I'm very sad tonight-- there's another progressive disease...

[mike_c]

...that destroys personalities and steals away loved ones: alcoholism. My wife and I are divorcing-- she's already moved out partially-- in the sense that she's living at a friend's vacant apartment until we can settle the disposition of all the "stuff." She's had several DUI convictions over the years and is at least partly dependent upon me for transportation despite having moved out-- it will be some time before she can get a driver's license again, if ever.

I'll call her KLC to preserve her anonymity.

We've been together for twelve years, married for seven. I'm 49 and she's 50. KLC has been a functioning alcoholic for as long as I've known her, but during the last few years her ability to function normally has steadily declined. Nowadays she's either drunk or hungover pretty much all the time. Her personality has been utterly destroyed-- she barely resembles the woman I fell in love with more than a decade ago.

I'm particularly sad tonight because she's been calling on the phone drunkenly all day, threatening me, calling me names, and being generally awful. I finally gave up answering the phone, so now I have an answering machine full of bile.

People have asked me why I became involved with drinking alcoholic in the first place. It's important to remember two things. First, at the time I had no real experience with anything other than social drinking. I knew some people with drinking problems, and indeed some of my family members drank heavily throughout their lives, but I never saw them go through the really ugly stages. My friends and I drank at parties, and had a mostly regular pizza and beer gathering one night a week for years, so being with KLC was kind of like a never-ending party during those early years.

The second thing is that I would never have believed what alcohol can do to an alcoholic's psyche. I suppose some friends tried to warn me in a vague way, but I wouldn't have believed them even if they had been totally specific. The woman who called me all day today has an advanced education, but she can barely speak intelligibly now. She looses track in the middle of sentences. She's a biologist who understands precisely what she's doing to her body and her mind-- or at least once did-- but nonetheless does it more and more each day. She is utterly is self destructive. She demonizes people who try to help her-- especially me, but then I've spent more time trying to help her than anyone else. Now I'm having to protect myself from her.

KLC's alcoholism has led me to withdraw from most social interactions with my friends and colleagues. They're really "our" friends and colleagues-- we work in the same department-- and it is just too painfully awkward to deal with the social implications of spiraling alcoholism. That's probably the main reason that I'm posting this on an anonymous forum instead of talking to my friends about it-- I can't really do that without saying things about KLC that I'm still uncomfortable saying. Most of them know what's happening at some level-- several have come to me and asked if they can help, but still, it's just too damned raw to talk about with people who are somewhat in the middle.

Now that I'm mostly alone I find myself better able to remember the multitude of wonderful times we've had over the years, even when we were drinking our way through them. That's the saddest part, I think-- having the memories, but not being able to look forward to a future of having more of them, or at least more good ones. Everything around me reminds me of something. I don't want to remember her the way she is now, but she seems to have scrubbed all of the good memories from within herself, and has nothing left but sickness and despair. I don't know what to do for her anymore. I so wish I could help her, and bring her back.

on edit: standard divorce disclaimer-- KLC would doubtless tell it differently.