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.