Visiting my AH in rehab was a surreal experience. You are probably aware that not a lot really changes for the A in a few weeks of rehab. It takes a year+ in recovery to know if they have actually changed. So, it's OK to just go with the flow. In fact, if you don't feel like going, you don't have to go at all. It's not about you helping him anymore. It's about you helping yourself and your children.
There was a time in my life where if someone was hurting me physically, I would walk away. If they were hurting me emotionally, I might make excuses for them or give them a second chance. There was a time in my life when I might even "give that person accolades" when he stopped hurting me. We think we can cover up the emotional hurts, that no one can easily see them so we can minimize them, but they wound us just as a broken leg wounds us.
If you have to run anything through a "lens", try running it through the lens of: what is my gut telling me? How am I breathing right now? Do I feel relaxed, scared, confident, numb? Does my stomach hurt or do I have a headache? Am I holding in emotion to protect people around me? (Like you, I often had to do that because of having young children at home).
For what it's worth, I spent days writing and rewriting my cost letter. My husband said that they never even read it at rehab because it wasn't "bad" enough. I'm not sure he even read it. Life with an alcoholic is just one heartbreak after another--even when they are in rehab.
You wrote: "I've been praying, thinking, and trying not to think. I've been thinking about Saturdays visit with my husband for the first time. Trying to think "correctly" - worrying that every thought I have is codependent and then trying not to think about I'm thinking which gets me thinking all over again."
It's OK to just let yourself feel, and not think. That was the hard part for me--thawing the numbness that had developed from living with an AH. I went to a counselor for a while mainly to work on that. I read somewhere: "The opposite of joy isn't pain, it is numbness." Where we feel pain, we know we are alive. But with numbness, we are not truly alive at all. Sometimes we numb our emotions with thinking. The first part of my "recovery" was just letting the emotions flow over and through me. Of accepting how important emotional health is, and not make it a red-headed stepchild to my physical health.
Once I started connecting to my emotions, I was able to set boundaries with not just my AH, but everyone in my life, and I can sometimes even do it in the moment--I don't have to mull it over by myself and then bring it up at a later date. It is definitely a skill I am only just beginning to practice, but it has already helped a great deal.
I hope you are able to get to a meeting soon, and to also start creating a support network of friends and family. Hang in there and keep posting!
Hugs,
~ B