I have had a lot of “light bulb moments” since starting my recovery. In a lot of cases, those moments result in realizations that I might be making progress. Other times, the result is me feeling overwhelmed. I had one of those moments last night. The realization I had is related to my tendency to be defensive and react badly (lash out) to things that she says (are said) to me. I have an idea of why that happens.

For so long, I have depended on her to validate the things that I do, or say, or think. Even though I can’t expect that from her anymore, it’s still my habit, so when I don’t get that validation, I feel threatened and become defensive, and I react. By “react” I mean I will raise my voice and speak harshly, like a child, or I’ll lash out like cornered animal. I feel threatened because the absence of the validation that I’ve become accustomed to getting from her is indicative of what I perceive to be a growing rift between us.

Then I feel angry that I reacted the way I did, but I won’t acknowledge that I did anything wrong. I’ll blame her. It reminds me of something I’ve heard in the past. True anger only lasts for about ten seconds, and then it just turns into ego. That’s definitely true for me. The loss of control pushes me towards shame and embarrassment, which is just stupid. It would be so much better (in hindsight) to just step back and say “I fucked up”.

This brings me to what I fear now, and why my recent realization is overwhelming me: I’m not sure how to keep myself from reacting badly in these situations. I picture a series of tethers, connective strands that have formed between her (and others) and me over the years. Each time I react badly towards her, another strand breaks. I’m feeling tremendous pressure to learn how to handle things in a better way before irreparable damage is done, before the last strand breaks.

Yes, I realize I’m still depending on her. The thing is she’s important to me. In terms of the support system that I need for recovery, and that I will always need to maintain sobriety, she plays a significant role. I value her opinion and perspective.

I know what I need to do. I need to learn to be able to validate myself. I need the most important person in my life to be me. I need the strongest relationship in my life to be the one I have with myself. I know what I need to do, and I have to figure out how to do it before it’s too late.

You know, when you take a hamster out of its cage, and you try hold onto it without hurting it, and it immediately tries to crawl out of your hand, and you catch it with your other hand, and it crawls out of that hand, and on and on. You’re its wheel. Or, when you catch a small fish, one you know you have to let go, and you gingerly, yet firmly, remove it from the hook, and you try to hold it with enough grip to be able to place it back in the water properly, but gently enough not to hurt it. Well, that hamster and that fish are how I see my emotions lately. Sometimes I let go. I drop the hamster, and it scurries for a place to hide. I drop the fish, and it flops around on the dock trying to get back to water.

Last night, I came home from my three-hour alcohol abuse treatment session (actually, I’ve been labeled and alcohol dependent, no argument here), and I hear her from inside the house, “Hi, honey!” sounding genuinely happy to see me. I’m amazed that she’s still happy to see me sometimes. We had a nice conversation. I talked to her about a revelation I had about certain aspects of my behavior as a child, and how it translated into adulthood. She responded that that realization seemed like a positive step in my recovery. I agreed.

A little later, she revealed to me that she had not done something that I asked her to do as a favor, something that was my responsibility, but I asked her to do it because I didn’t think I’d be able to get to it. My immediate reaction was anger. I placed blame on her for not doing something that I was responsible for, knowing that she didn’t intentionally neglect to do it, she had every intention to do me the favor, and just couldn’t get to it, and she apologized. I was still angry. I let go.

Then:

I can’t share a bed with you.
OK. I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.
No. Come back. (I wanted to, but didn’t. I let go)

A little later:

You have to take responsibility for yourself.
I know. I will. (I don’t think she believed me. Fair enough.)
I don’t want you in our bed, and I don’t want you to have to sleep on the couch.
What do you want? (I looked away. She walked away. Fair enough.)

Later:

You can come to bed. I’m taking a sleeping pill.
OK.

The next morning, I couldn’t talk to her. I’m afraid I’ll let go, again, and things will get worse. I barely said anything to her and left for work. Is this any better that risking my letting go again? No. And I know better that that. But I couldn’t talk to her. She’s one of the few people I’m supposed to be able to talk to, and I couldn’t do it. I usually try to end these posts on a positive not, but I can’t do that either. Maybe later, I have a hamster to catch, and a fish to put back in the water.

Yesterday he wasn’t himself. After doing really well for a while now, he’s been on a steady decline. yesterday he could barely get out of bed, was sweaty and shaky and anxious and hadn’t slept. He was altered. As altered as if he had been drinking. (He had not.) He even said he just didn’t feel like himself.

“It’s the Zoloft honey, I swear.”
“No, it’s not.”

And I could see the internal dialog. “I suck, I’m weak, I’m pathetic, I can’t even gt out of bed.”

I’m trying really hard to not feel guilty about how much I’ve disrupted her life. We both took pride in the way we (supposedly) communicated openly and honestly with each other. Now that we both know that wasn’t always the case, it’s causing the world she knew to crash down around her. That hurts me more that I can say, and probably more than I’ve been able to realize yet.

She said:

“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.”

In my defense, I was not always completely dishonest with her. Maybe she didn’t really mean “all alone, all along”, but I can certainly see how she would feel that way.

Perhaps what did happen all along is that I adopted her truth, her feelings, her beliefs as my own, in the hopes that they would legitimately become mine as well. She had a lifetime of experience even before meeting me when she was only 23. I lacked that type of experience, I lacked the courage to have my own truth, and I lacked the sense of security that I needed to believe that my feelings and beliefs had any validity, so I used hers. I used HER.

The current truth:

I’ve hurt myself. I’ve hurt her. I can’t change the past, as much as I would love to go back, I can’t do that. The future I thought we would have together will not happen. Our marriage, as we knew it, is over. She used to tell me “You make me possible”, and I loved it when she said that (I most likely never told her that). She doesn’t say that anymore.

What will always be true:

I love her. I want her to be part of my life. I trust her. When she says “Our lives will be better than we ever thought possible” I believe her. I can’t depend on her. I’m responsible for my own happiness. I’m NOT responsible for her or anyone else’s happiness. I need to find my own truth, and sometimes it will hurt, but it can never hurt as much as a lie.

Once again, I’m debating with myself about the notion of willfully giving myself over to a “higher power” for my recovery. As I’ve said before, I’m not prone to placing responsibility for the things that I’ve done, and the things that I need to do, on something that exists outside of me. So for now, and I know this might change; my higher power is me, the version of myself that I want to become. The person who can eventually lead a happy and fulfilling life, and allow the lives of those I care about to be me more happy and fulfilling. In a sense, that person DOES exist outside of me, and is someone I don’t really know.

The important thing to understand for me is that I can’t rely on who I’ve become as a drinker and simply say I won’t drink anymore. I have to be able to look at a part of me that can make good decisions and realize that I have weaknesses that can be overcome, or at least confronted and dealt with, and do not need to be simply dismissed.

I remember looking in the mirror at myself, several months ago, and thinking “This is not me. This is not what I want. Things have to change”. Even though I didn’t do anything about it right away, that may have been to first step towards embracing a future version of me. I really do think of the person that I hope to be in the future as a stranger, someone who I am moving towards and will eventually be able to walk with side by side.

I’ll never be perfect. No one can expect that, and it is not my goal. I just want to know that I’m able to make choices about my life with the intent of making things better. It won’t always turn out that way, but the important part is the intent. This brings me back to my choice of my “higher power”. The intent is not to choose God, per se, but whatever you are able to embrace with the understanding that there is something out there you can look towards for help.

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.

I’ve thought a lot about, and written about, the fact that I’ve “lost myself” as a result of my continuous suppression of underlying issues of depression, anxiety, insecurity, etc., that were further suppressed by alcohol consumption. If that is the case, then a significant part of my recovery will involve “finding myself”, which begs the question, what will I find? Will it be the 12-year-old version of me who never had a drink? Will it be the 25-year-old version of me who she fell in love with? Will it be the 40-year-old (current) version of me who finally realizes that I’ve been there all along, and have decided that “I” am not the person I want to be, and “I” have to learn who that person is, and become that person?

That’s some scary shit. What if I don’t like who I am? I’ve become accustomed to my drinking self, and there really is a difference between an alcoholic who is actively drinking and one who is not. And how do I know when and if I’ve found myself?

I’m hoping that there will be a time, in the not so distant future, when I realize that I’m just living my life, and I’m satisfied with my existence on a daily basis, and I don’t even have to think about who I am, I can just be who I am, and feel happy and positive about who I am, and I can look at the people that are part of my life and recognize that I’m a positive influence on THEIR existence.

I still tend to view myself based on how I feel I’m perceived by others. But I’ll never fully realize myself until I can sense it from within, until I can project who I am towards others with confidence, and not rely on external perceptions.

Something that she said to me, a long time ago, but I still think about it all the time, “Consider the person that you want to be, make choices based on what that person would do, and you’ll become that person”. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? Except that I’ve become so used to not knowing who that person is. But if I can enable myself to do things that feel good, and are not harmful to me or anyone else, I’ll be on the right path.

I’m at a conference tonight with something like 1,000 brilliant women, none of whom I know, all of whom seem to know each other vicariously through various semi-anonymous actions they take in their semi-professional lives, publicly, with the sole intent of being noticed because they know that they have something interesting to say. I am not totally convinced that I belong here. I am oddly shy. (Not odd at all, if you really know me.) My voice is slow and loud and low in my own head. I don’t want to be here. I am way out of my comfort zone.

I need an f’ing drink.

Oh, wait, no I don’t, I have my work persona I can put on. She is witty and funny and charming and smart and people like her. I’ll just be her.

But I’ll have a drink anyway, just for good measure.

So here’s my question. What makes this different, in any way, from what “he” does? It’s an honest question. To be clear, I see nothing wrong with my behavior. I had a glass of wine at the first cocktail party. Then another at the next one. It is now a little after 9:00 and I am in bed (alone) writing about it.

Is the difference that I am wondering if it’s okay – rather than either blindly doing it repetitively and / or beating myself up with the need to hide it? Is it just that I had a killer long day and truly didn’t know anyone at this huge conference, unlike a party where they were all my friends and I still couldn’t get comfortable?

What makes those of us who CAN drink in such situations so different from those who CAN’T?

For the most part, I know that people like me, think I’m cool, smart, funny, all of those things. And I believe that I am too. But I’m not always in the mood, ya know. Sometimes I just want to be in bed (alone) writing. And that’s when I tend to want a drink…..

Anyway, it’s an honest question. What makes it different? I know that it is, I just don’t know why.

It’s a gorgeous day here today. Sun is shining and all that hallmark crap that would imply singing Blue Birds spreading melodic joy into the open waiting souls of shiny happy people. Yah, well screw that, my car smells like cigarettes.

So really, I got in the car this morning and it smelled like cigarettes. I do not have words for how much I hate cigarettes, but that’s just my thing, and I get that. But here’s what is happening now and then, he is smoking instead of drinking.

Excuse me! What the F is the difference? None. At least that’s how I see it.

Alcohol is not the core problem with alcoholism. Addiction is. And it manifests itself when, in times of stress, the addict chooses to use instead of “deal.” So swapping out alcohol for cigarettes is the same damn thing. Seriously.

At it’s core, the addict believes that he or she “just needs a little help” to deal with a situation. Whether it’s stress or boredom or anxiety – or even gets a bonus treat to celebrate something. That “treat” or “crutch” replaces the addicts own internal ability to handle their own emotions. And it is that inability to deal with emotions that leaves you on forever weak ground.

I felt completely and totally undermined. If overall problems are not actually being addressed and we’re just substituting one addiction for another, what have we been doing for the last 2 months? Seriously.

And MORE than that, he was sneaking around to do it. He knows how I feel about cigarettes. They’re disgusting – never mind that they are yet another way to slowly kill yourself, thus proving that you still see no value and worth in yourself. So it’s still SNEAKING and it’s still using a crutch.

My trust was again completely undermined. Really, so you’re sneaking around smoking, what else are you sneaking around and doing that I don’t know about. THIS IS THE OTHER CORE PROBLEM.

I had been feeling so positive, like we were on the right track, and this really gob-smacked me.

Now, to be fair, we had a great talk about it. He gets it, he sees it, it’s done. He truly didn’t think it was a big deal because it didn’t do anything like impair his ability to drive, you know, the bad things that alcohol does. But he didn’t think about it in terms of the underlying issues.

IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT THE UNDERLYING ISSUES!

But here’s my question, why doesn’t everyone else see this? You can always tell when an AA meeting has let out because there are unusually large collections of people sanding outside smoking. People who have traded one addiction for another. One crutch for another. One self-destructive deadly habit for another.

This bothers me. I understand the idea of dealing with one problem at a time, I really do. But in this case ADDICTION is the one problem, not alcohol.

And my car stinks.

And he gets it – it’s done. I trust that. I really do.

The last several AA meetings that I’ve been to have included extensive discussions on what it means to be humble, and what are the benefits of humility in one’s life. The discussions centered on the 7th Step, which states “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” I’ve been getting serious doses of humility lately. It’s ironic how, in part, my past tendencies towards humility (I’m not good, successful, smart enough) are what led me into alcoholism in the first place. But there is a different kind of humility than that. There is the kind of humility that allows you to say “I need help”, or “I don’t know what I’m doing”, or “I didn’t realize that was harmful to you, to me”, or “I don’t know how to stop”.

When I stopped drinking, I started smoking. Not constantly, just from time to time, when feeling particularly stressed or anxious. At first, I would think, at least I can still do this. I’ve stopped drinking, but here’s something else I can do, and it won’t alter my personality, it won’t impair my driving, it won’t break my sobriety. What the f*** was I thinking? It’s the same damn thing as the drinking. I’m using a substance to deal with emotional issues. When I realized that, admittedly with ‘her’ help, it was a heavy dose of humility for me. Addiction is real, and it’s insidious. One addiction can’t be substituted for another. I have to learn to deal with the UNDERLYING ISSUES.

If you’ve read my previous posts you may be thinking “Didn’t he already say that?” or “I thought he figured that out already.” More humility. I need help. I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t realize that was harmful (to you, to me). I don’t know how to stop. Yes, I did already say that, in this post. These are things I need to keep saying and keep trying to learn how to resolve. It’s ironic. The acceptance of humility can give you both feelings of helplessness and feelings of strength. Okay, so I can’t do this, but I can learn how to do it, and gain something in the process. And there are plenty of things that I am capable of doing that will have a positive impact on my life, so I can concentrate on those things.

I just want to come out and say it. This is hard. I’m struggling every day. I’ll even lose track of what I’m struggling with, and I have to stop and think about what I can do, just in that moment, to get just to the next moment. Talk about humbling. But without humility, I wouldn’t stop to think about what I’m doing, and how I feel about it, and what impact the decision I make to work through it will have on me and others around me. Something I’ve always said to her, but usually in a lighter context, “Evolution. It’s a slow process.” With humility I will evolve.