Alcoholism – ooglykraken

The Next Chapter

For almost a year now I’ve been living at my parents home recovering from a painful divorce and an ongoing battle with alcohol addiction. If these two occurrences were characterized as wars I’d be losing both. Most mornings I wake up hating myself for being as useless as I feel, an unemployed father who can’t be there for his daughter. I feel like a leech attached to those I love, stealing from them just so I can slowly rot away with no purpose. Due to my inability to fully heal from my wife leaving me and change my drinking, my parents have decided it’s time for me to move onto whatever is next for me. I agree. I’ve been wanting to be on my own for a long time but didn’t trust myself to do the right thing. So I have two options: 1. Check myself into an in-house care facility or 2. Find my own place. I am fortunate that I have money saved up from my time as a Software Engineer that I could do either. As a result, because I’m just ready to move on, I bought a car and applied for an apartment closer to my daughter (who lives on the other side of the country). I’ll be driving out there soon and then I’ll try to find any job out there. Its the riskier option but I’m tired of feeling this way and the only real path I see to move on is to do what I want to do, not what other people want me to do. I’ve spent most of my life following directives from others. If it wasn’t my parents it was my wife. For the first time I can just do what I want.

That doesn’t mean living alone in a drunken stupor where I’m not directly impacting anyone, it means being self-sufficient and responsible for myself. I’ve been in therapy, psychiatric care, working with an addiction clinic, and attending Alcoholics Anonymous which are all useful tools for someone in my position and I encourage anyone who feels a similar powerlessness to use them. AA specifically is free and provides a lot of support and community for alcoholics and will be the one thing I continue with going forward. Once I’m in a better position I can be involved in my daughters life again, the only thing that’s been keeping me going. Despite friction between my wife and I, I’m determined to make sure I am a good father for the person I love most in this world. Right now I may need her more than she needs me but one day that will change and I will be able to proudly support her.

Bottom line I’m not in a good place but I can’t give up no matter how much I want to sometimes. I just need to keep moving forward.

The Collapse Pt Four – Nadir and Terminus

I plan on this being my final post in The Collapse series and to avoid things I’ve already said, and to highlight happier moments there are a couple of earlier posts from in-the-moment I’d like to highlight. First is Life Comes at You Fast, where I go into more detail about what I was doing leading up to my daughter’s birth. Another from a month after her birth, A Liminal Space. And finally Tempus Fugit which focuses on the several months when I had parental leave from work. Again the topics below will probably be hard to read through. Anything I say about myself or others is only meant to draw out the points of how things can fall apart.

My daughter being born was and is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Pardon the meme but her birth cured my depression, or at least my nihilistically driven existential dread. For the first time in my life I wasn’t afraid of how I ended. It also seemed like the best chance for me to prove to X how capable I could be. However my wife and I clashed on almost everything at this point. I didn’t need to put a lot of effort into my contract job and thought that we agreed I would take over day-to-day child care, at least to start. Except my wife wanted a live-in doula, which I was fine with as far as nursing her back to health following a 10-month pregnancy. But it was obvious she wanted to offload day-to-day care to other people, something I was and am strongly opposed to when it’s not necessary. Since we came home with Zelda, it was “let’s have a doula, let’s let my mom come out and help, let’s get this daycare, or this person to come babysit for a day.” She had no interest in being as hands on with our daughter as I did whereas I felt that was mandatory. Before I continue I will say, X put in a lot of time and effort in other areas like finding daycares, vetting them, and other more logistical tasks.

From hour one of Zelda’s birth I was there, I even cut the umbilical cord probably with the most worried look on my face I’ve ever had. For the next three days we spent in postnatal care I most likely only got about six hours of sleep while watching over X and Zelda. Then we had a live-in doula for about two months who took care of X’s recovery and took care of Zelda. After the doula left, I sleep-trained Zelda myself, which meant sleeping only a few hours every night for months, getting her adjusted to a regular sleeping schedule. Then getting her to sleep by herself. All while looking for new work and getting housework done (I was on parental leave from work). If you ask X I’m embellishing, but I don’t believe I am. For the majority of Zelda’s first two years outside of the doula and eventually daycare, I did nearly everything that required hands-on effort. Not to say X wasn’t present, she did spend time with her. It’s just that I was the primary caregiver for a long time. When I was in CA last and picked up Zelda from preschool with my wife, Zelda completely ignored her mom and ran towards me, I believe because I was always there. Playing with her, talking to her, reading to her, brushing her teeth, feeding her, taking her to the pediatrician, things X did just not as frequently as I did.

At a certain point I started drinking again. From my memory this was 8-9 months after Jekyll &Hyde. Longer than I’d ever gone sober before, not to blame her but she gave me an ultimatum, stop drinking or she would leave. I didn’t have the strength for either. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, no matter what it cost me, I just couldn’t afford it. So when I did start drinking again I didn’t want to tell her. She’d always been a taskmaster, if I was playing video games I felt the need to hide it because she would shame me for it. Drinking was worse, I couldn’t tell her or I felt my marriage would be over. I was not drinking a lot at this point. It was mostly beer, as I enjoy drinking it, and only a few at night after Zelda was asleep. Back at work I felt driftless as I was on a new team, learning several new services, but my team was struggling to keep up with stakeholder demands. I had very little time to learn from my seniors and worked over-time to keep up. Work alone was incredibly stressful but my wife was still pressuring me to find a new job. I still had to take care of my daughter. There’s just a lot to do at this point in one’s life. We still had our good times and things didn’t take a turn for the worse until well after Zelda’s first birthday.

Zelda turned one during a visit to her family in China and this was when I realized something I still haven’t found a solution to. When my wife is with her parents she doesn’t really spend a lot of time with me. Though we did putz around town on scooters together a couple times. When my daughter is with them she wants to be with the group. I was naturally excluded because of the language and cultural barrier so I spent most of this time in China working, studying, and playing games by myself except when I took Zelda out on my own. When I told my wife this she didn’t really seem to care. One could argue “Learn Chinese”. Sure, which I did. I even delivered a vow to my wife in front of her family and friends in China, in (imperfect) Chinese at our wedding ceremony there.

Fast forward to later that year when in late October I was laid off as a part of company-wide expense cutting. I think our marriage was over the moment my wife found out. Immediately she told me, if only I had gotten a job sooner this wouldn’t be an issue. I wasn’t completely hopeless at this point, I had a plan already laid out for the next 4-5 months to make sure I would get one, by the end of my first day unemployed. A week later I had a few beers for the first time in months and X and I argued. The next morning we separated. I moved out, into a nearby rental. We started couples therapy. The rental I stayed in was shared with several others but was affordable as a result. I stayed mostly to myself while I focused on job searching. After a couple weeks I noticed the house-mates all hung out on certain days on the back porch and started joining them. Problematically they all drank and/or smoked. So at first I started smoking here and there, then I started drinking again. X was ready for me to move back into the house until I showed up completely drunk one day. No fights, just obviously drunk. Now I moved back in, not because she was ready, but to keep me away from influence.

Things stayed relatively ok still, during this period, though our relationship had obviously very much cooled. We got into one argument since therapy and she immediately stopped the sessions. Zelda was in daycare and I focused on getting a job during the day. I was putting in at least 6, sometimes 10, hours every day studying and applying for work and attending interviews but nothing ever panned out. I did pretty well staying sober having the occasional drink every couple of weeks but it was still enough for her to know I wasn’t in a good place, especially with all the failed attempts at a new job. After several months of this, around April of 2024, her parents came to help with Zelda. It was after this I completely fell apart. Since X spent all of her time with her parents we didn’t do anything together anymore and X’s parents were always with Zelda so it was hard to be with her also. Again I was excluded by the nature of language and cultural barriers. I felt alienated, alone, and frustrated. With the only two people who had kept me going all this time seemingly taken from me or just avoiding me. So I kept to myself, worked on getting a job, and drank at night and sometimes during the day.

I still spent whatever time I could with Zelda but it was usually just her and I, intentionally avoiding my wife and her parents. This meant walking her to the park, taking her out to experience new things, letting her interact with things like keyboards and vinyl. To this day if you play the theme from Banjo-Kazooie she’ll want to dance or have me hold her and dance. My favorite day from 2024 was Father’s Day when I took her to another city nearby for the afternoon. We went to Michael’s where she could see all the pretty and colorful craft supplies. Then we walked around the main strip, got lunch nearby and had ice-cream together.

Eventually I came clean that I had been drinking again but with everything that had happened I could feel, any chance of respect, love or hope had died. Still I strived for it. This was the hardest part for me. I wanted to be close to her, but I had betrayed her trust too many times, and she had never respected me as an equal. I was fighting a losing battle, and stuffed those feelings into a bottle of Vodka. It became worse and worse over the months.

“Pray before the Altar of Needles
Worship in the Temple of Smoke
Whine at the feet of Surrender
Smile all the while as you choke
Because we are in love with the pain
That we keep coming back to
Again and again and again”

– Abuse Ritual by Black Tongue

It was after X told me she wanted a divorce that I hit my nadir and I had given up. I had become nothing more than a blubbering mass of alcoholic self-loathing, a miserable little pile of secrets. There were days where I’d just lay in bed, drinking, wanting to die. My wife was already irreparably hurt by me, but harming myself would just hurt my daughter too. I slipped further and further until my best friend started to come and check on me. My situation worried him so much he worked with my parents to have me leave. Something I should have done as soon as X’s parents arrived. This was a week before Zelda turned two. I still hate myself for that, but I’ll just have to live with that shame.

After moving back in with my parents I was served the divorce papers. It hurt, and still hurts, so much I took my frustration from that out on my wife when I was intoxicated. Blaming her for this and that from over the years. She went from being a friend to no longer wanting to talk to me. I understand now, after all this time, what I did to her, how I hurt her.

See this is not just the story of how my marriage collapsed but how I crumbled alongside it. Instead of showing strength I gave in to my weakness, instead of doing the right thing I gave up. Those moments where my determination was most required, I didn’t have it. I failed. I failed again, and again, and again. Because of that I lost my wife, my home, a friend, my sanity, the right to take my daughter to school everyday, and the right to live with her and watch her grow up. Above all I hurt everyone around me. I hate it, but it’s my fault so I just have to learn to deal with it and do the right thing going forward.

Getting this far has been because I had friends and family around me who loved me and still support me.

X if you read this and make it to the end, no amount of apologies will take back what I did but know from the bottom of my heart I’m sorry.

Jekyll & Hyde

I started writing this blog to have a place to voice my thoughts and share with anyone who cares to visit. Despite the many ideas I wished to record I engaged in a habit that sapped me of my will, determination, and curiosity. That was habitual alcohol abuse. I chose this particular title because it got to a point where my wife recognized me as a different person when drunk. Angry and illogical I become a cruel shade of myself, trapped by my addiction and an inability to change. My Mister Hyde released after the imbibing of a potion. Any problems, troubles, or anything negative that I discuss in this story I provide not for pity but honesty. I made these mistakes, now I’m trying to fix what I can. I’m not the first and I will not be the last but maybe writing this will help me, and if you read it maybe it will help you or a loved one.

When the Covid-19 lockdowns started I had no problem staying at home. I prefer my solitude. However, as the lockdowns continued, I found myself growing increasingly bored and disappointed in myself. When my wife and I spent a portion of the year in Tennessee I started drinking a lot more. Partly because I had been a habitual pot smoker for about a decade and stopped all at once living somewhere where weed was illegal, and partly because of the boredom. It was simple at first, drinking a few beers after work while watching TV. Eventually it became habit and my consumption increased from a few beers to a six-pack. Not only that but being stuck where we were in Tennessee left me feeling trapped, like living in a hotel room for months. We went out when we could, but we were very remote. The only food available to us being microwaveable food as we didn’t have a kitchen. All of this and reduced exercise made me 50 pounds heavier after a few months. This all seems like text-book depression and maybe it was, but when I was high school, I suffered from a savage depression, and it didn’t feel the same. Eventually we left Tennessee and moved to Colorado, while here I picked up my smoking habit again but severely reduced in consumption. Recognizing how much weight I had put on I knew I couldn’t continue drinking beer and that I needed to be exercising daily. My misgivings over drinking had already started to exist but either out of indolence, foolishness, or addiction I continued to drink but now hard liquor. Of any of the signs my body gave me to stop the one that has changed my life the most it’s that my digestion stopped working properly though I hadn’t yet determined drinking as the cause.

Unfortunately, this is where the story takes a turn for the worse. My drinking had accelerated to a gallon of whiskey a week. I was occasionally day drinking, but certainly drinking far too much each night. This is when I started to lose control. When I started to argue with my wife. When she started to notice something was wrong. Too much alcohol and I can’t manage my emotions well, I start complaining about things to my wife. It becomes a debate. Then a fight, hurting us both. One could correctly guess this affected my wife’s disposition as well, quite severely. A tension had always existed between us as she’s highly motivated and hard-working, and when we met in College, I was struggling student who didn’t work as hard as he should or could have. After the alcohol she lost faith in me. She became afraid of me. Why didn’t I stop.

My wife had a hit breaking point with me and asked that I get into therapy. I met with a therapist for a few months but ultimately didn’t feel like it helped, and not for the first time. I had therapy as a high schooler when I was dealing with my depression. I attended several sessions back then but talking to my therapist I got the sense she either didn’t care or didn’t understand. She even suggested that my internal anger arose from contempt towards my mother because she and my older brother argued when he lived with us, based on me looking up to him as a kid. That’s absolutely a load of bollocks. I knew it wasn’t going to work with this therapist and I would have to figure it out on my own. Which I did, in a sense. One of my biggest inspirations back then was my French teacher at the time. This teacher really cared about her students and put a lot of effort into teaching. When I started to slip in grades, she’d talk to me about it because she wanted me to improve. She did all this while going through chemotherapy for cancer and she never lost her optimism. Not the overly bubbly kind but hopeful and determined. Knowing she’s probably suffering while doing all this it showed me that you must have hope and you must work hard every day to keep it that way.

Late in 2021 my wife and I discovered she had become pregnant. I had stopped smoking weed at this time in anticipation of my first-born, a daughter. This is also when I started studying seriously to change jobs and my first real attempt at managing my addiction. As a software engineer it’s required to demonstrate aptitude through a variety of tests and interviews. This means months of practice and studying. So, for three months I had purpose. Still drinking but I was too busy to drink a lot. For the first time since maybe college, I felt like I was working hard and had something. This was only a bright spot in a streak of darkness. I failed to get another job and I think the disappointment killed my remaining passion and optimism. Then I stopped studying and shortly after we moved back to California. My wife suggested it’s possible the constant moving prevented me from building solid habits.

I didn’t immediately relapse but I did start drinking again and it grew as a habit. Tensions with my wife, my own personal issues, a pull to change jobs, my day job, and most importantly my unborn daughter all weighed on me, asking me to find reprieve in a bottle. So, I did, and all that stress poured out of me whenever I drank too much. The pressure evolved into anger that I would direct at my wife when we disagreed, usually over my drinking. I never struck her, nor had I ever hit her, but the uncontrollable anger I exhibited frightened her. At least once she felt she should leave the house for her safety. Knowing if I want to be in my daughter’s life in a capacity that I would be proud of, I had to stop. I resolved to do so. Thus, this tragic tale of human foolishness reaches its present terminus (I apologize if I come across as pompous or anything of the sort).

My wife and I are trying to work through our shared problems. She’s suggested I see a therapist for my own issues. We’re also setting up time with a couple’s therapist. I’m looking into local AA chapters. Right now, the last bottle I drank is sitting on my desk empty with the date I began my abstinence “04-27-2022”. Hopefully in a year I’ll be writing about one year clean and how great it is to be a father.