Originally Posted by OnawaMiniya

As some of you know, I'm currently working on getting things set up so that I can leave my incredibly abusive alcoholic husband.

Today has been a tough day. He's now drunkenly passed out in bed - thank heavens - but the evening was full of him picking fights, making no sense, being angry, throwing his lit cigarette at me as he said "eff you" and stormed away (because I said I wasn't going to engage in a [very stupid] fight with him outside, which is where I was to avoid him, and as some of you know we live where he works, making it even more stupid to have a fight outside...), etc. The usual crap. And let me tell you, as far as abuse goes, throwing a lit cigarette at me is NOTHING. And I mean NOTHING.

So, PLEASE, those of you that have had the strength to leave your alcoholic partner, tell me how great it is. Tell me what you love about no longer dealing with that, and living with that, etc. Tell me the wonderful little and big things you now look forward to when you walk through your door into your home.

I keep visualizing living without him, how neat and organized I can keep my new place once I leave, how nice it will be to not have to walk on eggshells, and how wonderful the PEACE will be...just me and my sweet doggie

Paint me a picture!

I want to read this thread whenever he gets to me, so I can quietly smile to myself, knowing that soon enough, that peace will be mine!

I mean life is still life, and of course life doesn't become perfect just because you left an alcoholic; but it must be so much easier to deal with the stress of life without dealing with an alcoholic at the same time.

(Also, I suspect this would be a good read for those who are in very bad situations, good food for thought as far as what they could look forward to.)

Thank you.

Wishing you all well.

Peace.

Originally Posted by JustAGirl1971

Sorry, OnawaMiniya & Mightyqueen. Please just ignore my earlier comment. It really had nothing to do with the thread and is more about my crazy issues than anything else. I did not mean to project my own guilt onto anyone else. I wish you luck, OnawaMiniya. Prayers for peace and joy in 2014.

Originally Posted by JustAGirl1971

I agree. As adults in consensual relationships, we don't choose to be abused, nor do we choose the consequences we reap as a result of our A's choices. However, once that abuse occurs and we receive those consequences, if we don't change our circumstances (which is not necessarily the same as leaving or divorcing the A), we are choosing to stay in the situation we find untenable. And, I say that as the wife of an AH who is still in the marriage despite verbal, emotional, and past (mild) physical abuse. Despite the fact that we are in worse financial shape than we've been in our entire marriage (even though my salary is higher than it's ever been.) Despite the fact that my 15 yr old DS moved out of my house.

It's not at all easy for me to admit that I am currently choosing to stay, but if I'm going to get healthy, the first thing I need to do is be honest with myself. That means owning my choice. To be fair, it was initially a choice born of my decision not to choose. But, not choosing is a choice in itself. Now, I'm choosing to stay long enough to get to a point where I won't lose the house by having him leave. Hopefully, that's soon. If it's not, I think I'm finally nearly at the point where I'm willing to lose the house just to have peace for my remaining children and to get my other child home.

And, NO, saying that does NOT absolve the A of his responsibility for the situation we are currently in. But, him refusing to acknowledge his responsibility in this mess should have no bearing on whether I'm honest with myself about my own responsibility.

That said, due to the differences in each of our circumstances, we all arrive at this point on different time tables. I would never want to condemn or judge someone else because they chose to stay on the crazy train longer than I did. Nor would I want to be judged for staying on it longer than someone else. It is what it is, I guess.

And, maybe I feel like this because I see my own past failures, mistakes, bad choices, and bad behavior in all of this. For me to grow into the person I want to be (& have the peace I want to have), I have to acknowledge my role in this mess.

Originally Posted by ShootingStar1

Loss is never great. No matter why it comes to you, loss is painful, unwanted, unwelcome, less than, well, loss is LOSS.

Part of what we lose is the bad stuff.

Part of what we lose is the good stuff.

And for many of us, the most painful part of what we lose is the possibility of all those hopes, wishes, dreams ever becoming real.

What we remember, cherish as the memories of why we fell in love with this person, is a stark reminder of what we can never have again.

We have walked away from a life that for better or worse, for good reasons and bad, compelled us, moved us, drew us into its web, sometimes nurtured us, but as time went on, nearly extinguished the candle of our souls.

When I first left, I felt the profound relief of being safe first of all. I hid in an unlikely town, in a quiet apartment with lots of neighbors who would hear me if I cried out for help. It was physical safety I sought first, and I found it. I began to find emotional safety first more by the absence of the abuse and stridency of living in a raging alcoholic's presence than by the presence of anything.

No one yelled. No one demanded anything of me. No one criticized me. No one threatened to hang himself in the night outside our bedroom door. No one required my constant vigilance to try and keep him alive, or to try and mediate the increasing acrimonious interactions he was having with others. Constant vigilance on my part was not required to try less and less successfully to keep my own being intact emotionally.

There was an absence of stimulus, an absence of demands, an absence of abuse, an absence of intensity, drama and chaos. I found great relief in this.

I walked by the ocean with my loyal impish little dog, and people in my new small city began to smile at her antics, and at me, and I found an absence of dread. The wind on my face with the breath of the ocean began to breathe life back into me, and I took pleasure in the warmth of the sun on my shoulders, the bob of my picture hat as the breeze caught it, the faint scent of beach roses in its wake. I began to wake up and breathe again, and begin to feel again.

Sometimes it was hard. I remember seeing a older couple, perhaps in their early 80’s, walking on the ocean boulevard, slowly, enjoying the sights and sounds of the ocean, holding hands and swinging their interlocked arms as they walked so that in silhouette, they looked like one joyous being. And I cried for all that had been and all that wouldn’t be.

The winter was long and hard and cold and icy, as New England winters are wont to be. I got sick with bronchitis, walking pneumonia, and my quiet apartment became my refuge, my sanctuary against the onslaught that I had shut out when I left my home and my husband. My body, with the release of the tension that had held me together for so long, expressed the dis-ease I had held within for so long. And I struggled with the emotional toll that I incurred from bearing my prior life so long without being able to acknowledge its cost.

And I began to find solace, there, alone with my music and books and my always happy little dog. I cooked for myself, I wrote, and I began to heal emotionally even as my body began to recover. My grown children supported me emotionally wholly and with great generosity of spirit. I began to heal, to rebuild my immunity to devastation and desperation. I began to find peace and to reconnect to the spiritual well that I had drawn upon in years past. Though seemingly lost to me for so long, I found it still available and fulfilling.

I began to sort through the stuff of my physical and emotional lives, to sort out the debris and recognize the treasures I wanted to keep. And I began to re-form, perhaps “reform”, what was worth keeping and rebuilding my life around as I moved forward. The future began to have a place in my thinking.

The divorce negotiations finally moved after months of outrageous forays by my husband, and it seemed to me that he was finally comprehending that I had left, and I was gone. We had to work together to get our jointly owned home ready to sell, and I defied the good common sense of my family, friends, and therapist, and worked along side my soon to be divorced husband. He had moderated his drinking significantly, and had come to believe that his behavior had “been out of his mind” and seemed to feel genuine remorse. His wit and humor and good will were most prominent now, and he wanted me back.

People dear to me couldn’t understand why I saw him again; they saw me as the moth unable to stay away from the flame that would surely consume me. And in some ways they were right; each visit brought me back to the pain of the marriage and I felt again both the devastation of being in that marriage and the devastation of leaving that marriage.

But I have always been driven internally by a force that cannot be reckoned with and that compels me to understand so that I can be freed to be who I need to be. And going back and re-examining what had happened to me, and to us over the course of a twenty marriage at some core level deep inside me was essential and non-negotiable.

I saw him, now much less damaged, “less” alcoholic, if there is such a time-limited designation for someone who stays the course of alcoholism to try to regain something precious that they have lost; I saw him for who he was and I saw myself much more clearly as a player in this devastation we had wrought, and I owned my own behavior and I apologized for my part as did he for his part, and I did not go back.

He asked me to return, with great promises, in the flush of his greater emotional health, and it was excruciatingly painful, but I did not go back. Even as I worked with him and talked with him, the part of me that moves inexorably forward, was moving toward buying my own home in the community that had been my refuge, and is now my future.

I moved into my home in July and by September had gotten the last of the “keepers” of my possessions in my house. They weren’t necessarily what I had expected to take, and I am happy with the merging of old and new into what will be my foundation and refuge here in my new life. This fall I’ve had the repairs and renovations done to the house that I knew needed to be done when I bought it.

I’ve made trade-offs in many places. I gave up a dining room in order to keep my treasured piano, a gift from my beloved aunt who was a concert pianist, and I will play again. I gave up my perennial gardens, which had been a source of comfort and a way of nurturing in my former life, for a tiny lot in walking range in the city. I will make a tiny “courtyard” garden next summer, and take my former gardening time to earn a living as an artist.

Life still has its curveballs. In early December, I unexpectedly needed shoulder surgery, so I am confined to a sling and cannot work in my almost renovated studio for several months. So I have been taking this time as a spiritual respite and time to put the business bones of my art in place. I want to see if I can integrate what I have learned into the vision of my art.

More continues to process as I let go of more layers of who I was and what I did and how I want to be. I am still lonely at times, and I still cycle through occasional depression, loss, regret and pain. It is not as biting as it was, but it is still a progression toward resolution of loss and full participation in what I have and what I can create.

Mostly, I feel free, content, happy and invigorated. I am ready to re-enter the mainstream of life and make more friends and give to the community that has been such a spiritual solace.

This is, I know, far too long, but I have been through so many stages and changes since I ran away from my home and husband on July 4th 2012, and my hope is that this may be comfort to some of you contemplating or beginning such a journey. My early story is in a post on the sticky “What Is Abuse” at the top of the Friends and Families of Alcoholics SR forum index page if you want to see what propelled me out of my marriage.

ShootingStar1

Originally Posted by JustAGirl1971

Sorry, OnawaMiniya & Mightyqueen. Please just ignore my earlier comment. It really had nothing to do with the thread and is more about my crazy issues than anything else. I did not mean to project my own guilt onto anyone else. I wish you luck, OnawaMiniya. Prayers for peace and joy in 2014.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye13

Have you read the above posts PohsFriend?

Many of these people, and many others I've read on this site, do seem to be much happier than they were and pretty quickly when removed from the acute suffering they were in.

It is terrific you have had your situation work out, and we are happy for you and your wife. But you seem to generalizing your ideology to others. I don't think it always translates. Peace to you

Originally Posted by PohsFriend

No it doesn't translate. If someone feels like they will be much happier away from the person I don't understand why they are delaying it.

I might be wrong but I think there is a big difference between feeling certain that you made the right decision and being happy about it.

Whether the spouse is an alcoholic or abusive or whatever may be wrong with them I just haven't seen many people walk away with a big smile and most need some time to heal and mourn the loss of the relationship. Maybe some don't.

Originally Posted by lillamy

I was talking with my hubby the other day -- he also comes from a dysfunctional first marriage -- and we were musing over all the stuff we don't get upset about. Like, I hear my normie friends b*tch about how their husbands put the toilet paper in upside down or leave the toilet seat up or drop their dirty socks under the coffee table. My male friends talk about how long their wives take to do their hair and how picky they are about the gardening, and how annoying that is. There's no way any of that would even rise to the level of annoyance for either my husband or me -- YET.
.