Timeline: Part Five

November 3, 2011
I wrote an entry called "How About Now?"

I knew when I wrote this entry it was important. After nearly 20 years of my husband telling me, "This is who I am. I am never going to change. If you don't like it, you can leave", I finally, finally got it. It wasn't that I hadn't heard it a thousand times, I certainly had. It's just that I never thought he meant it. I never really believed it. I always thought he would change. That I was going to fix him. It was right about this time that I realized something very, very important. Something life changing. I was never going to fix my husband. He doesn't want to be fixed. He doesn't want to change, and he's been trying to tell me that for nearly two decades. This is as good as it's going to get.

This all came about after the second of the two counseling sessions we attended together. I've since told my husband at least a dozen times, that this session was a game changer for me. That's when everything changed. It was truly one of the most important events in my life. It would change my outlook on my marriage, and my relationship with my husband from that day on.

After this revelation, I began to focus on myself. My self image was shot. Kate told me my thinking was distorted. She had me write out a dozen or so "Affirmation Cards". On these index cards I would write thoughts about myself that were most likely distorted. On the back, I would think things through, and write a more "rational" thought. It took me about 2 minutes to write out the cards. I still remember many of them. "I am fat", " I am not good at being married", "I am old", "Any man would pick a younger, thinner woman over me","I am not lovable". And I truly believed every single one of these things. I believed them so much, that I was completely unable to write anything at all on the backs of the cards. I tried for an hour. I couldn't dispute even one of these things with a "rational" thought.

This is a very important place in the timeline. Probably THE most important place. I was broken. I was defeated. I accepted the fact that I could not win over alcohol. I had beaten myself down to a bloody pulp. I was wearing frumpy clothes and shoes, that fit the part of a middle aged soccer mom who was so exhausted, so tired from trying, that she accepted her fate and surrendered. I think I even embraced it. Maybe if I feel like I don't deserve things, I won't long for them so badly. Maybe if I accept that I am old, fat, and unlovable, I will not feel alone or neglected. I will not miss having someone go places with me. If I don't feel I deserve to be touched, I won't long to be touched.

This was a sad, sad time for me.