Nothing was getting easy

My last post was about my court hearing well a very shocking event took place instead of that court hearing, I have another blog on myspace www.myspace.com/stephaniepick if you are interested. I have found that I need to keep two separate blogs going because there is so much to write about my present that it starts to get confusing even to me to mix them up. So I'm heading back to my past again.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Life was not really getting back to normal there was no trust left in the marriage and no matter how many band aids we tried to put on the problems they just were not going away.
Bob's temper was always short and I simply focused on keeping the peace if I could, I was simply too tired to fight.
I found myself keeping a filled overnight bag in my car for those moments when he would follow me around from room to room just trying to argue. We argued about everything it seemed now.
Here I was raising our son, taking care of him, the house, all the bills, etc. while he was going to one meeting a day. That was it. Now his sobriety was important, don't get me wrong, but our life wasn't the same.
I no longer believed that all this isolation was going to keep him sober and I was right, it didn't. But along with that knowledge I was also not willing to be the submissive wive. There no longer was a reason too. Now when he was out of control I simply walked out of the door into my car and drove off. I would not tolerate it ever again.
We were all in foreign waters believe me.
Then one day the focus became the Internet of all things. I guess Bob just needed something to be mad about so he started getting at Matt for being on his computer.
Little did Bob know that it was the one escape from our nightmare that his son could retreat from without getting into any trouble. Bob viewed it as a fantasy world and never really understood that there were real people behind those names. Only in the end did he sort of get it when he himself signed up on myspace. He never told me I logged into my blog and found his profile as one of my readers. He got it, but he was spying on me. I wasn't doing anything but he had wondered.

One day he was screaming so loud I had locked myself into the bathroom and would not come out. I could not deal with his temper. I guess several of the neighbors heard him and came over. They told him if he didn't stop they were going to call the Police. I think it must have scarred him because when I heard them, I unlocked the door and bolted to my car. He did not follow.
We were living in hell and didn't even know it. It was the beginning of the Valium Years as I like to refer to them. Dangerous drug in my opinion. You simply never know when they are taking it, and at the time I did not know how addicted to it he had become and would always be. It was his new drug of choice for a long time.

How Bob got around taking any kind of pills were his real history of back and knee problems. There is no law against taking these pills especially when you have legitimate physical issues. He started having multiple surgeries on his knees, then it was a terrible hemorrhoid operation that went wrong for him.
He had been completely honest with the Doctor about his past history with pills and I must say this was the first and only doctor in all the years of living with Bob, that he could not get pills out of. The doctor gave him a few pain pills and only two Valium. Bob wanted more Percocette and a bottle of Valium. The doctor would not give them to him.

I will never forget our next nightmare. It was Labor Day weekend and in Malibu there is an annual Chili Cook off that we always went to with our son. It had a carnival and always was a great way to end the Summer. There was literally nothing more I could do to help Bob. He had to take it easy and was just laying in Bed, so I told him I was going to take Matt to the carnival for a while.
This is normal in any family. It was not a life threatening surgery and anyone will tell you, it is painful and uncomfortable. But there was no reason to sit there and wait on him hand and foot all day. I took Matt out to have some fun.

When we got back home all hell broke loose. He was crazy, screaming at me about how I was neglecting him and whatever else he was spewing out. It was another nightmare day with Bob on pills.
It's funny as I write this stuff that I actually realize just how much damage all these events left on my brain. I was always trying to protect myself from his outrageous theory's about what was real and what was not. You would have thought I committed an act of violence against him by leaving the house for two hours. It was insanity. That is the only way to explain any of this. Pill induced insanity.
When I spoke with his brother even he said that Bob could not be given Percocette.
This stuff went right to his brain and made him crazy.
I really don't know if he was in any sort of drug withdrawal from Valium at the time, but I do know looking back at this event it seems like it now. He made me drive him down to the doctor's office to get more of them and when he only gave him two I thought he was going to go out of his skin. It's how it affected him when I knew he was in withdrawal.
Bob had become really good at getting Valium and he had several doctors all over town that were prescribing different things for him. He simply knew how to work the system. This doctor must have had a feeling that he didn't want to be another one of Bob's pill pushers. I wish I could say that about all his other doctors.
They just gave him whatever he wanted because he was so nice to them. Little did they know how not so nice he was when he needed more of them. In the beginning even I didn't know what it was.
I used to blame everything on "dry drunks". The behavior was so erratic I will never really know for sure.
These next several years seem to blend in together. Separate vacations arguments about everything from his father to his daughter and everything in between.
The worst part of all this insanity was that I had promised our son that I would not divorce his father. I kept my word, but at times it was the hardest promise I had ever had to keep.
Nothing was easy. If we needed help with a homework project it would turn into a lecture. One that neither Matt nor I had any interest in let alone the time.
He never understood time management when it came to homework, bath and bedtime. To him we were his captive audience at times.


One of the nastiest unwarranted fights we ever had was when I was writing out our monthly bills as I always did and he decided to come into Matt's room and supervise. I have no idea what he was really mad at, but it turned so ugly and so nasty that I almost left him forever right then and there.
He started criticizing my family for no reason and then he ended it by telling Matt all these horrible made up stories about me. Can you imagine my poor son sitting there having to listen to his dad spewing hatred toward his mother? None of which was true, but he either wanted a drink or a pill. That's how it always started.
Pick a terrible unforgivable fight so that he could justify drinking or using.
The three of us were living in hell, yet there seemed no escape.
I couldn't even pray, I felt that God had abandoned me and I was angry. For all the years and times I had saved this man's life, and given him such a good life, this is how he repaid me. It did not matter that when he calmed down he would send me flowers or buy me something nice. I started refusing all gifts. I did not want to be bought like so many women I know. I simply did not have it in me to turn the other cheek for a diamond ring.
Over the years living in Malibu you hear of these stories of women who stick it out all because of their security. They don't love their husbands at all, I see it all the time. That was one hell of a price I did not want to pay. If it had not been for my promise to our son to not get a divorce, who knows how our lives would have ended up.
Perhaps had I had the courage to leave earlier, maybe he would never have met the "girlfriend". We will never know.