The Silent Struggle: Part 2

 I won’t bore you with the minute details of what happened next.  Let’s just say, I met a guy, fell in love and married him, lived in California, moved back to Ohio, had two kids and then well—divorce.  If you’ve been following me, you already knew all that.  In those fifteen years, alcohol continued to be a source of fun and entertainment.  Friday nights with post-collegiate friends in bars turned into Friday nights in someone’s driveway with camping chairs and a portable fire pit.  I drank vodka and Capri Sun and didn’t let anyone make me feel guilty for it because well—it was my thing. 

There was a ritual on Fridays in the neighborhood when five o’clock came around.  We’d journey out of our homes to “wine down” for the evening (see what I did there?).  My husband worked second shift, so I was generally the 5th or 7th or 9th wheel depending on who participated.  We would figure out a way to feed ourselves and our kids and like clockwork around 10:30PM, I’d do the thing I like to call, “The Skate.”  This is the point in the evening where Evan has had too much to drink but doesn’t want anyone to know. So, instead of saying goodbye—because, well, words are hard when you are shitfaced, I’d disappear.  I’m pretty sure everyone thought it was either cute or rude, but it was my style. I learned to poke fun at myself during those days as a way to brush it off, but there was a slow and sinister shame hiding behind the self-deprecation. That shame settled into my bones and haunted me for the next twelve years.  

All but one family moved from that neighborhood and we were the last to go.  We celebrated each other’s departures with “Moving Away” parties and released Chinese lanterns covered in well wishes and memories written by our friends.  We bought a house in the country with only a handful of neighbors. Once again, I was packing up and leaving a group of friends who had become family to me.  I grieved that loss and tried holding onto the relationships from afar as long as I could.  But as it tends to happen, we get busy as our children grow.  Now, our friendships are relegated to commenting on how big everyone is getting on Facebook and Instagram.  I recognize this is the natural progression of things, but it’s one of my least favorite realities of life.  I’m so grateful for these pockets of friends and memories, but sometimes I wish I could have held onto them just a little bit longer.  If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have drank those weekends away.

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My ex-husband and I started having significant problems in our marriage right before we moved.  Even on the car ride out to see the house in the pouring rain, we argued.  It should have been a happy experience.  The house seemed to be exactly what we were looking for with three acres of land and a beautiful quiet setting surrounded by lots of trees and rolling hills.  When we walked into the house, both of us were instantly convinced it was ours.  I even thought to myself,  “Maybe–just maybe–this house will save us.”

After the excitement of our new home wore off, the reality of life sunk in.  The commutes to work were longer, the yard was bigger, the house had more floors to clean and without neighbors right next door or friends in the community, my husband and I had no choice but to get to know each other really well again.  Within a year, I was pregnant with our daughter and that pregnancy was not easy.  My feet hurt.  My hips ached.  If I could have puked, I would have, but I was stuck with a never-ending feeling of nausea.  It was not fun, for anyone.  After two days of labor and an overnight in the high risk unit, our daughter was born via C-Section.  She was healthy and happy. The perfect baby.

Those first few months were idyllic.  Our marriage seemed strong and we had our little family of four, with two dogs and more than anyone could ever ask for.  All but the white picket fence. But when work responsibilities returned, we found ourselves back in a strained relationship.  My ex had decided to leave the police force due to stress and the political climate that made being a police officer even more dangerous than it naturally was.  He liked the work, but it didn’t allow him to be home and present with us the way the kids and I needed.  I was frightened more than ever for his safety.  He was offered another job as a Director of Safety for a local school district which we thought would be the perfect fit, but the politics and red tape were a recipe for disaster. 

Our evenings during this time were what most young, dual-income families experience.  Both of us got home from work, each with a kid in tow.  Fed the dogs, fed the kids, fed ourselves, split duties over bath times and dishes, tucked the kids into bed to sit down for the first time in hours somewhere around 9 or 10PM.  At some point in the evening—many times when cooking dinner—we would share a bottle of wine.  I had graduated from Capri Sun and Vodka to the big girl drink.  “Mommy juice” as some of us like to call it.  The magic elixir was a way to relax after the stress of the day.  By the time the kids were asleep, the bottle of wine was empty and we would make our way to bed, most times without saying a word. 

This cycle repeated a few times a week.  On weekends, the drinking would amp up.  Friday nights it wasn’t uncommon for me to finish an entire bottle of wine.  Sometimes, I would start with a beer and then transition to a Pinot Grigio or Chardonnay.  There was a local flower shop that also sold wine and every couple of weeks I would stock up on unique bottles that you couldn’t find at the grocery store.  Wine became a hobby for me.  I bought a few books and read up on varietals and history and climate and blends.  It was fun and felt like a good way to learn at the same time.  I shared my new knowledge with my friends and was proud of my tolerance.  I had worked hard for it over the years and now that I knew what I was doing, I only drank the “good” wine.  Not that grocery store, overpriced and overproduced crap.  

I acknowledged the expense, but shrugged it off knowing that I was still being financially responsible and saving.  We joined a wine club and picked up our monthly shipment at the counter, where we would laugh and taste with strangers.  That monthly shipment of a few bottles would magically disappear within days and soon I’d call my husband on his way home from work to pick up another bottle.  

I recognized that moderation had gone out the window when we transitioned to boxes of wine. In college, we called this “liquid crack” and I should have heeded my own warning, but instead considered it economical.  We kept these in the pantry. The beautiful but simultaneously dangerous thing was that you couldn’t see how much you were drinking.  As tolerances grew and the kids got a little more self-sufficient, I’d venture to guess I was teetering on a bottle a night.  If not more.

Our marriage continued down a strained path for various reasons. When it started to feel like we had become roommates vs. spouses, I replaced my relationship with wine.  He would go to bed early and I would stay awake.  Just my box of wine and the television or guitar.  In the mornings, my husband was already at work so I would shrug off the mild hangover, get the kids ready to go and start my work day.  Many times, I headed to my CrossFit gym and did an early morning class.  I was functioning, even better than most people, but I was on the cusp of a problem and although I had a hard time saying it out loud, deep down I knew it.

Now, there were several times I acknowledged this to my husband.  Several times, I even asked him if he would quit with me.  He laughed it off and told me that I was welcome to quit, but he didn’t have a problem and so while he would support my decision, he wouldn’t be joining me. Let me be clear here, saying that you might have a problem, even to the person who is supposed to be closer to you than anyone else in the world, is terrifying.  It’s raw and vulnerable and once you say it, you can’t unsay it.  His inability to acknowledge my feelings as real and have a loving and honest conversation is a big reason I left him in the end, but at the time, it just hurled me further into my addiction.  It gave me a reason for isolation.  It gave me a reason to hide.  It made me feel alone and ashamed and stupid for even bringing it up.   

Our relationship went from being agnostic to antagonistic.  For a time, I was desperate to fix it. I encouraged him to quit his job and go back to college.  I took a new job to support us financially.  That year was brutal.  The job was incredibly stressful and it didn’t help that the man who was my manager was a masochistic monster.  I was on the road every other week (whether I wanted to be or not) and as soon as I got home, the kids would be thrust into my arms.  Work travel was becoming problematic because “Mr. Mom” clearly wasn’t the role my husband was built for.  I had worked very hard my entire life to establish a life and a career that gave me the freedom to be an employee, wife and mother from the front lines.  When I wasn’t traveling, I worked from home.  I got the kids on and off the bus, listened to their stories from school, made dinner every night, I coached sports and rarely missed an important event.  It should have been the perfect scenario—instead, it was a breeding ground for unspoken jealousy and hostility.

Our marriage was no longer a partnership.  It was a contract.  A sentence for the next sixteen-ish years until the kids were grown and I could leave.  I felt unsupported, unloved, misunderstood and taken advantage of.  I was lonely in my own house.  I resented him.  I resented that he made me feel invisible.  I resented that he didn’t want to work on us or support me in becoming a healthier and happier version of myself for our family.  And so, I took the invitation to numb the pain and curate more distance between us.  In a strange way, it was a conscious decision.  I was past the point of wanting to try.  If he wasn’t going to honor or love me the way I needed, I was going to do everything I could to push him away.

On our last family vacation, we got tickets to Medieval Times.  This was on my bucket list since seeing Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy.  Rather than being excited, I found myself crying uncontrollably while drinking my overpriced piña colada, to which my husband looked at me with absolute disgust.  “What the hell is your problem?” he asked.  I didn’t have an answer, but shortly thereafter this depression and his disdain for me had me believing that everyone would be better off if I just didn’t exist.  I was breaking under the weight of it all and I desperately wanted it to stop.  For me, the new thoughts of suicide seemed to be the end to the madness.  A way out.  

Thank goodness, my passive suicidal ideations never became more than that. With the support of a few friends and my parents, I made a choice to get on a low dose anti-depressant.  It helped take the edge off and pulled me up out of the abyss, but as I have mentioned before, it didn’t fix my marriage.  The suicidal thoughts subsided, but our marriage was teetering on the edge of destruction. 

The following April, I engaged in an emotional affair and shortly thereafter chose to leave.  I knew I was leaving people in the wake and hurting my own children, but at the time, I was desperate to regain some control and dignity.  I was done feeling like a burden.  Being “too much and not enough” was something I would never allow someone to define me as again.  Our failed marriage had gone too far to fix.  I was done.  Once I made the decision to burn it all down, I didn’t look back.

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For anyone who has gone through a divorce, even if it’s justified, you know intimately how painful the entire experience is.  Reeling in the process and with 50% of my time spent alone, this increased my opportunities to drink and removed any accountability I would have had with another human in the house.  I didn’t have to hide.  If I wanted a glass of wine at 2PM on a Saturday, I was going to have a glass of wine at 2PM on a Saturday.  If I was cooking a big Sunday dinner for myself, the wine would start flowing before, during and afterwards.  If friends were day-drinking on the lake and I didn’t have my kids, I’d gladly join them knowing I had a place to stay if need be.  

I started taking myself out on dates because dating other humans—well, that’s another blog post.  I found restaurants where I would quietly enjoy a glass of wine or an Old Fashioned and quickly became a regular at a few cozy bars.  It felt like the sequel to my previous post collegiate phase of my life living in the D.C. metro area.  I was free to write my own story.  Free to figure out who I was to be in the next phase of life.  No longer “the wife of…,” I was my own person and hard-at-work redefining “Me.”  I had a short list of things to accomplish.  Start teaching fitness classes and become a personal trainer, travel internationally, play guitar more, spend time with girlfriends, get outside, do some serious counseling and be the best damn single mom ever in the history of single moms. 

Somewhere in that wish list was a desire to quit drinking.  Somehow I knew that in order to fully accomplish these things, I had to let that go, but I wasn’t ready.  I had to get there on my own time and I had many more bottles of wine and drunken solo dance parties to get through.  But, my time was coming.  By the grace of God, this was the path He had chosen for me.  He had heard my silent prayers that I didn’t want to live life this way.  He knew that in order to honor Him and others the way I was called to, I couldn’t let alcohol have any say.  It couldn’t speak for me anymore.  He would speak louder, but I would have to be ready to listen.

It’s been four years since those first nights alone in my big country house.  There is a laundry list of painful memories and unfortunate events that seemed to fuel my desire to drink.  There are a slew of mornings I couldn’t get out of bed.  Pictures with friends, blurry-eyed and purple-teethed.  There are Netflix shows I remember only parts of because the wine hit before my head hit the pillow.  There are men I spent time with that I found myself tolerating as long as there was alcohol in my system.  There are some poor decisions to drive after too much to drink and late night stops at the grocery store to pick up a bottle, even after I convinced myself earlier in the day that I wouldn’t.  There are concerts I think I enjoyed and trips to cities I would have preferred to explore more, but couldn’t kick the hangover from the night before.  

There was so much wasted time.

Looking back on this version of me, I don’t know that I would call myself an alcoholic.  I have researched the term gray area drinking and listened to countless podcasts about highly-functioning and successful moms who find themselves in this place.  Somewhere in between social drinker and full-blown addict, these women are running companies, setting PRs at the gym, running half marathons, raising children, managing households and on the outside, look like they have it all together.  But deep down, they are all struggling just like me.  Deep down they have a desire to quit, but don’t know how or what that even looks like. There is a TED Talk by a woman named Jolene Park. I have watched it now several times and each time I am thankful for another person who seems to look like I did. No longer covered in shame, I am able to connect with someone that I admire, on a level that I would have never assumed.

I first started researching sobriety three years ago, and it’s taken a few stops and starts to get to where I am now, but I’m here to tell you that true change is possible.  I have been completely sober for more than a month now.  I have been mostly sober for about 6 months.  After a solo trip south this spring with too many frozen mixed drinks and a few bad decisions, I decided enough was enough.  I committed to myself and my kids that things were going to change. I didn’t experience instantaneous sobriety like Annie Grace, it has been a series of different tactics and trials, but something is different this time.

I had done a final round of EMDR trauma counseling that ended successfully in March of this year.  Since then, it’s dawned on me that I have nothing left to numb.  I have no dirty little secrets to hide from.  I’ve put it all out there and I’ve replaced the lies I believed about myself and my culpability in situations that were never my fault to begin with, with truths.  I am worthy and loved and I am worthy of love that is rooted in truth and honesty and integrity and honor.  I didn’t deserve the awful shit that has happened to me.  The sexual assaults, the bullying, the neglectful marriage.  I didn’t ask for any of it.  

I was a victim, but I will not remain one.

My last drink was the night I found out I had breast cancer and my last hangover was the following morning.  Once again, the cancer wasn’t my fault.  I was its victim.  But this time, instead of drowning my sorrows and forcing myself into acceptance, I’ve decided to allow myself to feel everything. I’m crying as I write these words, but I’m fully present.  Fully in control of the things I can control and fully allowing myself to wrestle in the difficult and scary uncertainness.   Fully open to whatever the future holds.  Whatever time I have left in this life, I don’t want to waste another moment numbing.  I want all the good and bad.  All the happy and all the sad.  I want to remember every single little moment with family and friends.  I want to make it count.  I want to love others completely, but I know now it starts with loving myself.

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I began this blog by saying, “Some of you need to know that you aren’t alone.”  I will end this blog by reiterating it.  You have been fed all the same lies I have been fed.  You’ve been conditioned to believe that alcohol is a gift that you’ve earned as you moved into adulthood.  You’ve had it thrust in your face on tv, in movies, in music, by friends and family and other well-intentioned people.  You’ve been expected to enjoy alcohol, but not take it too far. Maybe you’ve tried sobriety and then been questioned or even urged to have “just one drink.”  Maybe you’ve done Sober October or Dry January because you wanted to prove you could control your drinking to find yourself right back in the same unhealthy cycle of shame and guilt a few weeks later.  

Friend, please hear me.  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  You are not different.  There is nothing fundamentally wrong with you.  You aren’t broken.  You aren’t weak.  Alcohol is an addictive substance and anyone who uses it is susceptible to its grasp. I have been where you are.  I know how hard it is.  I know how you look at the rest of your life and think to yourself, I have control everywhere else.  I know the anger you’ve had at yourself.  The bargaining.  The negotiating.  The failure of best-laid plans.  It’s absolutely exhausting.

Your struggle is my struggle and that of millions of other equally amazing, talented, successful, well-respected and unconditionally loved humans.  This isn’t something you need to hide anymore.  It’s not something you have to accept as reality.  You don’t have to be ashamed. Change is possible and it can start right now.  All you have to do is make the decision.  Today can be the start of something new.  Today can be the beginning of your redemption story.  

I’m rooting for you and I’m walking the same path–right by your side.

Love and light, 

Ev

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3 thoughts on “The Silent Struggle: Part 2”

  1. I totally feel & can identify with every word! I’m going on a little over 2 years alcohol & tobacco free. Annie Grace podcasts & Celebrate Recovery both helped me overcome the thought & feeling that I NEED & DESERVE those things. I’m so much happier & fulfilled now without them. Life isn’t perfect or without stress, but when those times come, I’ve learned how to feel the feelings for what they are & rely on God for the rest.

  2. I can so relate coming from a dysfunctional family , my father died at 50 of complications from and as I began to understand my mother was the enabler resulting in chaos and conflict for me and my 3 siblings. Discovered of late sobriety can be a way of life beyond whatever alcohol may be consumed in moderation-shared by a lifelong Denido friend.

  3. Evan, Thank you for your honest, vulnerable testimony and for your willingness to help others. I have dealt with alcoholism in my family and it has caused so much pain. I am encouraged and inspired by your courage and perseverance. I have always admired your kind heart, sweet spirit and willingness to share your gift of music. God bless you and keep you as you continue on your journey. 🤗❤️

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