Bitter Sweet
This Sunday my wife and I had many events to attend - kids parties, adult parties; actually nothing atypical, just aggregated on Sunday. It turns out that my wife was also struggling with some non-consequential drama, but certainly something that caused her enough emotional harm that she wanted to drown out her sorrows. My wife however, is a normie. Can drink, not drink, have half a glass or two glasses - and never ever binges.
Well, this Sunday she decided she was going to get sloshed because she was having a bad day. Sloshed in her world (I think) means 4 -5 drinks over maybe 6 hours, but we all know that it's a personal definition. The following morning, for the first time in our 20 year history, I saw my wife hung-over. Not the pukey kind, but the kind where you are in a really foul mood, where your insecurities flare a mile high, and the kind where you can't rationalize through anything.
Being sober about 18 months now, my heart just went out to her. It was dejas vu. I could see her skin crawling, her lack of focus, her hiding from the world. I felt guilty for not stopping her and saying "this is the mistake i made - drinking to forget instead of to celebrate". I gave her vitamin c, vitamin b and took the day off to help her back on track. I think the big thing i learned though, was that she had to deal with the actual issues - right then and there. She was troubled about her standing on her tennis league, she was troubled by some drama at our kids school, she was troubled by what her role would be now that she settled us into our new town. While I won't say we solved everything, at least she saw line of sight and got some clarity about the glass actually being completely full and not even remotely close to half empty.
The bitter sweet part: There is no better gift of sobriety, then being reminded how bad it gets when alcoholism takes over your mental state. That said, if I could have cut off my arms so that my wife would never experience that abyss, I would. She is my rock - the last thing in the world I ever would want would be for her to know what that is like!