I am still chugging along, but I have a long road ahead of me. There are a few lawyers that I picked out, but I haven't met with them yet. I know that I am just delaying the inevitable, but I guess I am scared. It is going to be a horrible process on me and my children. I know my wife, and it is going to make the War of the Roses look like the Brady Bunch when things are all said and done. Part of me still hopes that things will get better, but that prospect dims more everyday.
I do want to see what my options are about taking the children to live with me during the process. It is going to be damaging to them to be around during the process, and they have already had enough heaped on them that they absolutely didn't deserve. I can already tell that she is preparing for it by keeping accounts hidden from me. She is probably going to send off for Johnny Cochran at $1,500 / hour ($300 / hour for the medium) or his equivalent in family law. The one thing I have going for me is that I don't care about the money to the degree she does. I am not some pipe dreamer though that goes around saying money doesn't mean anything. If you can't keep a roof over your head or food on the table then you have a serious problem. It doesn't provide much above and beyond that though.
In fact, it might be better for my children to grow up away from a wealthy household. There are some folks I have met in life that came from wealthy families that were great people. However, some of the most spoiled, obnoxious people I have come across came out of that environment though. Maybe I just hit a run of bad luck or something, but I really don't want my children to turn out that way. Having grown up in a relatively humble household I was shocked to see how terrible people can be corrupted by money. My wife's family basically split up because of warring factions over inheritance. It really was sad to see people hate their sister, mother, and father all over their inheritance. I thought I had seen people hate each other before, but this was on a whole different level. They have been hating each other for decades now, and I think they would murder one another if they could get away with it. I think they could have made more money than what they are arguing over if they would have applied all that time and energy towards working instead of loathing each other.
Anyway, I got a little off topic, but that was weighing on my mind lately. Even though the road ahead of me is long I do have a sense of relief at knowing that a resolution is possible. I am trying to remain steady and to not allow myself to blame the drug use on the domestic situation. There will be problems in life even once I get through this, but I do believe they will be more manageable. I don't want to get overconfident, and start thinking that I will be 'cured' once this is out of the way. Drugs will always be a danger hovering in the shadows. That being said, long-term sobriety seems realistic to me if I can address this massive source of stress in my life. I think the bottom line is that I can't build a life that is livable without drugs if this issue isn't addressed. Sure, I could get on ADs, go to NA meetings daily, get a therapist, etc., but I would eventually crack. If it was something that I couldn't do anything about it would be one thing, but I can take action to resolve it. And even if I didn't what would be the point? I would still be miserable, which was the whole point of quitting in the first place.