is better to give than to receive is a tired cliche for a reason. It is tired because it is true. So I get this. I should be thinking of what I can give rather than what I want to get from Al-Anon. I don't disagree with this passage, I'd just like to add this thought: In order to give to others, in order to be in a place where you can give to others, you need to first give up a good degree of your own ego. I think there needs to be a good degree of humbling yourself, before yourself, before you can offer anything to others. Mainly, this is because if you do not give up enough of your ego, you will not be able to clearly see others and what they do or do not need.

So, for me, step one in the attempt to give to others needs to be giving up my ego. And to bring it back to the Al-Anon text, my ego is the force that wants to get something. If I can get over it, I can get on with giving. And just imagine the reduction in anxiety that would accompany this type of transformation. No more worrying about what you will get or how what you give will be reciprocated. That's some liberation I could go for.

Courtesy

My Al-Anon book, "One Day at a Time", finally came in the mail. The daily entries are short, which is good because it will give me enough time to read them each day and bad in that I wanted a lot of help all at once. To read a bunch and then for things to just be magically fixed. Unfortunatley, reality doesn't work this way and neither does the book.

The entry for today, June 7th, is about courtesy. Courtesy as "an expression of love, warm concern for the other person's comfort." So I decided to provide more courtesy to my husband today - I decided to be especially courteous before our conversation this evening. While he was out running errands I dressed myself up in some lingerie (what the hell!, right?) and then when he asked if I was ready to talk I told him was ready and that he should come back to the bedroom. He was surprised at my appearance. And I told him that we were still going to talk, but that I thought we should make love first.

I don't know if this is what Al-Anon would recommend, but I thought it might ease tensions and open hearts a bit, and I think it did (simultaneous orgasm a cheesy love song that happened to come up on Pandora didn't hurt either).

After making love we had a nice long talk on the front porch and he agreed to doing 90 meetings in 90 days. I feel good about our conversation - and should even feel good about the outcome. But the truth is that he is taking this step because he sees it as a condition of our marriage, not because he really wants to quit drinking. He still does not really want to quit drinking. In fact, after our talk he asked if he could have one last beer. Ugh! I thought, why!!!??? But instead of saying that I said, "If that's what you want." And when he asked if I would like anything, I told him I'd have whatever he was having. The honesty here is better than the lies, hiding the drinking, to be sure. But I am still disappointed that that is what he wanted. Baby steps, I guess. Now we'll just have to see how the next three months go.

It is so hard to tell when I am enabling, when I am standing my ground, and when I am being supportive of some type of recovery. Just knowing where you stand is the hardest aspect of this process.

Away From, and back to, It All

I haven't posted in a while (a week?) because I took my daughter on a couple of short vacations. First, was an easy one-night trip to a friend's lake house in Louisiana. It was a ladies weekend that turned into a mommy and kid sleepover, but it was good practice for A and I. The short trip was a dry-run for our three night trip with flights and family and more solo caregiving for me. Getting away from X and our home actually did help me get mentally away from our domestic problems. I didn't, as I thought I would, spend a lot of time thinking about whether or not he was drinking while we were away. Of course, I thought of it, but not as often as I would have thought. Traveling with a little one requires you to have constant attention on them, so having A as my travel buddy definitely helped a lot. She also helped by being incredibly cute and flexible through all the travels. She and the family and friends we visited with while traveling really allowed me to experience some uncomplicated joy - the type of joy you are not thinking through but just experiencing directly. I guess this is just real joy and I haven't experienced it for a long, long time around my husband.

Maybe everything that's happened between us - the fights, the disappointments, the criticisms - have been working upon us both for so long that we're not able to free our minds enough to enjoy experiencing each other. It think this is part of the problem, but who knows?

I do know that after being away from each other for almost a week, there was no loving reception between my husband and I. Sure it was late and we were both tired, but on the way home from the airport last night there was a lot of awkward silence. It was a two hour drive and at first I accepted the silenced, then I decided that I could get over him not seeming to really care about me or my experiences and began to babble on about my family and the four days A and I had just spent with them. This felt slightly more intimate than if I had been talking to a taxi driver who didn't know or care too much about me or my family.

But there was one hopeful disclosure. He said a couple weeks ago that he couldn't respond to some things I've brought up until later, that he needed time to think and that he wouldn't be ready to talk until after these trips. On the drive home I said, I know it is late and it won't happen tonight, but I'm ready to talk whenever you are. He responded by saying he could talk tomorrow.

Today he says the conversation will take a while, so we can talk tonight. This morning I dreamt he was in love with someone else, who was not in love with him, who never-the-less he wanted to leave me for. Today, his coldness convinces me he's ready for divorce. He is disinterested, distance and I know he has a disease, but I haven't really excepted it in a way that doesn't make all his actions (or lack of action, in this case) feel very personal. His detachment hurts.

Sink or Swim

The South Korean ferry disaster was over a month ago. But, through reasons of internet maze making, I found myself reading about the accident and looking at this illustration of how the boat slowly turned then capsized.

I read translated text messages from some of the students - which you can see here. While doing so, I found it hard to breath. The text messages, especially, got me imagining all of these students trapped inside a boat and then the boat underwater. It makes you claustrophobic to just think of what all those innocent and obedient people suffered. One student writes to his father explaining there is no way for him to get off the sinking ship. And it kills me to read this and to know that this person had enough time to message their father, but no ability to save himself - that there was an awareness in many of these students, but nothing they could do with that awareness.

I hope that this doesn't seem to make light of the loss so many South Korean families suffered, but because I am always thinking about alcoholism and what I am going to do for myself and for my daughter given the circumstances of my husband's drinking, I couldn't help but think of myself and my daughter as passengers on this ship - not the Sewol - but a ship my husband and I started creating when we got married. (This metaphor is especially apt because during our wedding ceremony we had a friend read Kay Ryan's poem, "We're Building the Ship as We Sail It").

What I am thinking now is that the boat is tilted 60 degrees. All three of us are at the beginning of this ship wreak, and I can't trust my husband to fix the ship. It doesn't seem that he notices its tilting, or notices it and isn't alarmed, he isn't as concerned with the cold water rushing in over all of our feet. I am putting on my daughter's life jacket, my own jacket and I am waiting to see if he understands the dire situation his drinking and lying has put us in. But maybe that isn't even being completely honest - quite possibly I am not even putting on the jackets, I am just looking to him for signs that he understands and is going to address things.

I'm terrified that I will stay on the boat with him, that I'll keep my daughter on the boat with him, and then alcoholism will capsize us. I won't say it is my husband, because he would not drown us - the disease would.

I believe in him as a person, in the man who I decided to build this ship with, but I can't trust his judgement right now, even though he went to a meeting tonight and says he hasn't drank in almost two weeks. And I don't want to be on a boat partly under water, always vigilant for the last moment to flee, to hop in a life boat before it all sinks. I don't even know that it will sink, he could stay sober, but I don't know that he will stay sober. And I feel like an idiot for not already getting myself and my daughter ashore.

Make it Rain

I'm still waiting for my Al-Anon textbook to arrive in the mail. Unfortunately, I bought it used instead of through Amazon Prime. So, it's taking a while to get here. This might signal I want to work on things, but am not exactly in a rush to. In the meantime, I feel the space between Al-Anon meetings open before me like a waste land. It's a desert of emotions, too many emotions and nothing to do with them. Sadness and anger and doubt and regret for as far as the eye can see. No drought, a constant storm, which is its own type of desert.

But I wanted to write something about how our anniversary ended up. After I made my last post, I took a shower and when I walked into the bedroom afterwards my husband had lit candles and cued a Civil Wars' song. It was "I want you back", a Jackson Five cover. You can press play (below) and then continue reading for a more authentic experience of my anniversary evening.

So, the candles are lit and the music is playing and I am naked because I just got out of the shower. I sit on the end of the bed, next to where my husband is sitting, and say something like, "What's going on?"  - This is the first official acknowledgement of our anniversary - He hugs me and I cry onto his shoulder, with abandon. I am not crying because I am so happy that he's made a romantic gesture and I feel that everything is going to be alright between us. I am crying because the romantic gesture does not work like it does in the movies, or as it might have worked on a younger version of myself. The romantic gesture changes nothing, I am glad he's done it, is doing it, but in my heart I am not convinced of anything, least of all his love for me or mine for him. 

Then he gets naked and I think "Not a chance" and he says, "I don't think anything's going to happen, I just don't want you to be alone" (in my nakedness, because I still haven't dressed since my shower). At least he gets that much, I think. The next song starts and it's "Dance me to End of Love" a Leonard Cohen cover that we danced to as the first song of our wedding reception. I was dressed a lot better that evening - and I was a great deal happier. Though, even that evening, he disappointed me with his drinking. I was pregnant with our daughter, so I didn't drink to celebrate our wedding. I had imagined that he might do the same, in solidarity and support of my state, but instead he got drunk. On our wedding night, I didn't even want to make love to him because of how much he had drank, the smell of his breath, his mannerisms. But tonight he is sober (I think, thought I can't be sure, and I even question the smell of his breath). He asks me to dance and I accept - not because I want to dance with him but because I don't want to say no to dancing with him.  

It was an awkward bedroom duet, to say the least. There was certainly no zest or feeling to my movement, mostly I cried on his shoulder. When we were close, I felt his penis grace the inside of my thighs, like a foreign object - like something someone had set down in the wrong place. He attempted a twirl and I turned in the wrong direction. We have never danced well together. We took a dance class that ended in more arguments than coordinated moves, but his dance was lifeless (at least for me). Later he said he was simply glad that I said yes instead of "Get away from me you jerk!". 

Ironically, this comment made me feel the most of anything that happened that day. It made me think for a moment, maybe he actually does know the damage his lies have caused, maybe he does feel badly enough to finally make changes and be a real partner. Pretty romantic, right? Your spouse calling themselves a jerk as the highlight of your anniversary. Still, this brought us to a better place than I thought we would get to that day. 

Then we watched Star Trek, like you do. 

Most surprisingly, after Star Trek, in bed, with the lights out, he asked if I would give him a hand-job. I resented him asking, a bit, but considering how much unconsummated nakedness had filled the evening I decided to indulge. Once I began touching him, and allowing him to touch me, things escalated and I thought, "I think I might actually sleep with him." And when he asked, "Would you have sex with me? I said yes. It definitely felt more like hormonal sex than love making, but that it even happened at all was pretty surprising. So, I guess I answered by second blog post: Will We Ever Have Sex Again

Last part of our anniversary, the ending, was us both lying in bed awake. Neither of us could fall asleep after making love. I don't know what that means - but there it was - us lying awake, next to each other. The end of what I hope will be the most difficult anniversary of my (our?) life.

Two Year Anniversary - Two Tragedies

Today is our second anniversary. To celebrate, I went to an Al-Anon meeting. Well, that's not all that happened today. We also spent the morning painting the 4th side of our house the same color as the other three (it's been almost year of them not matching), took our daughter swimming in the afternoon, and then went out to dinner. Ostensibly speaking, this does not sound like a bad day - not even a bad anniversary for two people with a one-and-a-half year old. We even managed to get through it without conflict. -- I decided that my anniversary present to him would be not bringing up his drinking, his attitude and/or how these things have made me feel about a) myself, b) him, c) our marriage. So far, so good! All I've got to do is hold out through this evening, and we're going to watch a Star Track movie so there shouldn't be a lot of room for communication. Plus, I already got the crying out of the way at Al-Anon.

Yes, I cried at Al-Anon. Yes, I was the only one who cried at Al-Anon. Yes, the meeting was large and full of enough people with enough reasons to cry.

The thing is, I am sad about this anniversary. It is depressing to think that we have been married for only two years and we are this unhappy - that I am so unhappy. I don't feel any romantic, anniversary-type feelings toward my husband and I don't believe he feels any toward me. Of course, I am allowing myself to feel self-righteous about this because HE is the one who lied and hid alcohol. HE is the one that did this major damage. I feel I should have permission to not be romantic, offer romantic gestures of some sort, and that he (in his guilty state) should make up for my lack of emotion, should try to win me over in some way, should do some great romantic gesture that convinces me everything will be okay and we can be happy together. Obviously, he's done no such thing - and considering that all he's asked me to do is watch a Star Track movie, I don't think he's planned something incredibly inspiring for this evening. He doesn't feel this dynamic, this in-the-dog-house-ness the same way that I do. How could he? Unfortunately, realizing that he doesn't feel the same as I do, that he probably doesn't even have a clue about my expectations, doesn't keep me from wanting it all the same. Realizing it certainly doesn't keep me from being depressed about my unmet expectations.

Since, I promised myself that my present to him would be not forcing a discussion of problems, I won't explain my expectations to him. Still, they sit like a cloud over me, keeping me from enjoying what I might enjoy about him. Instead of talking to him about something he won't appreciate or understand, I cry at an Al-Anon meeting.

This isn't exactly what I'd call an enlightening entry. But I do believe that my expectations (and the inevitable disappointments they carry) and related to will, and at the meeting this Socrates quote was introduced, “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.”

Well, Socrates, I can say that at this point the tragedy I'm dealing with is not getting my heart's desire. The problem is I want to be married to someone I can trust, who I feel understands me, who is not an alcoholic - but I am married to X. I realize that the conditions of the marriage or the state of the people in it are not going to change in a day, but I can't help being mentally and emotionally opposed to how things stand now (even though I know that accepting the current state of things is the necessary first step towards them getting better). 

Today has just felt like such an empty anniversary. I have mostly hurt and disappointment in my heart and I really hope this is not the reality next year. I want to love with honesty, abandon, and trust - and want to be loved that way in return.

Life in a Library of Babel?

I didn't write yesterday because I spent Friday evening alphabetizing my collection of books and dusting. It seemed imperative that I do these things. Why? Probably, I am trying desperately to get certain aspects of my life under control, since so many aspects are out of my control. This is what you do, when you're married to an alcoholic, I guess. You alphabetize things. You dust.

I miss having one of my favorite poetry books near me - so I will probably have to shift some things in this arrangement, but overall I feel better. I have always lived with a certain degree of disorganization, it's actually how I work best. But I'm beginning to realize that what I enjoy or get creativity from is a certain degree of chaos on the surface; a desk strewn with the books that are currently inspiring me, the opportunity to stand up and dance, painting materials not too far from hand. But underneath all of that opportunity, I need order. That way, I can feel like someone reading life in a fantastic library, maybe something like Borges's Library of Babel.

I can pull anything from the shelves of my life, of my home, to play with, read, enjoy -- but overall there is organization. To my left and to my right, before me and behind me, there is the expanse of the library in order and waiting to be discovered (or left alone).

I used to think of myself too much of a "free spirit" for this type of organization. I saw it as structure and structure as limiting. I viewed creativity and structure as opposed.

*Now, having the chaos of alcoholism so fully present in my life has made me aware that the strain that comes with chaos - this type of chaos - is worse for creativity than structure or organization because it limits your mental energy and range. Your mind is not open to wandering through the shelves of the Library of Babel because it is confused, it is burdened.

Well, I'm working on unburdening myself - regardless of what my husband does with his drinking. I'm starting to see the type of life I want to make for myself and my daughter and I'm excited by the idea of building this organization to sustain us both.


*Actually, this presence is not new, it's just my conscious awareness to it (the alcoholism has been there for years, and years - both in my husband and myself).

Will We Ever Have Sex Again

Today, this question occurred to me. Will I ever want to have sex with my husband again? I haven't slept with him since he told me he had started drinking again. That was Sunday, May 18th. Now, it is Thursday May, 22nd. 5 days. Not an epic length of time by most standards, and really not epic in regard to our relationship considering that 3 years ago X (I will from here on out use X to represent my husband's name rather than making up a pseudonym for him, too), so three years ago X suffered a terrible back injury and was briefly paralyzed from the waist down. This lead to no sex for quite a while, as you can imagine (it was everything below the waist). And then again, after the birth of our daughter my bladder spent months bulging into my vagina. Needless to say, this turned us into eunuchs again, for quite sometime, until months after my surgery.

But all of that, all those physical woes where bodily impediments to love making. This is something different. Any mental appetite that I had for sex with my husband is, at this point, completey washed out. As I drove to the local YMCA this evening (exercise is the best therapy, right?) I found myself thinking about how I feel he's broken his wedding vows. Then I realized that I don't think there was anything about complete honesty in his vows, in our vows. This seems a major oversight, not to have included this, but it also seems like a given. Should you really have to say, "I will never lie to you, I will be completely honest with you." NO! This type of companionship, honest, lovingly honest, is what you sign up for when you get married. Or, at least, I think it is what you sign up for. If you wanted to be manipulated, kind of tricked and played with you would just continue dating, right? Then at least you would have the excitement along with all the games. Now, instead I find myself with none of the excitement and also none of the security that I thought I'd traded that excitement in for. Maybe that line confesses my major fault. I should have never traded in in the first place. Then I wouldn't have to be disappointed with the deal, and sexless.

First Days, First Week

About a minute ago, I created this blog. I created it to have a space where I can write about my adventures (wait, adventures, I'm already trying to be cute), what I should say is my time with or my shitty experiences with an alcoholic husband.

On Sunday, May 18th he told me he had been drinking again, and hiding it again, which I both knew and didn't know. This is the thing about being with an alcoholic, or being in a relationship with someone who hides things or lies. You think you are the one being crazy when you suspect what is actually the truth. In my case, this is complicated by the fact that I suspect myself of being an alcoholic (but this is a whole separate -but connected- animal that I'm not ready to get in to right now). Stick around, read on, or follow the blog for more on that. 

What I'm dealing with now is my husband's lies and his drinking and what I'm going to do about it all - for myself and so after we talked Sunday night I found an Al-Anon meeting Monday evening and got an appointment with my counselor for Tuesday afternoon. So, in response to his confessions as of Sunday I have been to two Al-Anon visits and one shrink appointment. From here on out I will call my counselor a shrink even though this is not a necessarily accurate description of the kind and intelligent woman who I speak to once or twice a month. I use the word shrink in an endearing and respectful way, and I realize there is a difference between what she offers and psychiatrists and psychoanalysts provide. The point is, as of writing this blog post I am two al-anon meetings and one shrink visit in to my rebellion against life as it was or has been. 

I'm starting this blog for myself - but I hope that it also serves as a resource for other women who find themselves in similar situations. To clarify what that situation is, for me: I'm 32, I have a one and a half year old daughter and I'm married to an alcoholic who sometimes thinks he is an alcoholic and sometimes (maybe more often times) thinks I am blowing things out of proportion. Sometimes I may respond with extreme emotion to his behavior, I admit, but here are two facts: In February was drunk, lied about it, and proceeded to risk both our lives driving home from the airport over icy roads. I was sober, he had drunk/flew his way from New York to Mississippi. In November, he was so passed out drunk in the bed that he struck our nature as I was breastfeeding her in bed. When he did finally come out of the stupor  he got up from the bed and began to ask about our daughter, not cognizant of the fact that she was lying beside me. This was the night before Thanksgiving, I did not feel there was a lot to be grateful for - in regard to my choice in partners - that particular holiday. 

But I digress, which I am sure to do frequently, but this first blog I just wanted to do an introduction. I am using a pen name - but that is all I'm making up. I will not write of anything personal that is discussed at Al-Anon meetings, except for that relating to my person. Oh, and I'm hoping to use this blog to decide whether or not to divorce my husband. I told him I would do so if he drank again, I don't currently have plans to do so - and he is pulling into the drive way right now.