The time came for me to pack up all of my belongings from my parent’s house (and dispose of the remaining empty bottles and boxes) and drive down to Florida. Thomas and I had talked every day while he was in Florida, and I remembered about half of those conversations. Our marriage was pretty rocky. I should mention that before he moved down to Florida, there was an incident with TJ. To this day, I don’t really know what happened. I had been drinking, and it came time to go upstairs and put TJ to bed. He was still sleeping in our room in the Rock ‘n Play (which has since been recalled due to the risk of suffocation, but was considered to be safe at the time). As I was carrying him up the stairs, I tripped and fell. I apparently put him to bed and passed out, because the next thing I knew, Thomas was yelling at me asking me what happened. The was a dent in the drywall at the top of the stairs, and TJ had apparently been screaming and crying, and I had just slept right through it. We took him to the ER, and he had a minor skull fracture. After watching him overnight in the hospital (and having D.S.S. evaluate us), we were all cleared to go back home, and everything was fine. I chalked it up to being extremely sleep deprived and having an accident that could happen to anyone. Thomas, on the other hand, blamed me for it, and I think he never truly forgave me for it (at least at the time). I’m telling you this because I think, looking back, that significantly impacted our marriage. It should have been a wake up call for me that I was starting down a terrible path, but instead I doubled down and got mad that Thomas would blame me for something like that. I played the victim, something I became very good at.
Anyways, I had unknowingly succumbed to an alcoholic mind. I say alcoholic mind because I think there are two very distinct components to alcoholism. The first part is the drinking. People say that the drinking is just a symptom of an underlying problem. You could insert any other toxic word here: drugs, gambling, sex, food, exercise, etc. My drug of choice, was alcohol and only alcohol. How I wish it could have been exercise. To this day I hate working out. But that’s besides the point. So there’s the alcohol/drinking component and then there’s the mental component. The mental component is the thing that’s actually wrong. You can be completely sober (i.e. not drinking) and still be just as bad off if you haven’t participated in any sort of treatment/recovery. It’s the treatment/recovery that is so crucial. Without it, sobriety can only last so long. Plus, there’s a good chance you’re miserable. But more on that later.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the disease, there are certain things that are quite common among alcoholics. One of those things is a constant obsession with getting your next drink. It literally takes over your mind and is all you can think about. You’re either drinking, or you’re thinking about drinking. It consumes you. And you think having a drink will make it go away, but it actually makes the obsession even stronger. So it probably makes sense that having any sort of relationship, including a marriage, is difficult when all you can think about is drinking.
Of course, I was also unable to do a lot of normal, every day things. I wasn’t working at the time, so Thomas expected me to run some errands, clean, etc. while he was working, which I think is a very reasonable expectation. But I would usually be hungover during the day, and by the time my hangover had worn off, I was drunk. So he’d come home to a drunk wife who hadn’t left the apartment, hadn’t showered, hadn’t cleaned, hadn’t done laundry, and hadn’t made dinner, and he started to get pretty frustrated and also confused as to why I couldn’t seem to get anything done. Of course, we did have a newborn, so that was a great excuse, but if I hadn’t been drinking, I would have had time to do everything he asked of me and more.
I want to be very clear when I say that all of Thomas’s requests were very reasonable. Plus, I actually liked cooking and cleaning and running errands, because I wanted to feel like I was contributing and making life easier for him. When I wasn’t drinking, I’d spend hours looking for new dinner recipes, then I’d go to the grocery store, and I’d be really proud of putting a delicious dinner on the table. This isn’t a situation where Thomas wanted a trophy Stepford wife. He just wanted me to pull my own weight and help out a little, and under normal circumstances, I was happy to do it. And it wasn’t so much that he was mad that I wasn’t doing anything. I think he was mostly confused because I wasn’t at all acting like myself, and he didn’t understand why.
Another common thing alcoholics do is they hide their drinking. I was very, very good at this. (People sometimes ask me if someone we know might be an alcoholic, and this is usually the biggest red flag. If you or someone you know is hiding anything related to drinking, then there’s a good chance you’re dealing with alcoholism. There’s really no reason to ever hide how much you drink.) On any given day, I probably had at least 4-5 different containers of alcohol hidden around the apartment – in my purse, in the hamper, in my car, behind the washing machine, inside boots. The list goes on; I was very creative. So Thomas honestly had no idea what he was dealing with.
Our typical day was Thomas would leave to go to work while I was still sleeping, I’d drink and take care of TJ all day, he’d come home, I’d pick a fight with him and go to bed without saying goodnight, then wake up the next morning trying to remember what had happened and where all of my empty bottles were. It was a constant chore keeping up with the alcohol I was hiding. Anytime Thomas would get close to one of the hidden bottles, I’d have to find an excuse to get in his way and redirect him to make sure he wouldn’t find anything. IT WAS EXHAUSTING. (That is perhaps one of my favorite things about being sober.) I was paranoid; constantly on alert. I had to take quick showers in case he wandered into my closet for some reason. I had to use big purses to shuffle bottles in and out of the apartment, and I was constantly worried he might try to look inside one of them. I’d move things from one place to another based on what Thomas was doing. This is no way to live.
So to sum it all up, we really didn’t have much of a marriage. I think we pretty much hated each other. If TJ hadn’t been born, we probably would have gotten divorced. But we both knew things couldn’t continue like this. So after about a year, we decided to leave Florida, and I couldn’t have been happier. Of course, I think we both thought that Florida was the problem. But unfortunately, unbeknownst to either of us, it was the alcohol. So all of our problems followed us as we headed back to the Carolinas.
Looking back on this time in my life, I have so many regrets. But I also feel very strongly that there is absolutely no use in thinking about the past (at least in a negative sense). Thinking about what you should have done or what you shouldn’t have done gets you nowhere. So while I wish I had done so many things differently, I try to focus on the fact that God was with me the whole time. I didn’t see Him, but He was there. And He was, and still is, SO, SO GOOD!
To God be ALL the Glory!
Love, Grace
