Day One

Posted by Anonymous.

Before I can tell you about today, I need to tell you about last Tuesday. Last Tuesday was my first day of sobriety. But before I can tell you about Tuesday, I need to tell you about what happened before Tuesday.

Looking back, it's obvious that I've been an alcoholic, or an alcoholic in training, for a long, long time. My parents tell stories about me as a toddler or preschooler, stealing sips of beer. I remember drinking a glass of champagne or wine with dinner as a young child (maybe age six or seven) and liking it so much that I wanted a refill. I know that at age seven I preferred my mother's tropical cocktail (Planter's Punch) to my own Shirley Temple. I remember at around age 13, our family had a leftover keg in our garage from a block party, and I drank one or two glasses a day from it until it disappeared.

The first "official" time I got drunk I was 14. Fuzzy Navels and tequila shots. My friend, who had driven us to the party, wound up putting a very dizzy, barely conscious me into bed, obviously disappointed by what a crummy sleepover guest I'd turned out to be.

College? Plenty of binge drinking, followed by throwing up and blacking out. Bad behavior.

After college, more of the same.

I took a break for a few years, when I was pregnant and had small kids.

But once the kids got old enough to go away for sleepovers, more binge drinking. No more throwing up, but plenty of overindulgence followed by passing out and nasty morning-after hangovers.

Fast forward a few years. My husband's diagnosis of metabolic disorder gave us a great excuse to drink daily: red wine is a key part of the Mediterranean diet! My frequently-used jest was, "My doctor told me a glass of red wine a day is good for me. I say two glasses are twice as good!" In reality, however, two glasses? That was by six o'clock. We quickly got to a level of drinking that meant we recycled three or four boxes of wine per week. I was keeping up with his every drink, sometimes surpassing him, and he outweighs me by about 150 pounds.

I stopped going to sleep. Instead, I blacked out. Many mornings, I'd wake up naked, but not sure if we'd had sex. I had to ask my husband what we had done.

But certainly, I'd told myself, I wasn't an alcoholic. I didn't miss work because of drinking. I didn't start drinking until at least 5:00 p.m. (of course, sometimes I'd sit staring at the clock, with a glass ready, for ten or more minutes). I never got a DUI. I never went to jail. I never hit my kids.

But I started to get sloppy. Over the holidays, I drank too much and was obviously drunk at my in-laws' house. I embarrassed my husband. And the week after New Year's, my husband and I had a sincere conversation in which we determined that we drank entirely too much, and that we needed to cut down.

What happened? He cut down, even skipped nights, drinking one or two drinks at the most. I, however, started putting my wine in coffee cups, or, more disturbingly, waiting until everyone else had gone to bed before starting to drink, and getting drunk.

And that brings us to Monday night. The husband went to bed around 10:30 p.m. As soon as he was in bed, I went to the kitchen and turned on the faucet, as though I were filling up the tea kettle. Instead of tea, however, I made myself a glass of bourbon with one ice cube. (The water running disguised the sound of me pouring the liquor into the glass, as well as the clink of the ice cube.) I took my drink to the living room and played computer games, sipping on the drink as I played. Soon enough, it was empty. By this time, he was fully asleep, so I didn't need to disguise the noise when I poured the second drink. This one polished off the bottle, and for a moment, I considered funneling the bourbon back into the bottle. I quickly dismissed this impulse, however, and put the empty bottle into the recycling bin (in the back, so it wouldn't be easily seen). The second drink went down faster than the first. And here's where it gets confusing.

I must have gone outside to smoke a cigarette. I had my coat on. I fell. I don't know if I tripped or if I passed out on my feet, but I went down face first onto the patio. I don't remember falling. I don't know how long I lay there before I got up. I remember seeing blood on my right hand. That's all I remember.

I somehow got my coat off, and got undressed, and put myself to bed. I wasn't quiet about it, though, and my husband woke up. He says it was around 3 a.m. He told me the rest of it. I fell down on the floor on the way to bed, then got up and fell down again. He asked me what was going on, and my answer was "floor." He got up and saw what I would see the next morning: my face was covered with blood, with my upper lip bearing the majority of the injury. My glasses were scratched, my nose looked broken (it wasn't), and I'd broken a tooth.

Next morning, I woke up, aware that something was very wrong. I took inventory of my injuries with fingers and tongue. My front teeth were there. Good. But the next tooth, oh no. Was broken in half. My lip was numb, but everything else hurt. A lot.

My husband came into the room and discovered that I was awake. I'll never forget the look on his face, and the sob in his voice, when he asked me, "What have you done to yourself?" I tried to answer, to make up a story, but he already knew the answer. He wanted to take me to the hospital. I refused. He tried to clean up my face a little. And then he helped me get to the bathroom, where I took a long look at myself in the mirror, then collapsed onto the vanity. He helped me clean up more, then put me back in bed, where I was freezing and needed blanket after blanket. (I guess I was in shock or something.)

He ran me a hot bath, picked out some clothes, and took better care of me than I deserved.

While I was in the bath, he poured out the only liquor remaining in the house (1/3 of a bottle of vodka).

I spent the day resting, occasionally sleeping, crying a lot, and I asked for help. I called a friend who'd been sober for years, and asked her to take me to a meeting.

And that's day one. Today is day six. I've been to five AA meetings. I have not taken a drink since that night. I hope I never do again. I came very close to death that night. My blood is on the patio, only inches from four ceramic and terra cotta flower pots. I shudder to think how the whole thing would have gone if I'd fallen a few inches to the right.

I lied to my husband. My integrity? Non-existent. My self-respect? Right there with it.

I've got nowhere to go but up. I want to live in reality. I want to have integrity. I want to deserve my family's trust. I don't want to die because of alcohol.

One Love

Posted by Anonymous.

I knew this would happen. I feared it. Everyone would have thought I was crazy. I once told a friend (who turned out to not really be a friend) about this fear. And he did tell me I was crazy. I never confided in him again.

There just isn’t enough love.

There were many reasons I had for deciding not to have children when I was in college. One of the most important/ main reasons was that I feared not having enough love.

However, after quite a lot of time & thinking (&thinking&thinking), I did decide that my love for my husband was enough- and I wanted to show him that I love him. So I decided that I did want to have a baby. (And I did want to)

Turned out, I liked being pregnant. (Another fear was that it would be horrible!!!)

I never got sick & felt pretty good most of the time. I was a little tired in 1^st trimester; and again when I was rather large. I had a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy.

Of course I feared labor (another reason). Rightfully so.

I won’t bore you with the labor story.

Well, she came. She was big. She was heavy. And she was adorable. But about a week or 2 after coming home, she became fussy. Needy. Demanding to be held. All day long.

Not great timing; my husband’s job was oh-so-stressful at this time.

He feels he has to take care of everything/everyone. So he had work stress & would come home to screaming. And the “kitty cats” needed attention. It was a very very stressful time. And nobody had any good advice. We got so sick of hearing “it’ll get better”… nobody told us what to do RIGHT NOW.

So not the best start.

He had asked me when she was, I dunno, 3 weeks old or so if I loved her.

I broke down in tears because all I could say was “I don’t know”. I knew I would probably come to love her. But again with the whole “unconditional love”… I needed to get to know her.

Now she’s 5months old and I have come to love her. It didn’t take very long, actually. But it’s still quite stressful at times.

My husband worked from home for the past 2 months. Which made it difficult when she cried. If I couldn’t quiet her quick enough, I felt the added stress from him.

Basically with all this worry about love, I never thought about not having enough love for him anymore.

Things in this house are getting pretty bad. It’s no fun to be around us at all; and I wonder if she’s picking up on this.

I guess somehow I knew there was only room for one love. I just never expected to fall out of love with my husband. He’s about to come home from a 2week business trip.

I’m sorta dreading it. Again, a 14hour travel time to come home will be stressful for him. And to be faced with needy cats & a young baby who may/may not recognize him…

God I wish he’d learn to deal with his stress. Because it is tearing me apart.

I spoke to him openly before getting pregnant (and during) about being sure to love each other above all others. I grew up never thinking my parents loved each other, and it bothers me still. I want to show our daughter a better way to grow up. Now I don’t know how.

He was the greatest husband.

Until he became a father.

Outside The Bubble

Posted by C at This Matters This Day.

Liz Lemon has done it again. Put a window on something that, in retrospect, felt close to the truth…

Last time was the reunion episode. Weeks later, when wondering idly why some people from high school still haven’t ‘friended’ me – when they had friended others. Not just ‘the popular kids,’ but even kids more off-the-grid, now FRIENDING the ‘popular kids.’ Then, the episode came back to me.

Liz was at her reunion, and discovered that she was mean in highschool. That her reverse-snubbing, her snub-or-be-snubbed was NOT invisible. That the popular kids didn’t like her because she wasn’t likable.

I laughed and payed no real attention. Thought it wasn’t one of the better episodes.

Later – much later – weeks later… **gasp** …

When you are 15-16-17, sharp-witted and imagine yourself slightly better than those around you – the prettier ones, the more together ones, the ones who aren’t so afraid of trying, of proving themselves, of fitting in… ooops.

You become Liz. Snarky, with thinly-veiled quick-witted asides that are – oops again – sarcastic and more than a little mean.

I thought then that those honor role kids just didn’t get me. The truth was something else. I just didn’t want to play. And thought I should get by on my (under-appreciated) looks and (underexercised) raw intelligence.

OK. So flash-forward. Now those same kids – the ones who tried? Who made it all important when, I, in my infinite wisdom (and 2.75 GPA) suspected it wasn’t? Those kids have kids. And their kids are in private school. And they play with my kids. My kids who are woefully unprepared.

I could list the reasons why, or how they are unprepared: mom works, mom is scatter-brained, mom is not wealthy, mom has no idea what the rules are… but the truth is this: Mom doesn’t want to play.

On last night’s 30 Rock, we saw the return of Dr.Drew Baird. (Moment of silence, please, to acknowledge my disproportionate love of Jon Hamm…) The premise was that he is so good-looking that people expect little of him, and fill him with lies. So he’s a doctor that doesn’t know the Heimlich, is awful in bed, and cannot play tennis – and has never waited in a line.

Again, good show. I laughed. I was mad that Jon Hamm was leaving again, (c’mon Liz! Do you HAVE to be the bearer of Truth?) and I laughed harder when Jack Donaghy explained The Bubble and the loss of the Bubble. I laughed ‘cuz it was funny, right? A ridiculous premise?

Oh, shit. I laughed ‘cuz it’s True!

At the risk of being exposed as more narcissistic than I feel (although I guess even narcissism has its roots in self-loathing, but I digress) – I was driving home from my son’s third grade play almost in tears and realized… ooops… I GOT IT!

Now, the almost-tears were for a number of reasons. Chief trigger was that the set looked great. I had derided the moms that made a big deal of the set – thinking that this is third grade, they are walking up to microphones, the play isn’t blocked, each character is shared by six kids, etc. And TWO of my props were rejected as inadequate, and my son’s Zukerman costume was Not Quite Right, even though we got the same Farmer Costume memo as every other mom.

The secondary trigger was the Perfect Moms who told me afterward that my son was great – Moms whose children I did not know, moms themselves whose names are filed somewhere in my back brain where they cannot be accessed as I am trying to anonymously high tail it out of a multimillion dollar performance facility (where my son just performed a walk-up-to-the-mike rendition of a play written for about 8 kids along with 59 of his closest friends.)

You see, friends, I lived in The Bubble. Because while high school may not be kind to the I-think-I-am-prettier-and-smarter-than-you-so-I-flirt-too-much-and-laugh-too-hard-when-I-get-the-grown-up-jokes-of-the-AP-English-teacher-and-treat-everything-with-a-note-of-disdain-and-irony… your twenties? Especially if they got to occur in the nineties? In your twenties, folks eat that shit up.

All the sudden – for a minute, maybe, or for something like six or seven years – I was IT.

I ran in a circle with famous people for a college internship and later, I had a great job. I had loads of friends, I had loads of sex, and I had great hair. I dressed well and drove free German cars. I was connected. Professionally, personally… I felt untouchable. I flirted as I breathed. I got promoted. I worked way over my head, and I gathered in large chummy packs at the neighborhood bar in the tony neighborhood… that I walked to.

Because no one ever accused me of making things look easy, I assumed my aggressive wheel spinning and frenetic pace meant I really was working hard.

I assumed, that somehow, without actually working for it… I had earned it. I believed my press.

My eventual husband believed it, too – he would say later that his initial impression was that I was ‘out of his league,’ he imagined that I had it together – because there was so much of it, and it looked confusing to the outsider.

I was In the Bubble.

And inside, it actually was confusing. But it was contained, somewhat.

All that happened, besides growing up and getting married and having kids and folding into private schools (quite by accident, but again I digress) is that I outgrew the bubble. And now? 40, with those intrepid kids in tow … the bubble is gone.

The mess is no longer contained by the walls of the bubble, and I am exposed to the (god love him, still-with-me) husband. I am invisible among those working harder, with more qualifications and a more complete rule set. My confusion confuses them. They expect more of themselves… shoudn’t I?

Inside the bubble was better.

So, somehow? Now, I guess? It’s time to grow up. Or at least fake it a whole lot better.

Ergg.

Dear Ex

Posted by ANTM.

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

You suck. I am one of the nicest people on the planet and I hate you. Seriously – I hate you. Right now, as I am writing this you are messaging me wondering what it is that you did to push me away.

In the beginning, things were bright and shiny like all new relationships are. I liked you. We moved in together. I started to question your judgment two months in when you allowed your ex-fiance to sleep over night in our house together. Without asking me first. I let it slide since she was pregnant and obviously over you but I should have left you right then.

I am 6 years younger than you and I was straight out of college when we started dating. You partied just as much as I did. Funny thing is, I gave up partying once I got a job two months after graduation. You are 31 now and still go out every weekend. Not just out for a few beers with the guys. It is more like drink as much alcohol as you can because it might be banned tomorrow kind of out. Then you decide it might be a good idea to come home and wake up your girlfriend for sex. Who really cares that she has to get up and work in two hours right? Remember the time you threw up all over the bathroom and woke me up at 3 am to clean it up? Classy…

I moved away for a while to give you some time to grow up. Not just down the street away either. I moved to a whole new country. You would call and write. Messages of how much you missed me and you wanted to get married. You wanted to have babies. You wanted to move away and start a life together. I was pretty convinced you had changed so I moved back to the very town I hated for you.

I signed a one year contract for a job that I cannot stand. Miranda from the Devil Wears Prada is totally my boss. Each day it takes every ounce of strength I have to prevent myself from stabbing her with my letter opener. You promised after one year we could move to a bigger city. You took me to a ring store to look at rings. Then something happened and you stopped all of that niceness. I should have known better but I guess I didn’t.

You started going out every weekend again. You stopped talking about marriage with me and instead started talking to every girl who would look at you. So you know what? I stopped talking to you. For one week – complete silence. Then my grandfather had a stroke. A bad one. I hadn’t slept in three days. It was the night before my family was going to turn off the machines. I was going to the hospital the next day to say good-bye. I cried myself to sleep that night. You went out and got drunk. Around 4:30 am, you came home, stripped off all of your clothes and woke me up. You asked if I could help you out. When I told you to get the hell away from me, do you know what you did? You laid on the floor next to the couch I was sleeping on and asked if I would just go down on you for a bit. I should have kicked you directly in the groin but I didn’t.

I moved out two weeks later and you still cannot seem to figure out why. Perhaps I am just a selfish bitch but in reality I think it has more to do with the fact that you are a child and I would like to be with a man. You don’t love me anyway. You just love the idea of me being around to do your laundry, wash your dishes, and clean up your vomit after a rough night at the bar. So you can pretty much go screw yourself…

Sincerely,

Your ex-girlfriend

P.S. You can stop with the damn messages that I don’t care about your feelings and how you just don’t understand how I could be so selfish because frankly, I don’t give a damn!

Move

Posted by Anonymous.

My husband and I are moving to a big city, in a different province, in 8 days. EIGHT DAYS!!! we've gotten rid of basically everything we own. Our bed, dressers, couches, everything! Were moving because my husband is sick of being told if he's going to work or not, and for how long. In August, he was laid off by a company he worked for, for 3 years. I mean, it's completely understandable that they had to lay him off, they were shutting down. He was jobless for two weeks. Then got another job, at another mill. He's been there all of 2 months, and was recently told that, for Christmas there taking two weeks off. Everyone has to, there's no odd jobs he can do. On the following Monday, they held a meeting to inform their employees that, after the two week break, they will promptly going down to 3 shifts a week. WHAT!!!! you have GOT to be kidding.... So now, my husband is seriously pissed off, yet again he's going to be laid off. He has no seniority at the new job, so chances of him even being on the three shifts a weeks, is basically non-existent.

He wants to move. He wants me to move away from my family (and the rest of his) And head off to Alberta. What really, really makes this suck so much. Is because i made the final decision. I can't back out now!! I mean don't get me wrong, the only reason were doing this is because his brother has a job lined up for him. So its not like were just winging it. And there kind enough to let us stay with them, until we get on our feet. Which i couldnt be happier about. But i know myself, i don't do well in big cities!!! don't have my liscence and have had somewhat bad experiences with transit and greyhound bus rides. Although, i heard it is easier to get your liscence there. We'll see.

The upside, is that there's way better job opportunities there for me! Should I feel bad for feeling so selfish?!?!? I know he's scared and nervous about it too, he asked me not to voice how I felt, because then we really would be backing out. We can't turn back now, his two weeks notice was already put it, we leave in 8 days, i don't have a job anymore, and ALL of our stuff is either gone, or spoken for, and leaving this weekend. The reason I keep re-thinking our decision, is because in one day, I was asked by my dad, his step-dad and my other sister's best friend's mom if I truly wanted to do this, and do I have any doubts, and basically just begging me to tell them i'm scared shitless. I've never been so scared of the future in my entire life. I've also never been so excited about it at the same time.

I was hoping that writing how I felt out would help me feel better. In a way it has, but I still feel doubt....will it ever go away?!?!