Life without Trust

As much as I wanted to be there for him this time, I could not forgive this other woman, to make matters worse, the Monday I went to visit him in the hospital I had to figure out in my own mind, what I was going to do.

I looked at his bedside table and there was a card from "Meagan". Talk about throwing salt on the wound, it hurt physically and my head was spinning. I couldn't storm out of the hospital, but I was a scorned wife, just like a scene from one of my beloved English novels. I was seething on the inside, but the male nurse asked me if I could get into the shower with him and help bathe him. What would anyone say? Of course. I loved this man and loath him at this very moment.

Nothing prepared me for this. I could handle the slip, looking back it was inevitable. But to leave me and our son for three days to be with some woman he met in a bar, well that was the last straw. Now I was the one who was supposed to nurse him back to health again. What a joke. It was moments like this, that I should have really taken a good look at the lack of support our family had. Of course, once Bob was back in the hospital, there was a collective sigh of relief on all fronts. But did anyone other than me and his kids bother to go visit him? NO!!
Imagine that? After fourteen years without a drink, he didn't deserve a visit from his brother, dad or his dad's wife. I was so busy dealing with my own issues, and so used to doing this all alone it never occured to me that this time really was different from any of the past episodes. He had a family, and a son who had never known his father like this. Why couldn't they be there for him or us this time? I will never know. I guess I had just assumed it was because of the fight he had had with his father that lead up to this moment. But I think it was just the same excuse. He didn't warrent a visit from them. Plain and simple.

It all seemed so natural at the time, but as the years have passed and life has revealed itself like an onion, I know to the core of my soul how much that hurt him.
Was he so terrible that he didn't deserve a visit? He was on his death bed, the first couple of days. He was not important enough for a visit. This was part of the root of his problem. He felt he was never respected, only tolerated and I guess the family really did just sit back and wait for this moment to happen. Well, when it did happen he once again felt the cold chill of rejection.

I wanted to run out of there and never look back myself, trust me. The fact that He had announced he wanted a divorce to his family, but didn't bother to inform me would have been enough to end it right then and there, but, he was sick and weak,not to mention alone, I guess I was supposed to take it and just be the dutiful wife once again to keep a vigil and keep the family informed of his progress. A role I had willingly accepted.

Talk about conflicted, I was more than confused. I had to talk to his brother, father, daughter, our son and really try to keep it together as best as I could.
If I had ever had the disease myself I would have drown myself in a bottle for sure. I really never experienced anything like this.
The betrayal warranted drastic measures, but he was on a 24 hour watch for his seizure's.
I couldn't just leave him alone, I stuck around as the most unhappy, unwilling spouse ever.

I refused to go to Daniel Freeman's counseling program for the family, I wanted to know what they thought they could possibly do to help this situation.

It would take a miracle for me to get over this final blow. Maybe it was my ego, but it didn't feel like ego. My heart was broken, along with our vows and my trust.

If you have ever loved and trusted someone you know how wonderful it is to never question what they are doing when they are not with you. It's sheer bliss. Trust will set you free. And free was how we had always felt with one another. There was never another man or woman I had thought, that could break our bond.

I had really believed that ours was a blessed union, God had answered Bob's prayers.
What happened? I keep asking myself.
Not only was I shocked, so was everyone who knew us. Bob had brought a strange woman into our lives. Without any sign the eye of the storm must have been what life was before this. Calm, but hell was about to break loose.
The best I could do at the time was count my blessings that he would be in the hospital for at least a month. I had some time to figure out what to do. I had no idea. I just needed my son to feel safe and OK.
It's like lying, you tell yourself and your family that everything will be OK, but the entire time you know it's a lie you can't figure out how to get out of.

The more he recovered, the less remorseful in the beginning he was. This only added to my anger. But I had not yet found the inner strength to do something openly about it.
One day his daughter called the pay phone and asked to speak to him. The person who answered the phone thought she said her name was Meagan. She called me and wanted to know who Meagan was. I told her. I saw no reason to keep it to myself. Bob was furious with me. Of course he was. He wanted me to lie for him to his daughter because he knew that she would tell her mom. That made him really angry with me.
I couldn't believe my ears. I was expected to lie for him. I felt he was lucky I was even speaking to him. There was no way I would do that for him. I told him he should have thought about the consequences before he hooked up with her, then I found out that she was coming to visit him.
He was having a little romance. I didn't even know how to react. It was a habit he had learned being a lawyer. Turn it around on the other guy. He was mad at Me? I was not going to take this sitting down.

My anger was festering under the surface. I have always felt free to tell the truth, but I always managed to be somewhat "wishy washy" up until this point. I had become a yes wife, never wanting to be right were I was now. Looking at the face of someone who had just blown fourteen years without a drink, and who had also broken our marriage vows.
On both fronts I was devastated, but I felt sorry for him relapsing, and all I wanted to do was leave him for cheating on me. But of course that emotion was still being kept inside, like a time bomb just ticking away. I wanted him to get better so that I could leave him when he was better. I couldn't bring myself to do anything before. He always had an expression. "You don't kick a man when he's down". Those words kept ringing in my ears. I had to wait.
On the outside I had learned how to hide my feelings from the family, always trying to be stoic, always trying to give him the benefit of a doubt.
It would take more than old behaviour to make myself believe some of the nice words that were coming out of my mouth.
I wanted to bury myself and cry forever. I couldn't. I had to help our son through this.
He had never known the insanity of the disease, only sobriety, all though at times it wasn't a peaceful time, at least his dad wasn't drinking.
I needed to help him understand what had just happened. His dad was a sick man, not a bad man.
I could not bring my rage into it, at least not at the moment.
Bob was really in very serious physical condition. The seizure's continued over the weeks. One night they rushed him up to the cardiac unit to monitor his heart with an EKG. He was not doing well those first couple of weeks.

The real problem was that the Doctor had taken him cold turkey off all the medication that he had been taking for the past couple of years. How could a hospital not realize that was putting his life in danger? They were punishing him for taking a drink and totally ignoring the real problem, He was in major Valium withdrawal and that was the cause of all the seizures and the heart problems.
Today if that happened I could sue the doctor and the hospital for the lack of medical attention Bob had been given.
This is the problem with any rehab program, no matter what they say there is a certain amount of guilt tripping attached to it.
Bob was made to start going to therapy as soon as he could. This is such a joke. His counselor had three years of sobriety from heroine, he had never had the amount of sobriety that Bob had and this guy was a typical example of power corrupts. He treated Bob like he had suddenly forgotten every thing he had ever learned in his fourteen years.
It the thing I had about AA. The new comer philosophy. Shut up and listen. I wouldn't listen to this guy either.
It only made me feel even more empathy for what Bob was going through. No one bothered to stop and think about what it must be like to walk a mile in his shoes and then have to listen to some young punk. I would never have done it either. This guy had no credibility. So what was three years in the scheme of things. He had no idea of the devastation that had happened in our lives. It all fell apart and the best they could do was focus on his being a "New Comer".