I was getting ready to leave when there was a knock on the door. It was a salesman who just wanted a "minute of my time" to sell us some TV add on. I told him I really didn't have much time but Ok. I was getting anxious. My husband hadn't showed up yet and we were discouraged from bringing our children to the conferences. Finally, my husband arrived just as the salesman was leaving. Immediately he went into his anger and accused me of having an affair. He was intimidating and hostile and drunk. I simply had to leave. The kids pulled me aside and asked me not to leave them with him tonight. I agreed and told them to get their jackets and I would take them with me. On the way to the school we made a plan that they would play on the swings near the classroom and they were to stay together and not leave that area until I came to get them. They were also instructed that if they were in danger for any reason they should come to the classroom where I was. It should be only 15 minutes which an 8 and 10 year old should be able to do. When I came back after the conference they were doing exactly what I told them to do. I was proud of us for doing what we needed to do. We were a team. We left for home. By that time my husband was passed out drunk and asleep. I got the kids ready for bed. I was relieved that we didn't come home to an argument or assault. Since I had lived with drunkenness and the irresponsibility of my father when I was growing up, I thought my children would be able to cope as I had. The love of my mother got me through and my love would pull them through. I couldn't have been more wrong. My father, although an alcoholic, was not a narcissistic psychopath like my husband, and therein was the difference unrecognized.
After a 4 month hospital stay my dad had come home and transferred to a hospital nearer to me. I was the contact now for this stage of his treatment and I went every other day or so to check on him and relate his progress to my mother. It was so difficult because the drive was about 30 miles one way and it was usually after work. I would get dinner ready and then leave to take care of my dad. The kids were left with their father but I didn't see any signs of problems during that time. Common sense should have told me that was a fairy tale but I had so much on my plate that some things just weren't' in focus. Looking back, I am convinced that he used this time to disparage me to them. Why else would he be so easy to get along with about my leaving him with the children? He was always so opposed to taking care of them for any reason because he thought I was shirking my duties if I left them.
A call came in to my work. My father had had a seizure and was in intensive care. The staff told me to go and that they had me covered. I ran home and got the kids lined up with friends and left for the hospital. I was sure he was dying. I called my mom. She needed to be there, now! She drove over. He eventually recovered but I was feeling drained. A job, a family, my parents, an uncooperative husband and no way out was taking its toll. I told my husband that I was getting off this merry-go-round and he started acting defensively hostile. That confession was a big mistake.
I had a talk with my mother and I told her that we needed to make different arrangements for dad as they didn't seem to be paying good attention to him at this hospital. They seemed to keep him overly medicated. I felt like he had been warehoused there. She made the decision to take him to a convalescent center in their home town. This was a heart wrenching time. We continued to face adversity and unrest. Everything would be different now. No matter what we did we couldn't turn back the hands of time and erase the consequences of a lifetime of severe alcoholism; not only on the alcoholic but on all the lives he touched. There was a price to pay and we would all pay it in our own way. Even though we knew the odds were against us, hopes ran high for a cure and a return to sanity, or at least to a new normal. There was a lesson in this for me about the devastating effects of substance abuse on an enabler and co- dependents. The love lost on an addict is love lost: they simply cannot return it. You are left with a hole in your heart that you must fill on your own. I watched my mother suffer the truth of this. I wasn't far behind. It would take me most of my life to heed it.
With my plans for escape being derailed, I had to think fast. In order to go to counseling I used the excuse that my dad's illness was overwhelming for me and so my husband didn't suspect that it was actually my relationship with him that was the catalyst for therapy. I needed to regain some strength.
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