I can relate
Hey LBW....I can relate deeply to what you've shared and how you're feeling...I've found that what you're doing now-killing yourself with guilt and shame and remorse...is probably only slightly worse than the terror and bewilderment you feel...the panicky scenarios of "what if" and "if only"...and the ceaseless knowledge underneath it all that , as it stands now, you can't stop...I know the hopelessness and fear. It brought me to the point of a planned suicide- which I could justify because I would be doing it to save my kids from me...sick, huh? What I needed to realize was that I am sick...not bad. I have a disease..not a moral failing..BUT...I also have a moral obligation of the highest calling to change the situation..or...remove myself from my children for their own protection.
In my case, a sober ex-wife and a judge made that decision for me...and..looking back...I am grateful for that now...in my active drinking I almost killed my children...I drove drunk with them countless times...I left weapons and drugs within easy reach of their toddler hands...I brought them around people who were merely animals with names-like I was. I left them alone and unsupervised..I passed out for days while they crawled around my unsafe apartment....
This doesn't even cover all of it...I hit them...I stole from them...I lied to them...and on and on and on
I struggled for years behind the guilt and shame of my ugly truth...and it is true, all of it and more...but in my twisted sick alcoholic mind I was able to use my feelings to justify more drinking and similar behavior...thus hurting them all over again...FOR YEARS I did this....a vicious cycle that only could end in several horrible places
I can't stay sober if I wallow in the wreckage of my past...I can't. I can try every day to make amends for the things I've done, riskd with innocent lives other than my own that I've taken...but what I can't do is change it...I have to own it, admit it, sometimes grieve it with tears and self-loathing...but I have to let go or I can't get better....AA friends told me this over and over again TURN OFF THE ASS KICKING MACHINE...if its got a name you didn't invent it...others have done what you did, what I did, and recovered...that means there is HOPE form all of us...me , you, your baby...all of us. Just think...stop now and that child never sees you drunk....never feels what my and millions of other children are subjected to by people like me...what I used to be...You can do this....If nobody told you they love you today...I want you to know I do.....There is hope...Rob