Part 4 Continued, It Gets Even Worse

I started drinking more often and sometimes alone. Not every day but every few weeks I'd buy a bottle of wine and get drunk alone.  If my husband and I went out I always got drunk.   He always drove and never questioned it.   Sometimes he was drunk too but never like I was. 

I was dying inside, I had no God in my life, few friends. I was isolating myself from my mother and sisters because I was so ashamed of myself.    Then I got pregnant and my husband was livid.  He said it couldn't be his and he would find out who the father was and sue him for child support. I don't know how he thought he could do this as there were so many men. Also, the baby surely could have been his. He agreed to raise the baby but he would have a DNA test done and we would find out who the father really was.

One of the lowest points in my life was the day I walked into the abortion clinic.  At the time it seemed like the solution.  How could we raise a baby that might not be my husband's?  How would he treat this child?  How would I explain to the world that the father might not be my husband?  What damage might I have done drinking before I knew I was pregnant?  I lied to my husband and told him I miscarried.  He didn't question it, or the day I spent out of the house, or the time I spent in bed afterwards in pain as my baby died inside of me.  I got drunk the next day.  Very, very drunk.  I contemplated suicide but didn't have the guts to follow thru.  We never discussed the “miscarriage” and to this day I’ve never told anyone.  I will soon as I start Step 5 with my sponsor.

The hole in the donut was getting bigger and bigger.

My husband was angry when I told him I wouldn't work as a prostitute anymore. He told me that I better find another job before I quit what I was doing.  But I was so scared that I might get arrested, I feared being hurt by one of these strange men, I worried that someday my children would find out what their mother did for a living.  I felt so worthless and hopeless, and constantly had this dreadful fear that something bad was about to happen.  Little did I know at that time that my life had to get worse before it could get better.  I had yet to reach bottom.

Today as I am writing this and thinking back to that time I wonder why either of us thought this was a good idea? Why did I cower when he became angry at me for refusing to sell my body anymore? I still have a lot of anger towards him about allowing his wife to do that. But I know deep down inside I can’t blame him because I did it of my free will. He never forced me. But still there is that resentment.  But I am mostly angry at myself . I’m so pathetic to do something like that to please him. To think that I couldn’t find a better job where I wouldn’t lose what little self esteem I had left.

I didn’t find another job first. Soon after I deleted the photos from my website and shut it off. I threw out the prepaid cell phone I had used for making appointments. I was done. My husband didn’t say much about it. I guess he saw that I wasn't caving on this decision.

I didn’t want to do it, but with little job prospects I started working with him at his business. Not that it was going well at first as he had only started it a year ago  but we had managed to save a lot of the money I earned and it freed up some of his time to expand the business, we learned to put our two heads together and work towards a common goal.  In some ways it seemed like maybe, finally, I was getting my life on track. I did enjoy the work and it helped my self esteem to know I was contributing to society and my family’s income in a moral, legal, and positive way.

The swinging parties continued and by then I was getting drunk most Saturday nights. It didn’t bother me at all that my husband was sleeping with other women. There was a part of me that just didn’t care anymore.

Fast forward to the spring of 2008. We had started another business together (the previous one had made no money and we were forced to try something else)  and it was going well.   We were making good money! My home life seemed to be about the same, hubby was still at his porn, but no longer pestered me about going to swingers clubs.    But inside of me I felt dead. I was consumed with self loathing and shame. What I had done was not only immoral, it was illegal.   And I committed murder.

There is a lot of crap that I am leaving out. I don’t even know if anyone is reading this blog and some of the things that happened are not directly related to my alcoholism just more bizarre, crazy, nonsense that I felt sometimes would never end.  Like my husband’s foray into cross dressing and how he thought he might be bisexual for a while.  Thankfully he never acted out on it, at least not to my knowledge.

He also suffered from depression off and on throughout our marriage and while it was not the chronic, constant kind like I had, when he went thru his bouts he got very low.  A lot of times it happened in the winter so maybe he suffers from SADD.  Once he talked of suicide and I was so was so worried and scared for him, for all of us. I begged and pleaded and told him how much he was needed and loved and how the kids deserved to have a father and how our lives would forever change if he were out of it. He wouldn’t go to a doctor or therapy and he was better within a few weeks. And then years later, towards the end of my drinking, he had a suicide plan that involved a gun. The police brought him to the hospital and the doctors signed him in for 3 days against his will.

It was at this time in the spring of 2008 that I crossed the line between heavy drinking and not being able to stop. The next six months were a spiral downwards to a living hell.

I would stay up late and drink alone.  I’d vomit and swear never again and be back at it the next night.

Then I started drinking earlier and earlier each day and sometimes stayed in the bathroom in the morning after my shower chugging down wine or vodka in order to start my day. I went to my kids’ school functions and soccer games under the influence. I drove in the car drunk. I drove drunk with my children in the car.

By then the alcohol was playing havoc with my emotions. Sometimes it made me feel less stressed but more often it was making me severely depressed.

In Sept of 2008 I tried to kill myself.  My husband found me in bed with a plastic bag tied around my head. Thankfully he was there and for that I am forever grateful.  I guess it was not my time.  The next day he took me to the hospital (why not that night is a whole other story) and we met with people in the behavioral health department.  I had to talk to social workers, nurses, doctors.  They took vital signs and blood tests and asked a battery of questions.  Finally: "Do you drink alcohol?"  As I was ready to say no, a voice inside me said to spill it out and tell the truth.  I knew I needed help.  What I remember most about that night was the look of shock on my husband's face when I told the nurse that I had been drinking heavily and almost daily for months. Still to this day I don't know how my husband didn't know I was drinking, you would think he would have smelled it? I don't know.

They let me go home and suggested I go to therapy and or AA.  I went to a therapist, minimized the drinking, and whined about what an awful husband I had  (I never told her about any of the real issues that weighed heavily on my mind: the childhood abuse, the incest, the prostition or the abortion).  She told me I wasn't an alcoholic and had just abused it probably because of my relationship problems.  That's all I needed to hear.  See, I wasn't so bad after all.

For the next year I continued to sneak drink and by that time my preferred drink was vodka. Mostly the gallon plastic jugs so I never ran out.   Every so often hubby would find my hidden stash, I'd promise to quit, and instead just found better hiding places.

We fought a lot and sometimes slept in separate rooms. I didn't want to stop. Alcohol was my new best friend and no way was I giving up that. So round and round we went for another year of me drinking and him finding out.  Broken promises from me, threats of divorce from him.