Ugh.

My husband wants us to go to a 4th of July party at the halfway house where he is living. Apparently it’s a big to do. But I don’t want to go. Our oldest doesn’t want to go. Her exact words were “I don’t want to celebrate the 4th of July with a bunch of drunks.”

To be fair, they won’t (or shouldn’t be) drunk. That’s the point of the party — to celebrate and have fun without alcohol. But they will be smoking…yuck! And I will be nervous. I know there are some guys whose previous residence was prison. Not exactly the kind of people I want to have my kids around.

Call me a snob, but I don’t want to do this. The only reason I’m even entertaining the thought is that it is important to my husband. I want to be supportive. But if I had my way, I’d be anywhere else.

Lonely

God, I feel lonely. I have been so blessed to have friends who have been there for me in countless ways. But they all have families and lives of their own. I have great kids. But I’m their mother, not their friend. I have a husband who, while he doesn’t live here right now, still loves me. But so much water (alcohol? drugs? lies?) has passed, that I’m not ready to let him fill me yet. I just feel empty and lonely. And I know that this hole, this pit of loneliness that I am feeling will be best filled by God. But that’s not instant enough. It’s not real enough. To borrow a phrase from a retreat I attended once, I need a “God with skin.”

Getting back to Al-Anon

It’s been months — probably at least six — since I’ve been to an Al-Anon meeting. I let other things including the kids’ activities, my bruised ego, and my desire to pretend my life with an alcoholic is normal keep me away. But I look back and see that I felt much more peace, more serenity if you will, when I was going. Yes, I had gotten to a point where I needed to take it to the next level by really working the steps and talking with a sponsor. But even doing Al-Anon half-way was better for me than not doing it all.

So, I’m feeling like I need to go back, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to make it a priority in my life. How to schedule in the time. An excuse, I’m sure, but one that seems largely insurmountable right now.

Bed

I’ve never spent so much time in my bed. In fact, when my husband lived here, he used to escape to the bed frequently and it would anger me so. Now, I’m the one who camps out in the bed — sometimes sleeping, sometimes hanging out online — but always being away. I know it’s not good. That my children need my presence, even though I’m only 20 yards from them. They need me to be engaged.

But what I want to be is disengaged. From them, from my job, from my feelings. I think about what it would be like to be confined to bed, forced to stay for days on end by some doctor’s orders or mysterious virus. And I think it would feel heavenly. To just check out for a week or two.

What I’m feeling is not sad or depressed. What I’m feeling is beaten down and tired and scared. And like I just want to crawl into bed and stay there.

The Lois Wilson Story

It’s late on a Sunday night — too late for me to be up, really. But I’m watching a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie “When Love is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story.” It’s the story of Lois Wilson, the wife of Bill Wilson, the founder of AA. Ironically, it was my husband who told me it was going to be on.

I have to say that it’s been hard to watch in places and I shake my head at how universal the story of loving an alcoholic is. From the honest but broken promises that he’ll stop to the wishing that he’d just have the decency to die. From the lying to cover up his actions to the family who doesn’t understand why she would continue to stay. It’s been difficult watch because so much of it is my own story — a story I don’t want to claim, let alone relive.

Showing wear

It’s been almost two weeks since my husband moved out. The kids are starting to show some wear. The littlest tonight was crying, missing Dad.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” he cried.

“Why are sorry?,” I asked. “What are you sorry for?”

“I’m sorry I made him move into the (halfway house).”

“Oh, honey! You did not make him move there.”

“You mean Daddy’s not mad at me?”

What is this doing to these kids? How do I explain addiction and recovery and negative consequences to a 7 year old? Or to the older kids, for that matter?

How can it be?

How can it be a little over a year after I started this blog that I’m in the same place I was then? My husband’s sobriety has been on a slippery slope for several months. I keep drawing a line in the sand. He steps over it or barrels through it. I fuss, then draw a new line.

It’s been a difficult year for us. He found and lost a job — unrelated to his addiction issues. I quit going to Al-Anon shortly after my last post because I was embarrassed to have been rejected by someone I asked to sponsor me. Then life got busy. The kids had activities that came first.

Soon, my husband’s program was falling off the radar too. And I was content to let it slide. Content to enjoy being a “normal” family. And where did all that “normalcy” land us? Back at the starting point.

I’m not entirely sure what I expect or what I want. This morning my resolve as to what I needed to do was so solid and strong. Tonight, I’m second guessing myself. Is another separation the right thing? What should that look like? Does he get to see the kids? How often? Where?

I wish there was an instruction book for all of this.

Step by Step

I spoke to my new sponsor on the phone the other night. Just a way for us to become acquainted with one another as sponsor and sponsee. She told me how she is kind of hands off in her approach. I’m not sure if that’s what I need, but I’m willing to give it a try.

She said when I felt like I was ready, we would go through Step 4 together. Woohoo! From not working the steps to Step 4. Now we’re talking!

Then, for probably the first time, I sat down and really looked at the steps as they directly relate to my life.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Yep. No problem there. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look around and realize that.

Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
I’m with ya. I can see the movings of God in my life, when I allow Him to enter, and truly realize the power he has to restore order and sanity to my world.

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Whoa! Stop right there. This is where I stumbled when I read through the steps. Turn my will and my life over to God? Not so sure I can do that. Directing my life and exerting my will is what I DO. My husband’s alcoholic behavior has eroded my sense of trust so deeply that I’m not sure I can trust anyone — not even GOD — with my life.

It would be easy enough to tick past this step with a nod and a “yep.” But if I’m being completely honest, I am not ready to yield to the will of God over my own. So how do I get through this?

I think the first step is prayer. “Dear God, please open my heart to be able to give you my life and my will…” Saying that short prayer over and over is part of my plan. But moving from words to action, well…that could take some time.

I’m really not in a hurry. Like losing weight, I think the slower I move through these steps, the more likely the outcome — serenity — will stay with me. So I’m not going to look ahead to Step 4 or beyond. I’m not setting a deadline for myself for getting through Step 3. I’m just letting God know that I need him on this one, which, I think, is a step in the right direction.

I’ll cry if I want to

I don’t cry often. But I cried on Wednesday. As are most Wednesdays, it was an emotionally draining day for me. A feeling of being overwhelmed at work, followed by marriage counseling and Al-Anon at night. It was a day in which the tears seemed to have taken up permanent residence on the surface of my eyes.

I am really working on crying. It doesn’t come easily to me. Even when I get teary-eyed, I don’t often allow the drops to fall. I suck it up, stay strong and rationalize my way out of crying. When I showed up at marriage counseling, having asked my husband to bring me a mini bottle of wine for the session — I was serious, but he didn’t do it — it didn’t take long for my emotions to show.

“You look sad,” said our counselor.

“I am.”

“My job,” she said, “is to get you to stay in that sadness until you’re done with it.”

Uh? At $50/hour, that’s gonna be expensive. I think she must get a bonus for actually making me cry.

For me, crying shows a vulnerability that I don’t want to face. Holding it together, being the strong one in the face of adversity, that’s the image I want others to have of me. Yet, I am learning that sometimes it takes great strength of character to accept the pain that comes with — that calls up — a good cry.

So I cried there in our counseling session, feeling very uncomfortable crying in front of my husband, the one person I should feel most comfortable sharing my feelings with. But I did cry.

I went to Al-Anon that night and asked someone to be my sponsor. She, in the very nicest way possible, sort of declined. She agreed to be my temporary sponsor, to help me meet others who might be more available to sponsor me. While I understood and respected her perspective and was grateful for her offer to help, I couldn’t help but feel rejected. Then someone in the meeting who just rubs me the wrong way corrected me, privately, for something I had suggested. It all added up to one big reason to cry.

So I went home and I sat with my husbanded and opened my heart to him, allowing him to see my hurt and to just be there for me, when normally I would have stuffed those feelings of rejection and shame to a place where I didn’t have to deal with them, adding one more brick to the wall around my heart.

Recently I read Psalm 51:19 which says “My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit.” I’m trying to remember that in those times of brokenness when I am able to let the tears flow, I am giving a gift to the God — and when I choose, the husband — who loves me.

Sponsorless

I didn’t have to make the decision, to ask or not to ask. My sponsor-to-be was not at tonight’s meeting. Of course I felt “Darn! I was ready to ask her.” When in reality, I don’t think I was, but given that the opportunity didn’t present itself, it was easy to be all confident about what I would have done. Guess God was giving me an opportunity to pray about it.

The meeting was a speaker meeting. The speaker was a member of AA who has done two stints in prison and told his story while wearing a house arrest anklet. I could alternately hear the pain and the joy in his voice as he recounted his addiction and his serenity. The way he described some of his feelings was exactly the way my husband has spoken of his own addiction. As he told his story, I realized that I was not sitting in judgement of what he had done in his past. Why do I find it so hard to avoid judgement when it comes to my husband’s own struggle with alcoholism.

After the meeting, I made it a point to speak to a couple of people. And I had arrived a few minutes early to help set up chairs and materials. Both of these activities seemed to have worked to make me feel more welcome at the meeting and more as though I belonged.

Maybe next week, I’ll have a sponsor and will finally be a real rabbit! (Velveteen Rabbit, anyone?)