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There is nothing remotely self-piteous in your words. You are the essence of strength. Every post from a survivor who has lost a precious loved one to alcoholism is an opportunity to heal, even if it is only for one day. I found this site while I was staying at a guest-house with my 16 year old daughter. I cried for eight hours straight. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I was crying for all the sadness and pain that is left in the wake of this horror. I will walk with each of you on this journey and together we will heal.
Thank you Roxi. We will all be here for each other.
It is so heartbreaking for those of us that are left behind. At the root of all of it is an intense lack of understanding for the nature of this addiction. I just keep feeling that we are good people who are blaming ourselves for deserting our most precious loved one in their most urgent hour of need. I myself feel as though I treated my husband’s alcoholism as a behavioral problem that he was submitting all of us to on a daily basis; and that all he needed to do was have the courage and conviction to quit. This belief of mine was born of ignorance and lack of understanding for the disease of alcoholism. It caused me to become angry and extremely intolerant. Its tentacles spread throughout the family. I yelled incessently at him and sometimes at my children like some heathen beast because I was so angry. But it was so much more complicated than that. It was bigger than all of us. To have that person gone; the I loved with every grain of my being is just such an attack on love and human dignity. In losing my husband I have become a more compassionate person. It is almost as though I have learned an invaluable lesson in the power of love and patience and understanding. I want to take that with me for the rest of my life and live in this new way with my beautiful husband guiding me every step of the way. I’m doing my masters in teaching at 55 years old and I am going to try and bring healing wherever I go from this point onwards.
Guilt is such a common theme in each of these stories. It is the kind of hopeless and pointless emotion that drags us back into despair and self-questioning. Many people urged me to leave my husband over the years but I never did. I stayed. Yes, I was angry and cruel sometimes but I was a normal human being who was dealing with a very abnormal situation. Sometimes my reactions to the deception were completely out of control. I believe that alcoholism distorts our normal thinking and throws our emotions into chaos so that we behave as different people. When alcoholism takes its final toll, we as the ones who loved our husbands with all our hearts are left holding all the wreakage from the past. But it is not good and it is not productive. We have to be strong for our children and for ourselves as well and we have to make it our priority to find a way back to healing and to life.
It is completely understandable and normal that you would miss him. In your husband, you saw a human being who despite the curse of alcoholism, you loved unconditionally and deeply. You spend more than three decades with him and you were compassionate despite the toughest of circumstances. I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. My situation was very similar. I was married for 30 years. I had three children with my husband. He was the love of my life. His earlier years battling alcoholism were much more severe and they left a permanent scar on me which I was apparently unable to erase from my mind. Towards the end, he had mellowed significantly. He was actually a lovely person. I feel as though I was the one who messed it all up. One night, I sensed that he had been drinking and I asked him how he could have done this to us again and I left the house with my daughter. He took his life that evening and that man who shared my life with me is gone.
It is such a sad sad thing to lose your love to a disease that systematically destroys any semblance of family and loyalty and love. There is no guidebook for us because our loss is colored by resentment, guilt and anger. I am glad I have found this space to express all of this. There is nothing rambling about your thoughts. Never ever feel that way. This is my first day to this group but I have a feeling it will be a place of healing.
Thank you so much for sharing your story.