"Thawing out"
I have just been in an insane state of rage toward RAH since he came home 3 weeks ago. It has been so bad at times, I have wanted to physically hurt him, although I would never really do that. Anything he does or says makes me hopping mad. And we are around each other all the time. Hes not working now and I only work 4 days a week in the evenings, so we are together WAY too much.
I shared this distressing situation last night at Al Anon, and afterward, one of the old timers (who is a double winner) just hugged me and said, "Its ok, you are just thawing out." I was like, "Huh?" And she said she had a therapist tell her that once. That when you are dealing with active addiction it is not safe to express your feelings about how their behavior has affected you. You are just in survival. So it builds up and builds up and once the person gets sober or you are out of the situation and it is "safe" the floodgates open and you are forced to feel all those feelings, basically at once. So yeah, I am thawing out.
I have felt very bad about this, wishing I had some more distance between myself and RAH. I yell at him a lot. I shake with rage. I demand to know why he did x or y. I want him to "make it up to me". All the behavior. But he can't. The only thing he can do is not do those things anymore, or I can choose to not stay in a situation where those things have a possibility of happening again. There is no one who can pay me back for this. Not the way I want. And that makes me madder.