My story
Once upon a time I had a best friend. She was my other half, the yin to my yang. In perfect harmony we gave life to a beautiful child and all was perfect. Cookie cutter American dream. A young family, first house, decent job and even a dog. Life was just fine, at least on the surface. One thing is for sure, being responsible for a child won't make everyone grow up.
It might not be as common to see a new mother fall but I have. For five years I've had a foreboding sense that she might not get it. All along I tried to be nurturing, protecting, loving. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not perfect. Never was it supposed to be enabling though. What started out as a once in a great while blackout became monthly, then bi-monthly. I began to notice a pattern in the cycle. If I could only not do "this" or say "that" maybe it wouldn't happen tonight. Too often I looked for a reason on my end to fix the problem only to realize later that it didn't matter what I did. The hard part was that these episodes usually got violent. "I can take it" I thought. "When she realizes what happened tomorrow she will never do it again. Besides our daughter is asleep so she won't even remember her mommy acting like this." A sick justification but I'm a man, if it's broken I'm inclined to try and fix it.
Somehow tomorrows apologies became forgotten by the next weekend. Wash, rinse, repeat. I was spending more time covering for her mistakes than I was having fun. Part of me knew that I shouldn't have to live like this but I loved her too much to let "us" down. Oh how I tried to break the cycle. It never worked though. Once a week slowly became all weekend, which in turn became the majority of the week. My reprieve was Sunday's but only if I made sure she didn't get the chance to go to the liquor store on saturday night. It became very toxic. The verbal and physical attacks happened regularly and our daughter was starting to notice.
Around the time our daughter started kindergarten things really started to fall apart. My new job required me to work odd hours (hence this late night post) so I wasn't around to "help" her be accountable at night. The little one began telling me about her mom acting funny when I'm not around. Alcohol was beginning to affect her life as well. I would get home from work at 7pm, she would already be asleep and my wife was either passed out or staggering around trying to be "creative". Any attempt at talking about it was shot down or diverted to all the things I do wrong. I felt helpless to it. One night after an argument she attacked me right in front of our child. I finally reached my breaking point.
For the first time in our marriage I did what I should have done about this behavior, I took a stand. I called the police and decided right then and there to remove our daughter from that situation. It was one of the hardest things I've had to do. I was so caught up in being her protector that I felt like I was betraying myself as well as her. Talk about twisted. I have since filed an order for protection and was subsequently served with divorce papers (a knee jerk reaction on her part). The funny thing is, as much as it hurts to lose my wife right now, things are much calmer. Clarity is returning to our environment and we are no longer walking on eggshells. It's not easy but it could be a lot worse. I still miss my friend though. Sorry for the long read, I just felt like sharing.