She Said – Stranger in a Familiar Land

I think I’ve said this before, but I don’t feel at home anywhere. Not in my own home, not in the life that we had created together. It’s easy to say, “my husband is an alcoholic,” and people nod as if they know what that means. But it has nothing to do with the alcohol. It has to do with the lies and deceit that went in to both needing and nurturing his relationship with alcohol.

The thing that I valued most about our relationship was that it was built on honesty. We talked about everything. We tried everything. We agreed, together, to the boundaries and journeys of our relationship.

Except that we didn’t. He just told me that we did. I made a lifetime of decisions based on things we talked about, things I thought we agreed to, adventures that we were in together. But, it turns out, I was all alone, all along.

Worse than that, I was hurting him. So this wonderful life that I thought I had was not only a house of lies, but it was a destructive force that was hurting someone that I loved very much. He made a weapon out of me, out of our life, and he used it to hurt someone I love. He used it to hurt himself.

So now I am questioning everything. My skin hurts in my own home. I don’t want to be here. I don’t trust my vision – something I have always counted on. I don’t believe in things as much. I don’t know where the perimeters of my life are.

I was just away at a conference for a few days in a new city with people I don’t know, and it was the most “real” I’ve felt in a while. As foreign as it was, it wasn’t filled with baggage.

It’s interesting, I have a handful of other friends who are going through similar rough spots in their marriages. None of them involve addiction, but they all involve deceit. Convincing ourselves that we want things we don’t want, or can live without things that we know, deep down inside, that we need. And it really looks quite the same to me. “But you said we….” “But I’m not responsible for your…..” “I really thought I could….”

But look, at the end of the day, it will all fall apart if it is anything short of totally honest. That’s what I’ve been saying all along. But it has to start with being honest with ourselves.

The thing is, if you love someone – really love them – it’s okay if that honesty illuminates different needs. The relationship can change without going away.

I told him today to concentrate on the positives, not the negatives. I don’t mean that as a platitude, at all, but really look at what the relationship IS, and focus on that rather than the fear of what it isn’t. It’s clear that our relationship is not what we thought it was, and may not be what everyone wants it to be. But, there are a lot of things that it is. Loving, nurturing, caring, strong, flexible, generous, unconditional. No matter what you call it, no matter what it becomes, those characteristics will remain true. That’s the positive.

I can live in that. I just don’t know what to call it. Or where to put it.

I want to go back to being a stranger in a strange land, it’s easier than being a stranger in the life that I used to know.