The lies we tell ourselves - Living with alcoholism

The week has been full of uncertainty at work with one senior person in our small company accepting a terminal diagnoses and stepping down from their position.  My manager taking on more responsibilities the last few weeks had a heart attack on Wednesday. We have been told that everything is fine and they be back to work tomorrow.

We like to go along thinking things will always be the same I guess that is human nature and how we survive. Mental health and well being is directly related to our ability to adapt to change. I never really saw adapting as a solution to change.  I worked hard to keep things the same or even better to prevent on coming disasters from occurring.

The problem with my own preventative measures is that no matter what I prepared for it wasn't the disaster that actually showed up in my life.  When I lived with active alcoholism I spent most of my waking hours trying to imagine the many possible problem scenarios my husband might get into when he walked out the door.  I some how became responsible for him. 

I didn't know I was trying to control alcoholism I just knew when he was out of my sight bad things could happen.  At first it was smaller more innocent things like losing his wallet or his glasses.  Then he seem to get hurt a lot when he played basket ball at the Y downtown often ending up in the emergency room.  Then there was the tickets never actually a DUI but mostly reckless driving.

At this time in our lives we didn't have any money or health insurance and with everyone of these things it caused a major set back for us.  As time went on it got worse and then it seemed he was never where he said he was going to be and never came home when he said he would. The company he worked for was known for their party atmosphere and once a year had a big weekend party where no spouses were aloud to attend only customers and employees.

One year I got a call at four in the morning towards the end of our marriage asking me to come pick him up.  It was an hour drive and I had to be at work at eight. I didn't go and it turned out this was his first infidelity and he blamed me and of course I blamed myself.

He became a stranger to me and until that time we had never spent a night apart in seven years. I knew I was losing him and I fell into a deep depression.  Nothing was working I tried everything to bring back the person I knew and loved but he was gone. He turned on me a blamed me for everything that was wrong with us.  I accepted that blame because I didn't know any better.

I told myself if I was a better wife then we would be happier. At some point I shut down because I felt paralyzed by the lack control I had. It came to an end one day when he said he didn't love me any more and that he wanted out. I was devastated and forced him to go to counseling.  The sessions started out separately and he would tell them he had a girl friend and they would tell me to move on. I didn't know for almost a year that their was someone else.

I am not sure why I am writing about this today.  I guess the love I had for him really kept me from seeing the problems we had were bigger than the two of us. My thinking I could control him and the outcome kept me exhausted and feeling helpless.

Addiction comes in many forms and is a product of coping with something awful that has happened to us when we are young and don't have the maturity or support to deal with what is happening. It then becomes our way of dealing with life and depending on the substance of choice it can become permanent.

We both experience the death of our mother at eleven and our lives were chaos from then on. I turned to control and he turned to booze as a way to stay sane. His dad drank for three years after the death of his mother and he had plenty of access and no supervision.

We were a perfect match two broken people with similar needs. It was like I lost a part of myself when he left and I really never got over that loss. I think because for a long time we were like one person and we understood each others pain. I could not follow him when he left me for the drink. The women were just a part of the escalation of the alcoholism.

He married the other woman and they have stayed married.  The last time I saw him a week before their wedding he told me that he would never love anyone the way he loved me. He was lying of course always playing to the audience in the room. He sent me a letter later on making amends to me for making me the villain.

We make our own pain complicated and we drag the people we love down with us. We run thinking that we can get away from that monster chasing us in the dark. We are kids when this habit begins and if we could just have the courage to stop and turnaround and face it head on we can see it isn't real. It is just lies we have told ourselves that can be revealed. We aren't broken we just believe we are broken and it is this belief that keeps us where we are.

I am at peace today and know that I am free from my own monsters for the first time. I only wish I could help other people see just how simple it really is and I didn't have to spend decades suffering to find freedom from the pain. The lies we tell ourselves keep us stuck forever.

Today I try to roll with what is happening today and don't try to control things anymore. Life just on and magically things just work out.  We aren't always happy with the results but we get over it.