View Single Post
Old 10-20-2011, 05:59 PM
  # 14 (permalink)  
wanttobehealthy
Member
 
wanttobehealthy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: USA
Posts: 3,095
lillamy- thanks for letting me know i'm not alone in being shocked by what i chose to live with for so long. thus far i haven't entered self hatred territory-- i'm more in 'holy crap- it was really messed up and i really stayed and lived with that and subjected the girls to it' kind of astoundment territory... i have spent a lot of time in self hatred land over recent months (guilt about what the girls had to live with and beating myself up over it repeatedly) and i think i am slowly getting out of there...

it's just crazy how when you're living in the midst of it it's your "normal" and you don't really see at all how crazy it is. and now, looking back, any one of the things that i brushed aside as not "that big a deal" are enough to make me shudder and wonder how i didn't just pack up and go right then...

i have a new appreciation for the denial/fog/whatever it's called that alcoholics live in. they aren't faking not seeing how bad things are... they really really don't see it. just like while everyone around me surely saw how bad things were last year, i didn't-- and it wasn't conscious denial or stubborn refusal-- i really, truly didn't see it.

i am so freakin grateful tonight, despite all that has been lost and all the difficulty that lies ahead with divorcing AH, that i finally "see" it.... i shudder when i think about how the girls would have grown up if things had stayed the same and i honestly don't have any idea where i'd be, sanity wise, if i hadn't gotten sick enough of being miserable and finally gone to al anon after this very weekend a year ago. the very first meeting i went to was the day after D3's surgery that ah failed to show up for. in a weird way i am glad i guess that that happnened bc clearly it was the wake up call i needed.
wanttobehealthy is offline