bluelily

I know this is exactly what I shouldn´t have done but I did. After about 8 months of absolutely no contact I received a sms a couple of weeks ago wishing me a happy birthday. I had erased his number from my contacts so it took me a while to figure out it was my xabf´s. I just replied "thank you" and did not think much of it. But obviously my mind went crazy stirring up all hopes because after that I dreamed over and over that we were back together. He looked much nicer and healthier in my dreams than he had done in real life.

So one morning after waking from one of those dreams I told myself the best cure for this nonsense was to face reality and see what he´s been doing lately in real life. I even thought finding out he was with someone else was preferable to this idealization. So I looked him up on facebook thinking I would be angry for a while and forget about him.

But it was a terrible decision! I did not expect to have so many and such intense emotions from seeing a few photos. First, there were pics of him at parties. This made me sad because he behaved like a teenager when he´s in his late 40s. I was surprised to see he hadn´t "evolved", somehow. Perhaps in the back of my mind I had assumed he would put his life on track when I was out of the picture, but he had just kept his lifestyle and main motivation in life: looking for people to drink with. He puts a lot of effort in his social life but the only ones who stick around are people who feel sorry for him or are alcoholics themselves. It seemed he was going out with someone new though not (yet) very seriously, of course this hurt and made me jealous. I know rationally that he can´t maintain healthy relationships nor even relationships that last beyond one year, but still.

Then, there was a social gathering of his family of origin. I felt excluded, had always felt special for being made part of the family, although it is quite dysfunctional. I had always felt they were too complex to deal with, but I guess I had always hoped I´d be able to help him overcome his alcoholism and then everybody would be so grateful. Childish, I know.
I also discovered he was following some creative writing course (this from someone with economic instability) so his dad (an ex alcoholic but well off) must be financing him.

I don´t know why I expected things to take such a different turn. This was quite an eye-opener in terms of what to expect from an alcoholic´s life. But I´m very upset by it. These past few months I´ve been putting so much effort in working on myself and my life that it´s very painful to see that he just went with the flow of his drinking. On the other hand, I suddenly felt this urge to be with him physically. I really have to remind myself of the bad parts, which were a lot.

The thing that confuses me is that I see this facade of a big, strong and secure man, while underneath there is a huge void and insecurity. I can see now that I was attracted to his (non existent) strenght. I still wish he would be that man, not just pretend to be like that. I really dont know how to deal with these emotions, I can see how I´m trying to convince myself that he is not really unhealthy, that everything will turn out great in the end and be the partner for me that I need, someone I can lean on. While in real life he never was like that, he just used me as enabler. I don´t know if I´m back to a state of denial?

Anyway, I guess I´m just rambling, could use some support.