Lessons

I’m still I’m the belly of the beast, i.e. at my boyfriend’s, which was also my very favorite drinking place. Today is Saturday and I’ve been here since Thursday evening watching my boyfriend continue to drink.

I felt bad for him yesterday as I watched him feel miserable from the previous night’s binge. He tried desperately to feel better but as the day went on, I could see that he was going to drink to make himself feel physically better. Boy can I relate. The cycle of drink then try to sober up only to realize that the easiest thing to do is to drink to get the horrible feelings to go away. The old “hair of the dog” remedy that’s shoved down our throats from the time before we’re even old enough to drink.

I honestly felt horrible watching him sip his beer and watched with fascination as he morphed before my eyes into a completely different person. Was this how I acted when I was drinking?

I went to bed feeling fairly glad that I resisted throwing it all away to feel normal. I say fairly because I hadn’t convinced myself totally.

I woke up at 3:30am to find that he was back to trying to feel good again. Ugh. He knew that I was disappointed. I sat stewing in my own vile feelings of jealousy over not being able to drink. We talked about it and I cried tears of frustration. It’s not supposed to be this hard at 126 days.

I didn’t waste too much time before I got over it and decided that it’s really not my business what he does. I can only control myself and how I react to him even after he told me again how sad he is that I won’t drink with him. He wants the uninhibited me that comes with copious amounts of vodka. It’s pretty hard not to feel self conscious when only one of you is sober and resenting it.

Watching him drink brought some questions to my mind about whether my drinking has to do with him. I’m not blaming him for my drinking problem. But, he has enabled me to drink. I initially started drinking around him because it was easier than dealing with him sober as he drank himself into becoming more of an adolescent. I became his drinking buddy. A buddy that couldn’t keep up with him but tried desperately until I blacked out almost every time I drank in the last 2 years.

My black outs were not because I passed out. It was like I started drinking and the first hour was amazing. I became happy and carefree. The next several hours became a blank even though I’m told that I was awake and participated as though I was aware of my surroundings. After hours of what I can only guess was me falling down and getting really nasty and vile, I would go to bed. A few hours later I was back up with the most horrible anxiety I’d ever experienced. The only way to make it stop was to start drinking again. And so begins the vicious cycle of binge drinking.

I’m realizing that while I’ve always drank too much when I boozed, he is the only factor in my life that makes me want to drink. I don’t have issues at any other time. Again, I’m not blaming him but I’m wondering why I only feel like binge drinking when I’m around him when he’s drinking. We get along very well when we’re both sober.

The question I’m asking myself is what lesson am I supposed to learn by continuing to put myself through this torture? I do know I love him with all my heart. We both know that something in our relationship has to change. I don’t know if it will be him not drinking or me not being part of his life.

Oh, and fuck you, Wolfie!! You’re not going to win. At least not today.