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.