MaryGoRound

take that vacation!

i too secretly have that writer thing (although I'm afraid everything I write on here prolly makes no sense...its so hard to emit eloquent soundbites almost everyone of my english teachers growing up told me I should be a writer. Sometimes I wonder if I got involved just out of pure curiosity of an amazing story....

I didn't realize others on here felt the same way. Writing saves my life over and over again. I'm being hypocritical, but don't worry about how finding the time/motivation to start. One day, you'll just start and it'll come flowing out!

Maybe take a little writer's retreat to be alone..peaceful and tell your story !!!
That would be wonderful!

MaryGoRound

this thread is chock full of good stuff. I'm skimming since I've been so busy. and there is always great stuff posted. I'm definitely going to come back to this one and read it more thoroughly....

yes, SR..I am so glad I found you. This site trumps the al-anon I went to ten fold. It was quite a small group however.

Hang in there Kitty

sesh

I've been writing ever since I've learned how to. For me it is not what I want to do but what I can't do without. The way I deal with life.
It makes me so happy to find people who share my ambitions. I find writing to be most therapeutic thing one can do. Even when not writing about your own experiences, even when it doesn't feel it's about you at all, believe me, it still always is.
Kitty, you should definetely give it a try. Go for it, girl!

I've been published, even won few rewards. I also do book reviews. I'm not saying this to brag, but to add some weight to what I'm about to say:
Anvilhead, maybe you don't know it, but you are already a writer. You have fans here for sure. As you have this way you say things that makes people go WOW all the time. It's not that you are saying something noone else knows, it is how you say it, and that is what being a writer is all about. The rest of it is just practise, learning the craft and work, work, work.

PS having said this I have to add please don't judge my writing here (or my spelling) as english is not my native language, I don't even live in an English speaking country

wicked

Anvilhead, this i agree with totally. I am not sure how many times I have said WOW! to something you wrote, but it was quite a few.

Sesh,
you are amazing to me, not only do you have quite the mastery of the english language, you speak the truth so beautifully. I am sure I made some grammar errors here, the feelings are true.

coffeedrinker

kitty,

this is such a difficult and crummy place to be in. what we are trying to learn here, is to own our own "stuff" and to try and stay out of their stuff.

i think what makes our affliction so tough, is that we can't abstain. we have people in our lives, we need people in our lives. and we love some of those people, have built our lives around them, and want them in it.

so, because we can't abstain, we have to learn to manage.

so many do this kind of slow trek towards recovery. it's hard to accept, and they haven't yet discovered what true surrender means, how to do it.

you asked in the title if there is hope. of course there is - always. my mother got sober in her 40's, relapsed and stopped drinking again after 9 years.

but you also said you're not interested in going through this any longer. that he needs to be serious or you're out. but how long do you stick in waiting to see if he's "serious"? that is the hard one, yes?

his attitude, belief system, and behavior do not necessarily mean he's not serious. it's just not looking like you want it to. to me, it wouldn't look "serious" either. but to him perhaps it does.

i would suggest you think about what exactly you are willing to tolerate, in the vein of staying with him til he gets on track, then set boundaries accordingly. because we can stay stuck in the hope and the "progress" for a very long time.

peace...

sesh

Hi Kitty,
yesterady I was going to talk about hope for recovery, but got so excited about wrtiting thing, I forgot what I was about to say initialy.
My AH doesn't drink as much as he used to, and you might find what I'm about to say completely insane, but sometimes I wished he did. As his cutting down and conroling it is proving to be even bigger trap for him than drinking heavily on daily bases was. As now he has all these excuses for himself, like he's not drinking that much, he only had few and that's nothing, he's doing so much better and blah, blah, blah, .... and it's been like this for good few years, while his health is seriously detoriating.
Maybe for some people that is a path to recovery, it most definetely isn't for my AH. And even more regardless of the amount of drink he pours into himself he's still an A who is terribly failing at being a good husband and good father. I don't even think he has the slightest clue any more what being husband and father is all about, guess he's too busy thinking he doens't drink that much any more thus he doesn't have a problem any more (which he never admitted to having in the first place, but admits solving it !?!) which somewhere in his mind equals all problems solved. At least that's the argument he has for me.
Hope your AH does better.

KittyP

I definitely don't think it sounds insane as I feel the same. Ime, when he was knocking back a litre of neat vodka everyday at least I knew where I stood with him. When he's up and down it's harder. I want to believe in him so much that when he goes a full week without drinking I relax almost completely and start to feel we're on new ground. Then when he comes home drunk that night, or even slightly tipsy, I feel like I've been sucker-punched.

He's on his way to an AA meeting now and is hoping to go for coffee with one of the people he's connected with there. Then we are going to do some shopping. He also contacted a friend who's visiting for the weekend who some other friends are having a party for tonight and arranged an early dinner with her so he won't be expected at the party.

He said he couldn't bear the fact that all his friends and family care about him and were proud of him for being sober. I told him if that was true he really needed to talk it out with his psychologist or new psychiatrist because to me that sounds like something at the root of his problem and I'm just not qualified to respond to that. So he's going to call both of them on Monday.

In the mean time I am making 'back-up plans' in case I feel the need to leave in the near future. One of the harder things is that I'm finding it impossible to find a job. I know I've only been here a few weeks but unemployment is near 20% in this area. Also as awful as it sounds my background is in charity work and I just don't feel that would be a good environment for me while I'm trying to teach myself to stop trying to fix things for my AH.

But my AH has mentioned that they may have vacancies for extras on the tv series he's working on so I could possibly do that. It would be boring but flexible, pretty good money and I could write a bit during all of the waiting around that extras do. We wouldn't be anywhere near each other as he doesn't work on set, though I'm not sure if him helping me get work would be a huge disaster? I'm trying to weigh up the good versus the bad.

sesh

I can't figure this quoting thing!!! begining to think I must be stupid!
So I'm copying it.
KittyP: "I want to believe in him so much that when he goes a full week without drinking I relax almost completely and start to feel we're on new ground. Then when he comes home drunk that night, or even slightly tipsy, I feel like I've been sucker-punched."

I know that feeling all too well. And it's so tempting to relax, to believe all of my problems can be miraculously solved. I guess it can be avoided only by reaching acceptance, and than again acceptance is reached by being sucker-punched enough number of times to stay on that floor until judge counts to ten, you admit to yourself being betten at this game, get off the floor and decide what to do with the rest of your life.
Having said that I must admit my judge is about to say 10, I'm convincing myself to stay on that ring floor but there is still something inside of me that's making me want to get up and face some more punches. So at this point I'm faighting myself.

Few days ago I told my AH I want a divorce, and I'm sticking by my decision, but only today while cleaning the house I cought myself thinking:
"Maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe it's not this bad, maybe he's really trying and I fail to see it, maybe..."
And I swear when I realized what I was doing I could punch myself. But yes, it's so tempting to go for that easy way out, even thought I know it will last only few days before my world starts crubling down again...

And for him finding you a job, I thinking why not? maybe it's about time he does something for you. It wouldn't be like you are going to owe him one after that, you have already by far repaid any possible future debts to him.

Freedom1990

He already has relapsed. Just because he's not drinking constantly doesn't mean he's got any semblance of recovery.

There is no trying in sobriety. You either do it, or you don't.

Inpatient rehab gave me an excellent start on recovery, with a lot of tools to use. It was up to me, once I walked out those doors, to continue my recovery.

I left my abusive EXAH. I started over in a whole new place, over 2 hours away from my 'home' of 10 years.

I was a single parent of an 8 year old girl.

I was terrified.

However, I had my butt to every meeting available. I went to meetings when I didn't want to go to meetings.

I had a sponsor before I even got out of rehab.

I attended the monthly aftercare meetings for post-rehab folks.

I worked through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, over and over.

I started sponsoring other women.

I drank again after 4 years, and the bottom line was I quit doing the things I needed to do in order to ensure my sobriety.

I was out there for 2 months and am grateful to be alive today.

I didn't drink every day, but I can assure you, I had the mind of an active alcoholic every day during those two miserable months.

I was in relapse for two months, period.

The drinking wasn't my problem. It was a symptom, and was my solution for many years.

My problem was right between my ears.

KittyP

We had a quite a talk last night, mostly initiated by him after he caught me talking to his sister who had seen him last week at one point that he may have been drunk. He was very quiet after he realised he was being talked about. He went for a cycle which may or may not have been an excuse to drink though he wasn't drunk when he came home. He wallowed for a bit and kept asking if I couldn't see why it would upset him. I told him I could see why he'd be upset but equally he must surely see why his sister and I might want/need to talk about things.

He went to bed ahead of me and when I went to bed he was ready to talk. He told me he was frightened moving home might have been a mistake. He had been under the impression that moving home would make everything better but he's now realised that while it solves some problems it presents others. He said he didn't anticipate how hard it would be to stay sober and thought being at home would be enough. He's made a phone appointment with his psychologist and is trying to arrange a new appointment with his psychiatrist. He's also got some mid-week AA meetings his AA friend has recommended.

I'm hoping that he can get out of denial about how hard it really will be to recover and accept how much work he has to put in. I think once he accepts that, it will be easier on him to just do it. But it's a pretty big battle for him to face, hopefully he can muster the resolve to do what has to be done and the momentum to keep at it. Admitting that moving home wasn't a magic panacea will send him one way or the other. Hopefully he can steer himself the right way.