Dejavu

I thought that once I got Bob on the medication he would simply calm down, but as usual. Bob's body never reacted to things the way I thought they would.

I don't know if it was the patch they put on his arm to calm him down or the trazadone, but something either set off his desire to just rip and run or he was coming out of his skin. Valium withdrawal was unpredictable.

I took him to another AA meeting the next night, but this time instead of being grateful to be there he came out angry. I was not in any way ready to deal with this. I must have said something to really make him mad and he opened the car door and jumped out. I know he just wanted to get drunk.

That's what he always did before getting drunk when I was around. Pick a fight about nothing and use it as an excuse to blame me for picking up a drink.
He was screaming at me calling me terrible names and I was just sobbing. I had no idea what to do but I did know what not to do. I did not just drive off and leave him alone like he wanted me to.

Now if you recall, I'm the first one to say that I am one hell of an enabler. I was not about to leave him wandering around alone on the Pacific Coast Highway. Maybe a saner person would have just let him do what he was going to do, but I never could do that. I followed him slowly and begged him to get back in the car. He finally got in and we drove home. Well we dodged a bullit that night, but it would not be the last time he would jump out of the car.
I called one of his friends from the program and begged him to come over and talk to Bob. Don't forget, I didn't want to ever deal with this insanity again, I couldn't do it. Plus I had just about gotten comfortable with the fact that the marriage was OVER. This was a terrible place for the two of us to be in.

Bob knew how miserable I was. Even though I was trying to help him, it was almost like he resented me for it or maybe he realized he should have never called me to let him come home. Because at that moment all he wanted to do was drink and now he couldn't. I was there watching him. I don't even remember if he had his car back home. The night he left for good he drove it into town and probably left it at the studio. He was taken to rehab in a limo. If I remember right, I think that's why I had to drive him. He must have felt like I was watching his every move and I was.

It seemed like an eternity but Dustyfinally got to the house and told me to leave and go spend some time with his wife at their house. I was so happy to get out of Bob's presence. This night I remember Matt stayed at their house. The reason I remember is poor Matt was so allergic to dogs, and they had a huge Great Dane who of course jumped on Matt's bed when he was sleeping. Dogs just love following Matt around, they love him Poor kid just what he didn't need a one hundred pound dog licking his face in the middle of the night.

It's amazing how those little things just stick out in a person's mind. I remember so clearly being at their house and his wife being so kind to Me and Matt. They had dinner for us and really tried to make us feel better. Matt of course didn't even want to take a drink from one of their glasses. He just didn't like being there.

It was so bitter sweet because we had been a model family in the community.
I had always been a bit judgemental of this woman because her husband was in and out of sobriety while Bob had been sober and I couldn't understand why she just didn't leave him, but here I was tyring to find a way to stay in a marriage myself, in spite of all the insanity that was going on.
Dusty spent several hours with Bob and calmed him down. He called me and said it was OK to come back home. I really didn't want to leave, but I had to.
Little did he know that Bob was going to hold that against me for a very long time. He was raised to, as he would put it "We don't wash our dirty laundry in public". In his mind I had committed a cardinal sin. I had shared our deepest darkest secret with someone else.
It was one of the reasons' I believe he had so much trouble with the twelve step programs. He wanted to hide all those demons and secrets, not really share them with the locals. Especially in Malibu, where people in this community just seemed to thrive on other people's misery.
Bob had now fallen from his pedestal. After years of being the man who flew Angel Flight missions, and built the local Karate Studio, he was now just another Alcoholic
who had no sobriety. A Newcomer. God how he hated that term. He was normally a very humble guy but that hit him where he lived. It took away all his self esteem and I guess his dignity. Something he had worked so hard to try and regain in those fourteen years of abstinence.

So the cat was out of the bag and now most of the people that we knew had now heard about Bob and my situation. Small towns are not the place to live when something this terrible happens. Word spread like wild fire.

After all those years of not going to any meetings here we both were back at AA and Al anon. God I hated Al anon so much that I would go to more open AA meetings than any non alcoholic I ever met. At least I felt hope there. I never understood why someone would go to Alanon meetings and complain about their lives, when I felt that all they had to do was leave a horrible relationship. I know, I was as addicted to Bob as he was to drinking, but I had given this marriage a time limit. I did not marry him "until death do we part", I only married him through Sobriety. Now I was totally conflicted.
I never dreamed that our son would beg us to not get a divorce. I never wanted to be one of those people who stay in a horrible marriage for the sake of the children, but that was exactly the path I was going on.

I simply did not have the courage to walk out at that time. I think I was scared of what would happen to all three of us. I kept trying to convince myself that it was the right thing to do by giving Bob another chance, after all, it was only one slip, and one little affair. How much did my son's emotional well being mean to me?
It meant everything. I would stay with Bob for the sake of our Son. He was more important to me than my own feelings about the betrayal. After all, I was a pretty good actress around the family, I knew if I had to I could just get through it somehow.

During Bob's stay in the Hospital I had started to make plans for Matt and I to go to England with his sister. We thought it would be really great for the three of us to go around England, France and Spain together. Well when Bob found out that he was supposed to pay for this trip and he wasn't invited along he went crazy.
Looking back I really couldn't blame him. We had never been to Europe together in all the years we were together, and now his daughter wanted me to leave her father home. I couldn't do it. I totally understood how he felt. I never used him for money, we were always a team before this. Now things were changing so rapidly neither one of us knew the rules of the relationship any longer.
I called his daughter and told her that if she didn't want her father to come along that Matt and I would not be going either. I gave her permission to tell me she didn't want to deal with him because she had stopped traveling with us several years before this and they just didn't get along as I have mentioned many times.
Well, I'm not really sure why she made the decision to let us all go. I do know that she needed us to help her get her extra luggage back home without having to pay the extra cost, but that couldn't have been the only reason, at least I hope not.
Any way the decision was made. The three us of would meet her in London.

As crazy as it seemed, at the time it was just that little ray of sunshine we needed. It gave us something to look forward to. Something positive. I started going to Therapy to get help for dealing with Bob cheating on me and his slip. Bob had started to get a little saner and was going to a lot of AA meetings and he even got an AA sponsor. I felt that I had made the right decision, I would try to put this behind us. We had a lot at stake and many many reasons to try and work it out.

The only question was, COULD I EVER REALLY FORGIVE HIM? Only time would tell. Now I was the one living One Day at a Time. How Ironic.