February 2020

For the first time in over a year I was working full time again.  It was great.  I was super busy, between directing a musical and working full time, trying to take care of a house and as many as four kids. But it was good busy, happy busy.  

Then the relapse.  It was what I feared when I told the boyfriend I wasn’t ready for him to come home from rehab.  I knew I wasn’t ready.  I was pretty sure he wasn’t.  Before I found out I was right things were pretty good.  I managed my stress as well as I always had - that stress about never really being sure you’re going to get everything done on time.  I was getting back into the swing of our family life, the game nights, trips, cooking for everyone.  It was the family life I had always imagined was possible but never quite had.  I had almost created the peaceful, loving, safe home I’d been trying to create for so long.  Well, we had it, for a time.

And then the relapse.  He didn’t come home and I couldn’t get him on the phone.  The tears didn’t come right away but I knew what was happening.  If he’d been sober he would have answered.  I knew where he’d been all day, at the hospital at his program, so it wasn’t too difficult to find him.

When my son got home that night he asked where he was.  He’d dealt with the drinking before and was resigned to it.  Had even asked, when I was deciding to let the boyfriend back home, “What about if he drinks again?” My son had said, “Well that’s just who he is, we will deal with it”.  I wondered aloud if we should go get him and my son was game.

I drove the car with the boyfriend alternating between sleeping and awake and pissed.  I said nothing to him the entire way home.  

The next morning he was apologetic.  He felt awful.  He was grateful we came to get him.

He relapsed once more before the month was over, on Valentine’s Day no less.  He had two cards, hastily scribbled.  One that seemed like it was for me, one that didn’t seem like something he’d get me at all.  My spidey sense tickled.  I did nothing.  What to do in any case, ask directly and you get a direct denial.  Beat around the bush and you get cleverly worded excuses.  The fact is, I hate to admit, I didn’t want to know.  I wanted my family back.

I spent the second half of the month stressed out.  When my doctor suggested I start on Paxil I didn’t argue, I just said yes.

January 2020

We called 2019, “The Year That Shit Got Real”.  That was because when my boyfriend and I met we worked at jobs in a tumultuous company run by a man we suspect was a narcissist and megalomaniac.  The guy man never met a conversation he didn’t overtake.  There was never a good idea that eventually become his own.  And he was constantly threatening to fire someone, and did, fire many people in my nearly four years with the company.

We made it through that experience, dating under the radar (our boss was against us being together) and in secret from our respective children.  Both of us wanted to be careful not to introduce our children to a relationship with either of us or the other children, that didn’t work out.  So, we were careful.  Very careful.  We took it slow introducing his son to my two kids and getting all five of us together.  Once we finally all got together it clicked and worked much of the time.  Our children became more than friends, they became siblings.  

We made it through months of this bliss until July 4th.  There was a pool party.  Then a drive home in separate cars.  Then the viewing of fireworks from my backyard.  And the sudden and gut wrenching realization that he was drunk.

Between the pool party and getting to my backyard he drank enough to become extremely intoxicated.  

Now, one would think when hearing his explanation (after the fireworks were through of course, nothing interrupts my fireworks!) you would think I would have cut it off right there and kicked him out.  But being a co-dependent I doubled down on his pronouncement that he was an alcoholic and invited him to live with us.  So Al Anon am I, that I was convinced I could “handle” it I could control the situation enough that everything would be alright.

My boyfriend spent most of 2019 in rehab.  Two different rehabs.  It was tough getting him in and tough being apart all that time.  But I managed to keep things as normal as I could for the kids, keep our little blended family together and positive.  

At the end of 2019 the rehab was ready to send him home but I was not ready for him to be home.  He had come home for a weekend in October and I suspected he had been drinking.  But he denied it.  By December I knew he was intermittently drinking. Yes, in rehab.  We even broke up on the phone for about 10 minutes while he was drunk one night.  It was the year that shit got real.  But true to my co-dependent self, I begged him not to give up on us and the family that was waiting for him.  I should have probably.  And after that night, driving home from the FedEx store I missed going to because they closed while I was arguing with him on the phone for two hours, I vowed that if he ever broke up with me again, I’d let him.  Maybe shit really did get real for me in 2019.

January 2020 rolls into place and my boyfriend arrives home from rehab.  I am at first nervous, but as things go well we quickly fall into a wonderful routine of family, work, games, ping pong in the garage.  He relapses once.  My son and I go collect him.  I put it aside, try not to worry.  Work and recreation carry on.  He buys a fish tank.  His son is with us often.  It’s beautiful and I am happy and hopeful.  He does well, goes to meetings, even starts eating better.  Gets a sponsor.  

It’s all gonna be OK.