jessicajoe

Hello. I'm still struggling with detachment. I'm getting there.
My partner has been dry for 11 days now but there is still no "plan" and he has already had one bout of announcing that he was going to buy beer. I was really proud that I didn't engage with this and just told him "he made his choices". He didn't buy beer but I found myself thinking "big deal" instead of "hooray". I'm not quite sure what that means.

What I really wanted to post about today was my dad. He is in his mid 70s and has a full, busy life. He is an alcoholic who stopped drinking 11 years ago.
I looked at the ACoA forum here and my story is nothing like the horrors that the people posting there suffered but it did play a big part in my childhood.

When i was little my grandmother lived with us. She was deaf and babysat us two nights a week whilst my mother worked nightshift. These were the two nights a week that my dad went drinking straight from work and didn't come home until very late. He drank at other times but these were his "bar" nights. I've been thinking about how it worked out that way. Did my mother perhaps not know how late or how drunk my dad was when he got home ? My grandma certainly didn't she went to bed and didn't reappear till morning.
I don't have lots of terrible memories but I do remember discovering there was no Santa when he got me out of bed one Xmas my mom was working to put the gifts under the tree because he was too drunk. I remember before my mom went to work I would go with her on two buses to bring his car home so he didn't drive home in it after the bar.
I clearly remember one summer vacation my mom was driving because he had had his licence revoked and they were fighting whilst me, my brother and grandma were in the back of the car because she was struggling with a parking space and he wanted to park. Lots and lots of little relevant things but no big traumatic events.
By the time I was 20 Dad was always asking to be edited out of film footage from family events because he is quite obviously falling down drunk or rambling in all of them but still everyone went on with their normal lives around him.
By the time I was 30 Dad was quietly drinking the best part of a bottle of vodka every night when the rest of the world had gone to bed.
Then ten years ago there was a baby in the family who was poorly. My mom went every morning to help. She has arthritis and had to struggle with two buses every morning because my dad couldn't drive before noon. He stopped drinking then and my mom says this is why. Who knows? Maybe that's the truth.
So my musings.
I think perhaps I "normalized" my partners behavior because like my dad he was/is never loud or violent or troublesome. part of me thinks/thought that's just how some men are.
I also think that even with everything I read here,everything I know to be true, a tiny part of me believes that maybe he will "just stop" because that's what my dad did.
I want to ask my mom if she told the lies and did the things I did to cover for my partner but I don't know if that conversation would hurt her and I don't know how it serves me.
Still I wait for the other shoe to drop and my partner to resume drinking and meantime I look for ways to be a healthier , less co dependent me so I'll be okay either way.