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.

Manipulation

My wife’s father turned 70 last week. A party had been planned at a local restaurant for all the family, which he was going to pay for. My wife got it into her head that this would be a terrible idea and that the party should be held at our house. She harangued her father so much that he gave in and agreed that every one should come to our house and gave my wife the money to cover the cost of the food, he also brought five bottles of wine round two days before the party, guess what…?

…Yes of course she drank the wine, which I had to replace. She spent the majority of the money her father had given her on booze and I had to foot the cost for the rest of the food. I’m not complaining about funding her father’s party, the guy is basically OK and we get along. what I object to is the way my wife manipulated her parents into giving her money which she spent mainly on alcohol for herself and also because she was worried about going out for a social occasion where she would not be able to drink her normal copious volumes of booze without arousing suspicion. She made some chicken liver pate for the party which required a tablespoon of brandy in it, so of course she had to buy a bottle of brandy (when a small miniature would have done) in addition to the rest of the drink she bought. It lasted a day.

Of course, people brought bottles of wine and beer etc with them and our fridge was overflowing with booze that in the event hardly anyone touched (with the obvious exception). I didn’t drink a drop, her mother doesn’t drink, my niece was driving; in fact only my wife, her father and my niece’s boyfriend were drinking. Needless to say we were left with lots of excess alcohol in the house. It’s not there now, and not because I threw it away like I should have done but because my wife has been like a kid in a sweet shop.

Predictably, there have been no bullshit errands this month as my wife through her manipulation of her extended family has managed to secure both funds and free alcohol.

Resentment rides high

I’m feeling very resentful about my situation at the moment. I’m really tired of the daily routine of my wife drinking every night until she passes out and then spending the rest of the night by myself watching crap TV until I have to go to bed and try to get to sleep next to the snoring drink-sodden wreck in the bed in a room which stinks of stale alcohol and shit. My wife’s “diet” of junk food and booze means that she farts constantly and it’s disgusting. I resent having to put up with this night after night, but on the other hand on the rare occasions she is only drunk (and therefore conscious) rather than paralytic I find myself wishing that she would just leave me alone.

Also we’re into that period where she has run out of money and has to come up with daily excuses to borrow money from me to go to the supermarket on some bullshit errand in order to stock up on booze. She has tried this every day for the past two weeks. The first time, I was stupid enough to give her my bank card and she spent over £100; mainly on drink. For the past week I have been trying to second guess what supplies she will say we have run out of and buying them on my way home from work in order to magically produce them when she informs me of our tragically low levels of milk/bread/fabric softener/orange juice/cat food etc. I had some limited success with this approach but in the end she just borrowed money from her parents to buy her booze. I realise now that my actions were futile. Not once did I stop her from getting drunk and I just wasted my money and energy playing her stupid game. Plus now her parents, who are both retired and living in sheltered accommodation are short of money for the week until they draw their pensions.

I know I am powerless to control her alcoholism and must focus more on myself and my kids rather than getting sucked into this stupid chaotic behaviour. I know all this, but it’s too easy to forget for a while and get drawn into the crazy dance.

This song has crept into the “25 most played” list on my ipod. (I listen to it in bed to drown out the snoring)

When the routine bites hard
And ambitions are low
And the resentment rides high
But emotions won’t grow
And were changing our ways,
Taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again

Why is the bedroom so cold
Turned away on your side?
Is my timing that flawed,
Our respect run so dry?
Yet there’s still this appeal
That we’ve kept through our lives
Love, love will tear us apart again

Do you cry out in your sleep
All my failings expose?
Get a taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold
Is it something so good
Just can’t function no more?
When love, love will tear us apart again

Love will tear us apart: Joy Division (Curtis, Hook, Sumner, Morris)

It’s a great song. I wish it didn’t feel so appropriate.

Long time no blog

Where to start?

It’s been a few months since I wrote anything, partly because I have been really busy with work but mainly because  I got fed up with writing the same thing over and over again.

Well nothing much has changed really, my wife continues to drink heavily; about three bottles of wine a night until she passes out or drags herself up to bed. I see her sober for about half an hour in the morning before we go to work and the kids go to school, then from the moment she gets home she starts knocking back the booze at the rate of a bottle per hour. She is almost always unconscious by 9:00pm.

There have been more lies about debt. The bailiffs arrived at my door last month to serve a court order on her for non-payment of debts and she now has an “attachment of earnings” order on her salary to deduct payments at source before she is paid. She never opens any mail addressed to her and I recently discovered a bag full of unopened final demands and bill reminders stuffed under the bed, they date back well over a year.

She has almost totally isolated herself from daily family life. I cannot remember the last time we all sat down together to watch TV or eat a meal together, she prefers to “eat” alone in the kitchen sat in front of the computer sending increasingly obscure posts and comments to her “friends” on facebook as she descends further into her fog of alcohol. She doesn’t actually eat properly, most of her food goes down the waste disposal. I guess it must interfere with her alcohol and prescription painkiller intake.

So. I’m still lonely and bored. The only thing keeping me here now is my kids. To be honest I don’t think it would be too much different if she weren’t here, I hardly ever see her and I see the real her even less.

In lies we trust

My wife recently asked me if I trusted her.
It was difficult to give a straight answer because questions like this generally mean “I am spoiling for a fight” especially when she’s drunk.
So I’m afraid I took the easy option an answered “yes”. This was not an outright lie, as I will explain.

1. I trust her to drink uncontrollably as soon as she gets home from work until she reaches the point of unconsciousness.
2. I trust her to spend the majority of her disposable income on booze and crap we don’t need, leaving me to sort out trivialities such as food, petrol, mortgage, insurance etc.
3. I trust her to be in constant debt to people and companies stupid enough to extend her a line of credit and then ignore any subsequent requests for repayment.
4. I trust her to conceal her debts and court judgements from me and to refuse to discuss them even when sober.
5. I trust her to ignore the phone and not answer the door when she is alone in the house in case there is a debt collector calling.
6. I trust her to bitch about my family in front of the kids.

As you can see there is a great deal of trust in our relationship and I understand completely where I stand.

For this reason I have worked hard over the past few years to completely separate myself financially from any entanglement with her. I started a new job locally just before Christmas, jacking in over ten years of work at my previous job so I can be closer to home and sort out the kids at school during term time. Should she decide to leave us, become hospitalised, kill herself; either intentionally or through drunk driving. We will cope, even though I found out that she had let all of her insurances lapse through non-payment and when I tried to take out a policy for her, the insurance company wouldn’t touch her because of  her history of non-attendance at doctor’s appointments for a period of manic paranoid cancer scares a few years back.

So I’m as prepared as I can be to face the worst case scenario for the future, even if we have to do it alone, we’ll be OK.