I’m Okay. You’re Okay. Oh wait…

In steps the counselors. I should be happy. These are the men and women that can fix the psyche! They can root around the busted and broken mind, tweak this, tune that, slam the top down and, voila! No more drunken binges! No more depression! No more body dysmorphia! No more eating disorder! No more suicidal thoughts! Kids will be safe! We will be happy! Life will finally rock!

But I have been in this part of the cycle before. I have spent time, money, and a lot of emotion pretending that this was the highly anticipated end game; all the anger, and hurt, and injury that preceded this moment would soon become a distant memory because now we are in COUNSELING! I know this isn’t true. The thing is, now that I understand that this is just signaling that another revolution on the merry-go-round has started, I find my hopes have stayed completely dormant. I imagine it is like playing the Lottery a lot: at first, every time you scratch there is that bated breath just thinking how cool it would be to uncover a fortune. Years later, it is more automaton rather than a nervous excitement that winning may just be a scratch away. Sure it could happen, buy now you are sober to the odds.

The problem is, now that she is talking to the doctors, she is acting as if everything is okay and my lack of any trust in her is unfounded. I guess if love is blind then I am in trouble because I feel like for the first time I really see things the way they are. But more on this later.

If there are any other brothers in a similar position…

Just another day in paradise…

Got home last night to find the living room in shambles. A metal statue I bought in India had been broken, another wooden statue scratched up, a Tibetan prayer wheel and the Om Mani Padme pulled out and ripped. The kitchen floor was very sticky…what the hell happened here? I just sat on the couch and started rerolling the prayer scroll pack into the wheel casing…I also needed to fortify and collect myself before I went to ask my wife what happened.

After I finally managed to get most of the prayers back in, I went to our room and asked…”Oh, the boys were going nuts.” Well, where were you? Where was the maid? (No, I am not that rich or spoiled…we are expats living in Asia…it’s the only way to get a babysitter and stuff really clean) “I was washing clothes and she was doing the dishes.” I asked if she was drunk and she claimed no. By this time it was almost one as I had been delayed a few hours by an accident on the bridge on the only road that leads to our house.

The next morning I noticed that a once nearly full fridge was now all but empty. Driving my son to school I asked if he had broken the statue….no, he said, his brother did it. Where was Auntie or Mom? Auntie had left for the day and Mom was asleep. We tried to wake her by putting all our toys on her but she didn’t move.

Shit. It was only a few weeks ago when I came home to find my wife passed out on the kitchen table with my oldest son walking around in his pjs scared that mommy wasn’t moving and he couldn’t find me. I has come to the point where I am afraid to leave the house…

Because there may be others.

Actually, with a world of 6 billion plus, I know there are others. Many probably. And if for no other reason, this may be the healthiest thing for me to do. I am a father and a husband. While the first presents enough challenges as it is these days, this blog is dedicated to helping me understand, discuss, and work through the latter: being married to an anorexic/bulimic wife with a growing drinking problem. I don’t know what subtopics I will be discussing, but I am guessing that it will come naturally as time and events unfold.

So far I can feel myself slowly shutting down emotionally towards my wife. I have weathered a lot through the six short years that I we have been married, and have  been able to muster up the desire, love, and endurance to hang in there through suicide attempts, fits of rage and depression, cutting, moving in and out of our house, divorce proceedings…shit that I wouldn’t wish upon anybody. In the six short years some days I feel I have aged twenty. Don’t get me wrong…there have been long stretches of great peace and happiness. There has been very healthy counselling and genuine desires/attempts to change. Then months, perhaps a entire year passes and the demons come out to play again. I just don’t know how many cycles of this I can take. 

And I probably wouldn’t if it were not for our two sons and the fact that we semi-recently moved to a foreign country. That and I genuinely believe she can change…I am just quickly losing faith that she will.

As I start writing I can see how much more I could add, but if anyone comes across this, I would love to hear how others who are/were in a similar position manage(d). Am I simply on a sinking ship refusing to acknowledge the obvious?