Ha ha, hee hee, ha ha (anyone remember that song?). All kidding aside, my duck got me good, with a barrel full of buckshot, and I'm looking for some advice as I don’t know where to turn.
Last year (New Years Day) I got back together (after a year apart) with a b/f of four years. In the past we fought about his denial. And without him willing to face the problem I just couldn’t justify the lunacy. Last year, around Christmas, he gave the lunacy a name and told me he was in recovery and going to AA. I met him for lunch and snapped the lock of Pandora’s box... Within a month the facts surfaced. He had lost his license in a DUI, there were others in the past (as I had previously suspected) and therefore he had a slew of approaching legal ramifications. He had been to rehab a few times in the year apart. Yet, when my knee jerk reaction was to run, instead I welcomed his honesty and because he wasn’t drinking continued on. I loved this man like I have never loved another. Admittedly I recognize my codie ways (went to alanon for a short time when we last split), but remove the alcoholic traits in him, remove the codie traits in me and we still had something really special... And I’m assuming this is why many of you hang in there. Then he drank. And at first I was baffled, how in one year’s time he went from a binge drinker that used to hide it by picking an absurd fight and disappearing for a few days only to reappear like nothing happened, to picking up that first drink and not being able to stop without detox. His friend explained the “progression” of alcoholism to me, but still it seemed unfathomable. It killed me to see the man I've loved for 5 years reduced to this. I posted here last year a few times, but then went astray (with my own recovery again). Hence, this cunning disease literally sucked me in and spit me out
Over the past year, I rescued and helped him into so many detoxes, hospitals, and rehabs I lost count. And while I learned a lot about the disease I’m apparently non the wiser today. I sacrificed my own needs, my work and my friends. Meanwhile his family (out-of-state) did a wonderful job of Monday Morning Quarterbacking, what I could have done better or different each time. He’d complain to them I was “a part of the problem,” (on the heels of having to own the hurtful things he'd done), yet each time he fell my phone would light up with calls from both him and his family, and I felt like a switch board operator. When the incidents recurred with more frequency, his family began to "suggest" I let go and let them handle it... but, alas, he’d still be sitting alone in a hotel somewhere drinking himself to death a week or two later while they tried to “talk” him out from the comforts of their home. Fearing for his life, with my codie cape on, I’d swoop in for the save. And round and round on the Merry-Go-Round we went. When we weren’t in the throws of it we spent all our time cleaning up the mess and trying to circumvent the (now expanding) legalities. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, my life was completely unmanageable, happy moments grew further and further apart... and we agreed to part ways for the better health of both (he couldn’t deal with “my” needs and under the circumstances I understood). He moved out and I began to move on with unexpected success (the peace and tranquility was marvelous!). Unfortunately he didn’t meet the same success (guess I wasn’t part of the problem after all) and he drank again after his many attempts at reuniting were rebuffed with kindness and love (I.,e., we need to work on ourselves). He wanted to rush over and “we’d” figure out how to get him out of this mess. Again I said no, it's not my place, you need to do this on your own. Describing the events of the next 3 (very long) weeks would take too long (you can imagine I’m sure), but the end result was he'd been drinking non-stop for 3 weeks when his family came in town to do some yacht shopping and stopped by to see him for 5 minutes, leaving their flight info on the table and telling him to "stop drinking" and get to the airport on his own if he wanted to go back with them (he could barely walk and stopping at that point would cause him to become violently ill). I was furious. And finally I broke (after his 1000 phone calls) and went to see him. He looked near death and had ZERO desire to live, or give recovery another chance saying it was useless. He asked me to disperse his belongings... This letting go thing I just don’t get, waiting for them to hit the bottom (that never seems to come) and hoping they’ll pick the phone up and call the medics themselves? What if he died in the process of practicing my own recovery? I sat with him for a week. I brought him food, I prayed with him, I held him and tried to breathe hope back into his soul. And finally he agreed to go to a rehab out of state (by his family...our state’s facilities don’t work? Or he was too embarrassed to revisit them). So I gave him a bath, called in some reinforcements and got him on that plane.
2 weeks later he’s back to berating me, what I could have done different, better, what I did wrong in the past. His family equally offensive, telling me “they” would take care of it now and to move on now with my life. Yup... I’m the savior, I’m the get your hands dirty girl, I’m the errand girl, and now I’m mud. I flipped (asking him if he had any idea the “hell” he puts me through). And it’s now been 6 weeks since we spoke. His family emailed me and asked me to do some more favors (hope you don’t mind!) and I told them to take a leap and find another errand girl. But I just can’t get back to where I was!
I can’t let go of the anger, how he could come back into my life when I was moving on and doing OK, how I could be such a FOOL to reach out the hand of friendship only to have it gnawed off again? Why can’t I let go of the feeling that I deserve AN APOLOGY? I know I have to get over it, for if I got it it would only be a ruse, or taken back sometime in the future. I know I need to let go (again), and this time for good, and let God. I read an interesting link posted on the A boards on the addict and his exceptionalism, and the attack the attacker theory, etc. and it helped. I read the detachment post 100x. In the past I read all the Codie books, went to Alanon, saw a shrink, and went to church. I know what it is about my past (Dad’s a functioning alcoholic that I could never please, mother was coda on me), but still I can’t let the pain go....
And as the days go on, the holidays approach, I’m just feeling worse. The hole in me widens by the day. I feel like my mind is the hard drive of a computer infected with a duck virus I can’t get rid of! Please give me suggestions on how you got through these times. Should I go back to Alanon, get a sponsor to talk to (healthy friends don't understand), even though he's out of my life? What will I get there I haven't read here or in books, that I don’t already understand? If I know where it's coming from, why do I repeat the behavior? How was it I was doing so good, then came full circle again??? I know he’s sick and his hurtfulness can’t be rationalized (while there’s little excuse for his family, except to say they have “no idea” what they’re in for... Quack, quack) so why can’t I let the hurt and the anger go? ARGGGH! I heard Jim Carrey is coming out in a movie about being able to go to a doctor to have a painful memory erased. A mini lobotomy of sorts. What a concept, imagine what the world would be like if we could just erase our pain!