Parallel Booziverse

Christmas day happened kind of as I predicted with my wife drinking pretty much non-stop from 6:30AM until she came into the lounge at around 5:00PM wearing her pyjamas and announced that she was going to bed. Our parents were still here at that point having visited us for Christmas Dinner (which went well for a change) and obviously after a few strained moments they decided to make their respective ways home. My wife passed out for the night shortly after they left, leaving me and the kids to enjoy the rest of the evening playing with their presents and watching Christmas TV so all in all we had a good time, it’s just a shame my wife wasn’t about to share it.

Christmas Day was just the start of what turned out to be a three day binge. This only ended because she had to return to work on the 28th and she definitely had a significant amount of alcohol still on board when she drove to work that morning. She promised me that she would walk to work but took the car instead while I was getting the kids organised.

New Years Eve we had no invites anywhere (surprise surprise) and she made it to 8:30PM before passing out on the couch. I tried to wake her at midnight but it took about 15 minutes for her to come round. She complained that there were not many fireworks this year and refused to believe that she had missed them all because she had been unrousable. She had no recollection of this conversation in the morning and her mind had just filled in the blanks to give her total recall of everything that happened, including the “amazing fireworks”. This happens all the time, she invents a series of events which fit in with her view of “how things are” which bear absolutely no relation to what actually happened and this then becomes her official history and if reality does not correlate then reality has got it wrong and I am obviously lying.

Denial

We had a frank discussion about my wife’s drinking this week. She wanted to know what my problem was and why I don’t show enough affection to her any more. I laid my soul bare, said that I was struggling to cope with her constant drinking and how it breaks my heart to see her drunk every night. She replied that doesn’t think she has a problem with alcohol and that she “deserves” a drink now and then, what with all she has to put up with. I showed her the ten empties in the kitchen which had accumulated over the past three days and asked if she thought that drinking over three bottles of wine a night was normal behaviour. She denied that she had drunk that much. Well it wasn’t me I replied, which is true, I haven’t drunk wine for over six months as the very thought of it repulses me. I have had the occasional beer on rare nights out but the smell of wine now makes me feel physically ill. This conversation seems to have had absolutely no effect whatsoever. My wife is in complete denial about her behaviour. Her self image is of the perfect mother and wife who enjoys the odd glass of wine now and than and bears no relation to the pissed-up wreck who is at this moment passed out in our bed upstairs, snoring and farting, covered in red blotches and stinking the room out with the smell of stale alcohol and sour grapes.

She has finished work for the holidays now (I don’t finish ’till Christmas eve), so the week of all-day drinking has begun. The best I can do is to make sure the kids have a good time and are shielded from the worst of it. We have her parents and my mother coming round to spend Christmas day with us. I’m dreading it already. Not because we don’t all get on but because I know that she will be completely drunk by mid-day and things will go downhill from there on until she passes out on the sofa and every one exchanges uneasy glances until excuses are made and they leave. This is probably the best we can hope for.

Dear Reader, I hope you have a good Christmas. If you are a problem drinker reading this, spare a thought for your family and loved ones, the best present you could possibly give them is yourself. If they are still with you then it is because they love you and they have hope that you can get yourself well. If you are the partner of an alcoholic then my very best wishes, I hope you have a peaceful Christmas.

Party

Four bottles of wine today, I lost count yesterday but she drank enough to be almost comatose hanging off the edge of our bed last night; fully clothed with her pants round her ankles. She was unrousable and I left her there and slept on the couch, she came to at about 2:30AM, I could hear her stumbling around. The kids were staying with my mother as we had been invited to the birthday party of one of our oldest friends, which was a surprise in itself as we haven’t had much contact since a drunken episode around 18 months ago. My wife had been drinking solidly all afternoon and was pretty loaded by the time we arrived at the party. We only stayed a couple of hours and I called a taxi when my wife’s behaviour started to get more & more erratic. She could barely walk to the front door when we arrived home and staggered upstairs and collapsed in the heap in which I found her five minutes later.

The worst of it for me though was the look of sympathy for me from a one time close friend. Our eyes met for an instant as we were leaving and the expression on his face just said “nothing’s changed then?” That’s partly true, my wife still cannot control her drinking but I am no longer under the illusion that I can control it for her. My role is to protect and provide for my kids. My wife will only get better when she really wants to and that is a decision that she has to make for herself. On recent evidence though, that doesn’t seem to be imminent. I returned a wan smile with a non-committal shrug, made my excuses and left. I think it was Pink Floyd who said “quiet desperation is the English way”.

On a (slightly) related note, one friend who I was hoping to see was not at the party, his cancer has relapsed and he started palliative chemotherapy this week and will be lucky to see Christmas. His mother died on Thursday (also of cancer). He will leave behind three young daughters and a doting wife, which kind of puts my troubles into perspective.

Crap

My wife has gained another alcohol related injury to add to an already bloated list. My Son and I went to a concert at the weekend leaving my Daughter safely tucked up in bed and my wife to her own devices. She had already begun drinking before we left at 6:30pm which is nothing out of the ordinary but she obviously had quite a party after we left as there were another three empties in the kitchen when we got back at around 11:00 and she was passed out upstairs in a cloud of her foul smelling vapours. The following day I noticed that her hand was bruised and she revealed that she had slipped over the night before and landed awkwardly on her wrist. She pulled back her sleeve and she has extensive bruising extending from her hand, halfway up her forearm. This is pretty run of the mill for one of her drunken falls as she bruises really easily, probably as a result of liver damage as the liver is responsible for the manufacture of clotting proteins. A few years ago I would have been worried about the extent of bruising and taken her to the A&E dept fearing that she had broken her wrist but I am now so used to the appearance of this type of injury following drunken stumbles that I know that it is only bruising  (plus she has full range of movement and no neurological deficit, so don’t worry folks) which looks alarming at first but will clear up in about a week.

If we rewind about a week then there was another “incident” which followed a rare night out with friends. We rarely go out into town mostly as a result of losing most of our friends over the past few years due to my wife’s erratic behaviour and also because she starts drinking as soon as possible and is usually in no fit state to do anything by around 8:00pm especially at weekends when she doesn’t have trivial things like work to get in the way of her drinking. Anyway, we had been out and had a good time; I had even had a couple of drinks which is unusual as I now never drink at home. My wife had obviously had more than that and was pretty drunk even by her standards. We got home, paid the babysitter and my wife staggered up the stairs to bed. I stayed behind to make myself a cup of tea before I went to bed. While I was waiting for the kettle to boil I could hear a scrubbing noise coming from our bathroom (which is directly above the kitchen). I thought that she had probably vomited and was attempting to clean it up so I went upstairs to see if she was alright. It was much worse however. In her drunken stupor she had lost control of her bowels and was busy trying to clean up both herself and the bathroom floor with a whole bottle of shampoo and a towel. She seemed to think this was really funny. I did not see the funny side of her shitting all over the place and then spreading it about while giggling to herself. What a wonderful end to an evening out…I don’t think.

Damp Squib

It’s 10:00PM and once again I find myself sat alone in front of the TV. Kids safely tucked up in bed, wife passed out in a drunken stupor in our bed. All in all a pretty normal Saturday. We had some fireworks in the garden earlier this evening as it was bonfire night this week. I let off the Roman candles and rockets while the kids watched from a safe distance and my wife stood swaying on the deck with the ever present wine glass in her hand.  It was a nice moment, I got to set fire to things and blow stuff up for a bit and the kids enjoyed the flashes and bangs. But always at the back of my mind were memories of better times when we actually had some friends and we used to go to each others houses and club together to get some really big fireworks, maybe have a barbecue or a big pan of Lancashire hotpot with some red cabbage and baked potatoes and make a real night out of it. But in the last few years all of our friends seem have drifted away as my wife’s behaviour at these sort of occasions got more and more out of control. At first I’m sure she seemed the life and soul of the party, good fun to have around but eventually people just don’t want an unpredictable drunk around their kids. Especially when arguments start based on imagined insults and we always seemed to be the ones leaving early because of my wife being “unwell” or too upset. So now we exist as an isolated unit mostly devoid of any social interaction.

So the fireworks are all done now, just soggy charred cardboard tubes lying on the wet grass. I’ll clear them up in the morning and we’ll carry on as normal like we always do. One day I may grow the balls to end all of this, but for now I’ll keep my own counsel and quietly lament the life we used to have before the alcohol took over.