23 years ago May 15, I sobered up... for what is hopefully the last time

[SPKrazy]

Dayum this has been a roller coaster of a year.

I don't know if I imagined it would be like this last year, the year before surely not.

I am feeling more... hurting more... but I'm alive! I am feeling like I am no longer numb from letting myself feel trapped and unhappy while smiling on the outside (much of the time anyway)

I'm like a damned 12 year old though, I realize so many things I think I put in cryopreservation 20 years ago when I got together with the woman who will soon be my ex wife. Not that she is a terrible person at all.

I realize that in actuality, I was sober what, 3 years? At the time I met her she was at her first Alanon meeting, there to deal with issues that had nothing to do with me. So we became immediately enmeshed, obsessed with each other. I realize now that she never really had the chance to deal with what she went there to deal with. She stayed involved in Alanon, but something was lost when we got together. I never thought of myself as having done anything "wrong", I never realized that I had been in a situation that I shouldn't have been in. Who knows, things work out the way they are supposed to for the most part. At any rate, somewhere along the way I crawled inside myself and went numb. Without drugs and alcohol, I used food and sex to numb myself more. So things went on, and finally came to a point where an awareness came to me, a thawing out of sorts, that helped explain a lot to me. So this last year and a half have been very painful, because it is not like I'm leaving someone I don't care about, it is that we are splitting up because we have now both realized that our love was lost somewhere along the way and it can't be retrieved any more to put it together again. In all of that we have an 8 year old son that both of us love very much. He is the focal point of my life today. He is a miracle in fact as he is an IVF baby and is a wonderful kid. It breaks my heart to see that my folly, no our folly created a world that he was born into and now that changes. He seems to be accepting that our separation is not temporary. I know it is hard for him. It is hard for both of us to let him go to the other. It has gotten a little easier, but in reality, it is still very much a situation where when I drop him off, I want to leave as soon as possible because I know he isn't coming home with me.

I'm SPK, and I'm an alcoholic, an addict, and a human being worthy of searching for happiness and that means even if that happiness has to come about through the severing of a 20 year marriage so that both of us can find ourselves, or at least have the chance to do so again.

thanks for reading, I appreciate everyone here, and am so glad that when I come to DU, I am also just a mouse click away from an online meeting!

:grouphug:

:hug: :hug: :hug:

:loveya:

[NMDemDist2]

1. ....

:hug:

I love ya man, as do so many here.

:pals:

[SPKrazy]

3. I love ya too AZ

:hug:

and yer hubby!

thanks

:hug:

[KitchenWitch]

2. Congratulations!

Life on life's terms is often interesting and painful. But you and I both know if you stick with it, you will grow in ways that you cannot even fathom right now.

:hug: :loveya:

[SPKrazy]

4. It's worked so far

so I think I'll stick with it

:hug:

:loveya:

[laylah]

5. ...

:hug::loveya: Hang in there, SPK! Congrats on the years of sobriety. I look forward to when I can say such words. I am so sorry for your pain. I know about the "smiling on the outside"...I have gotten tired of feeling I need to be "on" so, I am just me now, as are you...and a wonderful you at that.

My name is Jennifer, and I'm an alcoholic who is so very grateful for you, et al in this wonderful forum.

[SPKrazy]

6. Hi Jennifer!

its one day at a time, I never would have thought I'd be saying I had 23 years of sobriety. It sounded awful at one point to be happy about it. One day at a time life circumstances change, sometimes for the better and sometimes they turn south, but the great news is that YOU get better, and if you stay sober and work the steps, you will be able to comprehend the word serenity and know peace and will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle you. Right now I'm baffled by a lot of things and the weird thing is that I KNOW how I ought to handle them but I keep doing things that are perhaps not so wise. One day at a time Jennifer.

:hug: :loveya:

my name is steve and I'm an alcoholic

[laylah]

7. ...

:hug: :loveya:

[Critters2]

8. Love ya, SPK!!

:hug:

[SPKrazy]

9. You too Critters!

:hug:

:loveya:

;)

[old mark]

10. Steve, keep on keepin'on.

I celebrated 20 years back on March 10, and have been through some awful times in those years.
I can not imagine how much worse parts of the last 20 would have been if I had been drinking.
Of course, I would not have been alive to complain about it.

Today will be a better day, and maybe tomorrow better yet.

You know how it goes by now, just keep going.

mark

[Justpat]

11. I don't know how I missed this thread.

But please accept my belated congrats on your anniversary.

Dealing with our stuff at a day at a time we can survive and grow.

Hang in there. You are much loved here.


:hug:

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. You know, this is a heart-warming place to visit, even for a piker, and dyed-in-the wool

teetotaller. Or as my bibulous uncle Derek used to call my breed, Reccabites. Biblical, apparently. Well, I hope you're all permanently on the wagon, of course.

It's also at times a little sort of awe-inspiring, reading the trials and tribulations which people like southpawkicker and old mark went through, but also people's anguish at their temporary failures.

As one of our wretched telecoms companies in the UK puts it in their ads: "It's good to talk". But talking from the heart of matters of the heart is something else again, isn't it? Long may we blether away to our heart's content.