Dear Drunk Girl,
The shock will eventually wear off, and in time relief will
take its place as it should. For two
years you pretzled yourself into a twisted version of the real you...
In the beginning it was as if every prayer you had ever sent
heavenward had been answered. A kind,
sweet, emotionally present man who was intent on pleasing you in every way. You talked for hours and hours about
everything, mostly about how his 26 year long marriage had ended abruptly with
his wife leaving him for another man. He
immediately folded you into the warmth of his family, suddenly you had a full life
again, with your oldest son absolutely loving this wonderful man. He did more for you physically than you could
ever have imagined possible. From moving you to trimming trees to helping at construction jobs to power washing your driveway to showing up with heavy bags
of dog food to fixing your toilet and a million other things he staggered you
with his sweet consideration. You were literally
glowing with happiness, people commented on how beautiful you looked. You felt loved in every way, and so
ecstatic to have found your soul mate at last. As you held hands and sat in church together and prayed, you thanked God for this wonderful man.
Sure, there was some adjusting to be done. You had to be available every Friday night for
Date Night at six o’clock without discussion, and it was not optional. With a work
schedule from Hell, you were stressed beyond being able to function
because your jobs close out on Fridays and getting home at 4:45 to shower,
change, walk the dogs, sweep up the insane amount of dog hair that was
perpetually tumble weeding across the hardwood floors, and be ready to go
exactly at 6:00 was incredibly difficult.
Still, you loved him and you were willing to make that effort, even when you
found yourself screaming at your employees periodically and letting payroll slide
from Fridays to Mondays. You had learned the hard way how important punctuality was to him. So in beautiful dresses you couldn't afford you let yourself be
swept up for dinners that were never less than $150 every Friday night, with an
over abundance of wine, deserts, after dinner drinks, piano bar drinks, drinks
at home before bed…somehow the drinking just got out of hand. It was like being in college again and he
never judged or limited you, though most nights you passed out on the way home
from the exhausting work week and the alcohol.
The voice in the back of your head that said “enough Kelly” was silenced
by yet another bottle of the expensive French wine you had begun to love. Soon the scale started to creep up,
from 112 to 115 to finally 122 pounds.
All that wine, all that food, the sheer gluttony of it was now reducing you to someone who could no longer tuck a blouse in. Finally you got him to change the time to 7:00 but still...some Fridays it would have been nice to rent a movie and order a pizza and cuddle on the couch with him.
Drinking also made it easier to listen to him talk about his
ex wife incessantly. If you walked into a
place they had been you got to hear how Debbie did or did not like something about
it, or listen to an anecdote about something that happened to the two of them there. Every trip was a place he had taken
her first, and you were regaled with story after story about the two of them. At first you just listened thinking that it had
only been two years and he was still processing. After all Debbie was apparently perfect in
every way, and it seemed he was still reeling from the unexpected betrayal. But on and on it went, and every reference to
her began to pile up like tiny little grenades. And when they finally blew, it was not
pretty. You ranted, raved, sobbed, staggered
off, screamed “F--- You!” That first time he
gave you the silent treatment for two days, until you dramatically showed up at his house, begging forgiveness
and crying, pleading for him to take you back. And so it began. Every time you showed passion or emotion he would withdraw, and tell you he had to think about himself first so he was taking a step back. You remember thinking "how much further back could you get?" So you towed the line, tried to never have emotions, to be more "Debbie Like" in every way, to be perfect because the threat was always there that he would just dump you if he decided he was done. You never had an opinion, worked until 2 or 3 in the morning during the weeks he booked trips for you, staggered into jobs hung over a lot because everything revolved around drinking. He and his friends could swill three or four bottles of red wine at dinner, then there was the after party. You were drinking white wine, but you kept up. Always the ex wife was there in spirit, either he was ruminating about something to do with the divorce or he was making observations about their past life. If you couldn't be where he wanted you to be when he wanted you there he went alone. You drove yourself to a lot of his family events, in the midst of work problems, moving, your kids being in town. You carefully cultivated relationships with his kids, trying to get a foothold. But in the end his oldest daughter had to listen to you sob and lament his treatment of you to the point you finally knew you were in deep trouble. She looked at you with pity and said "It shouldn't be this hard."
He no longer looked at you with love and trust, and you no longer
trusted yourself not to become that insane, jealous, screaming drunk girl. So you started therapy. He was happy you were going to "fix yourself " , which
is a direct quote. So time went on, you
did date night and drank and traveled and laughed and drank and took the boat out and drank and cooked at
his house and drank…you were both so uncomfortable with each other for
so many reasons by then that was the only way to be together was numb from wine. Still, you believed you loved him, and you were adamant that he was going to forgive you for being emotional so then he would love you again and it would feel the way it used to. He called all the shots though, was always in
control. He would never ever see you during
the week, sometimes canceled plans for Friday if something better came up, went
on little trips with people without discussing it with you, letting you know after
the fact what he had planned for the weekend and with who, excluded you from his normal social stuff and the big stuff like surgery. You began to think you really were crazy, while he told you over and over how much he loved you, he would then slide into a mean brooding
mood and give you the silent treatment, then casually he would mention you two getting married and building a house, then talk about where he was moving to alone, then ogle other women at
bars, then exclude you from a family event or go to a different church with
other people out of the blue. It was like
existing in a world made entirely of jello.
The beginning of the real end to this sad love story was
when his daughter got engaged. For eight
LOOOONG months all you had crammed down your throat was his ex wife, by their
entire family. Not one conversation could
begin or end without her being brought up. Everyone had so much anxiety over this nondescript woman and her hill billy family who had betrayed and devastated their family. His mood swings were getting worse, so much
of it was about the amount of money involved in the wedding, but always there was an
undercurrent of sadness that she was going to be attending the wedding with the guy
she had left him for. It was combined with a very real and very scary anger. You kept thinking “what the hell? I am beautiful, I love him, we have been
together for a year and a half…why can’t he just LET GO of her and be happy
with me?” You weren’t getting anything you
needed any more at all, not attention, love, support, or communication. You became his counselor, his sounding board, his best friend. You
wrote his speech for the wedding, a nasty letter to his ex for him, managed the anxiety his daughter had, decorated her house for the
bridal shower. In doing so you lost all confidence in yourself, aided by his never ending criticism and the awareness that you were never
going to measure up to Debbie in his mind. All of this culminated into a frustration and anger that finally reared its ugly head at the wedding. It was a complete disaster, it was probably the lowest you have ever sunk. You allowed Debbie and her terrible, ugly, timeless power over Mike to
turn you into a drunk, screaming, crying mess. If you need a visual just rent the movie "Bridesmaids" and fast forward to the cringe worthy wedding shower scene. You remember saying to everyone the next day, “he will never forgive me”…and
he didn’t.
So you did your time, you did five months of his withdrawal, his
snide comments, his distance, being left out of family get togethers, his hot and cold emotions , his passive aggressive abuse. He showed you a picture on his phone of the girl he said he hoped he would end up with, he casually mentioned how his friends really liked his ex girlfriend, he stated for the trillionth time he wanted his wife and family back. Ten days ago you went on your Facebook and found
out he was looking up a woman he had met at a party he had intentionally
excluded you from, and you felt a sense of intense
shock. Things weren't great but you had travel plans lined up
through February. You had talked about
your future, you had mixed your families together. When you confronted him at
dinner that night he told you to “fucking shut up!" … and that’s where it
ended. He told you he would never marry "a person like you" so he was cutting you loose.
You loved him. Why were you that person trying so hard to feel loved for so long by someone who was obviously still in love with someone else? I think you will find someone who is healed and whole and have a healthy relationship with him....or maybe you will just be happy alone. Either way it is better than being Drunk Girl.
