Bad memories
Homework from MT… Make a list of all the memories I’m forced to relive every time H chooses to drink again. Sometimes even when he doesn’t. This is a really painful activity.
I’m reminded of:
All the years he spent gaslighting me, trying to make me seem crazy for worrying, being upset, being so impacted by his drinking. The emotional toll that took from me feels like it’s irreparable most days. I spent a decade full of self doubt and misery and forgot how to trust myself.
The time he was wasted on vacation in Sea Island and got mad at me while taking out his contacts and threw his contact case at me, but hit D❤ instead.
The writing career I could have had, but don’t. Because we separated when I was starting the fourth book of my series and something in me just… broke. I realized I was writing about romance in ways I didn’t have it and probably never would. My creative energy disappeared. The thought of writing became painful, even though it was one of the few things that brought me joy.
Just before this happened, I would go to book signings and writing conferences and actually had fans there specifically to meet me.
The night he (not for the first time by far) drove drunk, which led to hitting a neighbor’s car and getting arrested with a DWI.
I remember hearing a loud crash as I was trying to fall asleep and rushing into D❤’s room to look out over our driveway, convinced he’d hit my car on his way home from the bar. But my car was fine and he wasn’t there and because of all the years of gaslighting I felt ashamed to have made the assumption about it — wondering if I’d really just been overreacting all those years. But then he never came home that night. I actually prayed he was having an affair because I was terrified that he’d done something to get himself killed (driving, walking in the road, a million things ran through my brain all night.) I called his parents in a panic the next morning, but then he called from jail around 6 (?) to tell me where he’d been all night.
The police officer who knocked on my door late one night, back in our condo, when H hadn’t come home or called me. He told me H had been in a hit and run and for a moment —until he clarified — I thought H was dead. But the clarification was that H had hit another car and driven away. After the cop left, I called H who was driving around the beltway, laughing hysterically because the “Po Po were after him.”
to this day, H seems to believe the person in the car he hit overreacted.
Receiving a call from a DC police officer that I needed to come pick H up. He’d been driving drunk, but only wasn’t arrested because he’d blown a tire on a speed bump (I can’t remember if that was exactly what the reason was, but similar) and now he was passed out in his car. So I had to call my dad at 3am (or 4?) and pick him up to come with me to change the tire and drive Nelson’s car home.
The way I had to stop drinking almost completely because I knew I’d have to take care of my husband and be ready to take him home if/when he got too sloppy. And then after he stopped drinking because I didn’t want to make him feel bad or be tempted to drink if I was.
Having to leave one of my best friend’s weddings early (before the Chinese lion dancers came, which I was really excited to see) because H was so drunk he was passing out over his plate before dinner was served. Having to walk him back to our New York hotel, pulling him up off the ground when he fell, apologizing to the hotel staff for the sloppy scene while getting him to the elevator.
All the times I tried the “if you can’t beat him, join him” mentality and tried to drink and just relax and have fun, the way he seemed to think I should, but couldn’t.
This disdain with which he spoke about me to my own family on beach trips.
The way I don’t feel comfortable talking to my family when he still drinks because I don’t want them to get to a place where they can’t forgive him or are sick of hearing about it. How they’re uncomfortable even today when we’re together in social situations, uncertain what they should/shouldn’t do regarding their own alcoholic beverages.
How he hurt them and never acknowledged it.
The time when I first reached out to his parents, asking for help with H’s drinking and they responded that he was only drinking that way because he was so unhappy, implying our marriage — I — was the problem.
The way I don’t really have a best friend anymore. I haven’t for a long time. A best friend would make me want to talk about H’s drinking and the impacts it’s had/still has on me and I keep people at arm’s length because I don’t want to do that.
That when I give into things I think I shouldn’t (overspending, overeating, going numb/through the motions/not allowing myself to feel things for so long I forget how to have emotions) I blame him for almost all of it. I do realize my actions are my decisions, but I spiraled out of control because I didn’t know how to deal with what I was feeling, with devastated I was and how it just kept knocking me over again and again and again.
When H was drunk and mad at my spending and punched the refrigerator.
How different my life could’ve been if I’d had over ten years in a happy marriage instead of one filled with anger and uncertainty and a complete numbness when the negative emotions got too heavy.
How scared I am that I’ll never get over the resentment and bitterness in my heart towards him. That we’ll never have a good marriage because I don’t know how to fall in love with him. That we’ll never have good sex because I don’t know how to be attracted to him. None of my fantasies involve him.
How, ignoring my own basically broken heart, I gave him almost a year of gentleness while he was working on himself after his DWI to get/stay sober, waiting for him to make amends for what he’d put me through (and yes, I told him I was waiting for his focus to turn to us), but he just jumped into a new business with his dad — and apparently me — (that put me in a position to do almost every single thing for it) instead of focusing on me/our marriage.
When H was drunk and mad and hit the coffee maker (keurig).
A line from a show that hurt to hear, but really resonated: “before they hit you, they hit near you.” Which put into words what I couldn’t express on my own.
How I’ve fantasized about having an affair, just to feel something pleasurable. (There’s no person in mind for this affair, it’s just… the thought of someone finding me attractive, wanting to be with me, wanting to know me… to touch me. All that and me actually wanting to reciprocate it.)
Being called a “deadbeat” because I wasn’t bringing money in while taking full time care of D. And in that same timeframe, being told that there’s no point at all to Mother’s Day. Which, honestly, I get it if I’M the one who thinks it (which I honestly don’t) but for him to think it’s okay to say that?
When I was in New Jersey at a writer friend’s house for the weekend, working on a book. I get a call from H in the middle of the night. He’s wasted, slurring, furious. He’s walked back from a bar and can’t get into our condo. He’s accusing me of changing the locks, telling me he hates me, he wants a divorce. I literally leave Jersey in the middle of the night, driving through exhaustion and tears to get home, terrified that he’ll be passed out outside our door or worse, arrested. When I get home, he is snoring in our bed, having figured out how to use his key again at some point. The next day, he didn’t care.
The way he slurringly speaks to D❤, when he’s been drinking. And how when I was out of town at a wedding, he told her that “mommy and daddy were going to start living in separate houses.” She repeated it to my mom, asking if it was true. Then, he did it again, just a year and a half ago at the beach.
Typing that makes me feel like I hate him. That he would put that sort of weight on our daughter, who doesn’t deserve to have to remember a drunk father slurring and stumbling and telling her hurtful things just because he feels like it. It’s not that we wouldn’t have that discussion with her if the time came, it’s that we’d consider her feelings and the best way to ease her into the new way of living and to make 100% sure that she understands none of it is her fault and that we love her with our entire hearts. But he didn’t care about her with his words. They were selfish and self-pitying and cruel.
It’s one thing to treat me (an adult) uncaringly (still not okay at all) but it’s completely another to treat our daughter that way, to hammer cracks into the foundation of safety she’s supposed to have at home, with her parents.
I’ll add to this list in pieces because it’s too hard to do all at once.
But also. How do I ever heal from all of that? Even with professional help. I just… I don’t know.