I was just going to power down the laptop and go to sleep, but can't without saying Hi, and telling you that I've been through that kind of thing too. I can't give you all the answers Gaz, but some of this might help.
Firstly, even though it seems like it's due to you and the booze, life and people are more complex than that. This may have happened anyway, even if you'd never drank in your life, had twice your income, were a fully paid-up vegetarian member of Greenpeace and took the neighbour's dogs for walks at weekends. Who knows? It's as much about her as it is about you, and her feelings and decisions are not under anyone's control, nor of course, should they be.
I lost my first wife after 13 years of marriage, as well as my four children, because she decided she didn't want to be married any more. She moved three hundred miles away, and my kids grew up without me. That was fifteen years ago, and I've been drinking ever since. Neither of us drank while we were married.
My drinking, however, has ruined other relationships since. But that's not the whole story. One beautiful woman I was with for five years got colder and colder with me, less and less emotional and close, and said she was always bored with life. She said she hated my drinking and wouldn't drink with me, but she liked spending the money I was earning. Eventually, we couldn't stand being around each other and split up. I got more and more drunk of course, but you know what she did? She went out partying with others, getting plastered and doing drugs: she told me after that she just wanted to enjoy it. So it wasn't my drinking at all - it was far more complex than that.
This was perhaps six years ago, and at the time I stayed alone in my huge flat, sitting on the carpet crying like a baby for days, perhaps even a week or more. Oh, and getting plastered so I could collapse and pass out at night.
Some while later, when I was feeling just cold, empty and emotionless, thinking of her and the other guy, why we couldn't have stayed together and been happy, etc., a friend visited me and I poured my heart out. I sat and cried again, told him I hated life, hated her, hated myself. I asked him what the was the point when I had tried so hard, and it all fell apart anyway. You know what he did? He laughed at me! No kidding Gaz - he folded his arms, gave me a big grin, and laughed. I was bloody furious. But then he said something that stopped me in my tracks, and made me realise that everything which happened to me was because of choices I made. He looked me right in the eyes and said, "If you don't like what you've chosen,
choose again!"
I didn't like him saying it, but some penny dropped inside me. I realised that my choices, my wanting her, my projections of what I thought our life together should be, my wanting to hang onto her when it just wasn't going to happen, and my refusal to see that it could be the best thing for me, was all about
how I thought life should be.
I found out later that expecting life to be a certain way is a sure road to misery. If I choose it to be one way or another, and other people or events don't give me what I want, then how can I ever be happy?
Perhaps my rather long reply won't stop you feeling down right now, but I want you to know that all events in life are about choices, outcomes and change. That change is learning, growth. You might not think it now, but you'll look back in a little while and realise that you've grown from all of this - some part of you has expanded. Learned not about her, or her choices, but about the most important thing in your life:
you.
It's not 'too late' Gaz, it's transformation. Have you read any of Thich Nhat Han's work? He's a Zen teacher, and writes some wonderful things. He said there has to be change, impermanence, in all things in this universe. If one thing is permanent, all things must be. If one thing is impermanent, all things must be. If everything was permanent, how could we change things into better things? How could we change unhappiness into happiness, tears into joy?
Learning to move through changes and be wise enough to to accept that they're teaching us something is what life is about I think. And the greatest lesson is learning to love not others, but yourself. When we love ourselves it radiates out to others naturally. When we refuse to love ourselves, as I've done for fifteen years by poisoning and numbing myself with booze, all we're doing is resisting the natural transformation of the world, and hurting ourselves by trying to avoid changes which would teach us how to find our own happiness.
Sorry for rambling on, but sometimes my mind becomes busy with thoughts, and I can type very fast!
Take one thought for now at least: you don't need to numb yourself with booze, and cause pain to your body because your heart feels pain. If you try to numb the pain that way you just hurt yourself more as you know, and you also slow and perhaps even loose the lessons you can learn about yourself in the coming days and weeks. How can a light shine for us if we keep switching it off?
Take courage, and know that there are many others feeling as you do now, and even worse. And come here often - people here have and are still going through the same pains, and understand better than any I've come across. Wishing you some peace for tonight.