Finding Forty, Day 38; Driving

I drank too much last night. I hate it when I do that and I really want to stop. My liver must be pickled after this past year and while I've had fun being social and living it up at the neighborhood Happy Hour, I know that I drink for the pure escape factor.

Before alcohol, I would numb myself with food.

Neither work. In the end, you just feel worse about everything. Besides that, both make you fat. And that is where I find myself this morning; hungover and hanging over (the waistline, that is).

I'm exhausted, wiped out, spent. After we got home from Happy Hour, A and I had outstanding sex (what I can remember of it) and then stayed up another couple of hours yelling and crying and accusing and blaming. We were a wreck, our car skidding and careening out of control, waiting for the impact as we slammed into the guardrail or oncoming traffic.

And because I'd been drinking, my recollection of everything that was said and done is spotty, hazy at best. I don't want to rehash the conversation this morning, but I'd at least like to be able to own my words.

Ugly as it was, it was cathartic. Twenty years of anger and frustration and sadness spewed forth last night. A shared things about me that bother him far more than I'd ever suspected. I just wish I remember it with clarity. Thank God the kids were at the neighbor's house having a sleepover.

If I could get in the car and drive away, I would. I don't have to be alone. I'd want A, the boys, and our dog with me. We could tidy the house, water the yard one last time, pack a few necessities, leave the porch light on, lock the front door and drive off. In the rearview mirror, I could watch the house and this life of mine get smaller and smaller until finally it disappeared.

But running from my problems, from life, that's a journey that gets you nowhere. Even I know that.

My head hurts. My heart hurts. My body hurts. My pride hurts. I want a do over on the last year and a half.

I'm mad at myself for making everything so hard. We have no disease (other than my possible propensity for addiction) in our life, no major strife. Why does love have to be so incredibly hard? Why can't I find happiness in the blessings that abound around me? These gifts are within my grasp, but it seems they wisp and feather against my fingertips, and I can't hold on.

I've got to make changes. The alcohol has to stop or diminish greatly. I just feel like crap when I drink too much. I say things I shouldn't say, do things I shouldn't do, and then have to deal with how shitty and embarrassed I feel the next morning.

In the light of day, with conscious clarity, I want to talk to A again about what we BOTH need in this life to make this love work. Apparently, there is something there because neither one of us are willing to pack it in and call it quits. Or are we just paralyzed with fear?

I guess I can't get in the car and just flee and I certainly can't jump into my time machine to go back to 2009 and start over. All I've got is today, now, this moment, to start the work of getting it right.