Guilty

I have not been posting for a long time.

I have just started to realize how much this is SOOOOO part of MY sickness as the wife of an alcoholic.

When he is doing bad, I am doing bad.

I start a secret, anonymous blog to pour out my heart and my angst and my fears and my devastation.  It is my journal that my kids can't stumble upon hidden in a drawer or under the bed.  My friends can't find it and gasp at my fantasies or unbalanced thoughts.  My qualifier (Mr. M) can't find it and know how I fantasize about my life without him.  It feels real and true.  I don't have to censor myself because I don't have to have a facade because no one knows who I am.  No persona.  No mask.  Just me.  Feels good.  Feels true.  Feels maybe even a little bit healthy.

Then Mr. M gets sober.

I let him start coming around.  

I hug him.  I let him start hugging me.

I let him have sleepovers.

We go to amusement parks and the beach and even *gasp* vacation.

I start a new family blog with pictures of all the new happiness and beauty we are creating.

I am living in a fantasy land, sucking all this up... lapping it up... rolling around and wrapping myself in it.

I SO want it to be real.

I SO want it to last.

I am SO afraid because I KNOW how temporary it can always be.

I am blessed to be able to give my kids a few more months or years with their Dad and not give up.  They are all blossoming.

But if I let myself THINK about it, I am afraid it is nothing but a house of cards.

My desire to be in denial and just enfold myself in this 10 month period of sobriety - where Mr. M is not perfect, but he is present and available and loving and strong - is all-encompassing.  I think that's why this journal is lying dormant. 

 If I come to it and log in with my secret email address and my secret name & password, then I am remembering and looking at the reality of what my life was (is) just 10 short months ago and I am forced to see how - with the sip of a drink - it would be right back there.

Would I regret this delicious period of denial?  

I can't answer that yet.

And I don't want to go back and read any old posts to see.

I DO know that I am still in therapy and progressing slowly (snail's pace, in my mind), but I DO see and feel changes... but I am not very brave... I am slow and hesitant and scared.  I want to be braver.  I want to trust more and love fully and not live to protect myself from real or imagined pain.

If temporary, my time of bliss is still real.  My kids' happiness is real.  But this... this alcoholic marriage is still real too and I need to not forget it.

Not enough?

Mr. M has almost 6 months sober.

What I fantasized about it not bliss.

Not only is there still the daily suspicion and fear of the temporary hiatus shattering, but there is the punishing, grinding of living with a newly sober alcoholic's insanity.

He seems always on the verge of exploding. His moods are ever changing.

His self-absorption is mind-boggling.

His short-temper and pouty hurt feelings over every imagined slight.

His lack of patience when the kids bicker or challenge or question or whine or defy... he has no tolerance or patience and no respect or gratitude for the fact that I have done this alone for months... years.

I can't bear the thought of going on like this, walking on eggshells, hoping, always hoping for more.

He loves me deeply, I know that.

And I love him, its true. 

But I am frightened and grieved that that might not be enough.

Is it possible it is not enough?

Who I Want To Be

I want to be a fun, funky, whimsical, delightful person.

I'm not.

I am actually fairly crabby, anal retentive, controlling, fearful, and rigid.

Some things that make me feel like my best person are:

The saying "Follow Your Bliss"

The Happy Woman Store - Everything in it - just being on the website - makes me happy.

I want to write these books (books that look and feel like this):

I want to be a person who puts these on her luggage, not because she WANTS to be fun and funky or is TRYING to be whimsical and delightful, but because she IS:

I am almost 40 and I want to be able to embrace it in the free "when I am an old woman, I shall wear purple" kind of a way (and I want to say words like "shall" in every day conversation that doesn't sound old fashioned and prude, but whimsical and funky). I want to be "old enough to smell the roses, young enough to be in love, and wise enough to let it be".

I DELIGHT in the saying "I am fairly certain that given a cap and a nice tiara, I could save the world."

I adore the work of photographer Tara Whitney, and her eye and the way she sees the world... she has a great professional website and also a great blog. I want to be like the people in all her photographs. Looking at them makes me jealous, I confess. I want to have chalkboard-faced cabinets in my kitchen and fun friends and kids who write on them. Ahhhh... just click and enjoy her eye and her brain and her.

As a Christian I feel guilty about liking "The Secret", but I do. I don't like or agree with all the new agey "we are all god" crap, but I DO like the reminders:

be grateful

what you focus on expands

you teach people how to treat you

when things hurt or are tough you ask "what can I learn from this"

live excited for the next great thing God is going to bring into your life

Ask. Believe. Receive.

I even like this encouraging video... It is a terrific daily reminder.

I adore Beth Moore's Bible teaching.... I am moved by God's bigness and goodness when I sit under her teaching (on DVD) and I also get a kick out of her Living Proof Ministries blog.

Helen Keller said 'Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.' Wow!... no really, Wow!... read that again.

'Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.'

Seriously?

My life is not a daring adventure right now... it is a fearful, closed little hermit crab of a life. I want to live a daring, reckless, wide open, breathless, full of wonder life!

I want to be a person that has people over to my home and yard to eat and laugh even if my house is not decorated perfectly or I don't have a pool or I am not a great cook... I just want there to be a spirit of home and hospitality.

Even though I am in an alcoholic marriage, there is still room for delight and whimsy and freedom. I feel like I will be grateful and blessed and OK if I can become this type of person... maybe I should give it a try and see...