I don’t know too many details, but the Monday before last, I was at work and the ex sent me an IM. I hadn’t heard from him in awhile but sometimes no news is good news. He simply told me, ‘I didn’t want to bother you, but I got in a fight the other night.’ Well, all of the undoing and removing and distancing I’ve done over the last 18 months or so got completely erased and I felt a familiar but frightening wash of panic sweep over me.
It turns out that he walked a few blocks from the apartment to a bar where a lot of young people hang out. I am close to 40 so this is anyone younger than me 😉 Anyway, I didn’t want too many details, but he was likely blacked out and running his mouth and some “meathead” kicked his ass. My ex is not a big guy at all. He’s 5’9″ if he stands up straight and the most I’ve ever known him to weigh was 165 and there’s no way he weighs that much now. It wouldn’t have taken too much to beat him up in a drunken stupor. He told me that his eye was black and blue and completely closed up; he said he was worried about his legs; that his knees were pretty bad. I kept asking if he was OK or needed medical attention an he said no, that he was just sad and lonely and went out someplace he had no business being. Now, I understand there are consequences but there is a sliver of me that just feels so bad for him. I don’t want him to have to live sad and alone and get beat up (I mean, what is this? Who gets BEAT UP?) and it’s just all so pathetic. I also know though, that I cannot help or save him and I told him that repeatedly that morning. I expressed to him that I was sorry that it happened and that he puts himself through that misery. I also told him I am happy he was OK and hadn’t been killed. He apologized but I told him he had no need to apologize to me; that all I ever wanted for him was to see him be able to live happily and sober.
He also went on about how he cannot keep lying to himself that he can do this, so he is planning on going back to rehab. He said he shouldn’t have left in the first place, but again I say if I got scabies somewhere and also lived with bedbugs, no amount of coaxing could have made me stay, but that’s just me. He said he was meeting with them again that Wednesday for an assessment and he went. I think the wheels are again in motion for him to go back in there. Maybe third time’s a charm.
That would leave me with a messy apartment, lots of furniture I don’t have room for, his personal belongings that I don’t want to throw away nor be responsible for and of course – and this is the one thing that will bring me to tears – my two cats that are left. I am going to have to try to figure out a way to have one of them and have asked a couple friends to be on the lookout for a home for the other. It all just seems so final and that is what I want, but my whole life I have turned away from conflict or things that make me uncomfortable and this situation sits at the peak of my mountain of situations that make me feel anxious, uncomfortable and fearful. I lost sleep about it and when I finally opened up to my boyfriend about it he said he would help me move furniture, clean, whatever I need. I know he will, too; it’s not just lip service. But it’s going to be a lot and it’s going to open wounds I’m sure, and it will be time consuming to the point that I will likely have to take time off of work that I don’t want to.
I suppose it’s all a part of a work in progress which is me getting my life back and him attempting to stay alive. It is me in the process of moving on after having stuck myself in pretty deep for almost sixteen years. I have a lot and I mean a LOT of work to do but at least I have not gone back like I had so many times in the past.
The Alcoholic Marriage 