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.