This is weird

But, I know that this is something that I am going to have on my mind for the next few weeks if not months, so I know I will want to be able to talk about it here, so I have to acknowledge it here even if this is kind of uncomfortable for me.

 

In the past I have acknowledged that Sam and I have been going through some rough patches.  It has been now the better part of the year that we have been in and out of rough patches.  I know now (and have known for some time but not the whole time) that they are due to the fact that Sam is an alcoholic.  He hasn't quite gotten to the point where he has or even can acknowledge the full power of what that means to himself.  He has said he thinks he is one, but I don't think that he has let himself really wrap his brain or life around that, right now he mostly considers it a "symptom" of his anxiety disorder.  At times he does better with it than others, and he is definitely a functioning alcoholic when it comes to work, but when it comes to his home life (and my home life) he is way less functioning.  He has never hit me or done anything that extreme to me other than just generally being a jerk to me when he is drunk and having no recollection of it while sober.  This week, it got the better of me.  I finally had enough of his shitty behavior and how crappy it was making my life, and I decided that if I want my life better I need to quit moping and take action, so I have.

 

For those of you with pits in their stomachs, Sam and I have not broken up nor do I have intentions of doing that.  While I still have my own apartment, I am moving there.  Tonight I drive a zipcar load back home, and I will be staying there at least until my roommate gets back from her summer vacay in Iran near the end of July.  It solves the problem of who will look after my house while she is gone, and gives Sam the opportunity to shape up.  I will not be staying at his house, although I will go there to visit my cat (who is staying with Sam).  Sam is welcome to stay at my place although he has a curfew to avoid late night drunken insanity of the variety that has of late been making my life crappy.  Along with the cat, some of my stuff will still stay at Sam's because I don't intend this a permanent move.  Although, if Sam does not use this opportunity to get his shit in order, there is the ominous (and I hope unecessary) possibilty that it is a permanent move.  I really, really hope not.  But Sam the alcoholic has the very classic alcoholic history of fixing things just enough to get himself out of trouble but not enough to lead to him having to give up too much of what he wants.  I did also make a condition of my returning to his apartment that he must either attend start attending AA or make a full disclosure of his drinking and the problems it has caused in his life to his psychologist who he mostly has been not bothering to tell about it while being on medicine for an anxiety disorder that totally is sabotaged by alcohol.

 

Like I said, this will be on my mind for the next weeks and months.  I am on the one hand happy about it because I really am optimistic that it will put us on the path to real change, but on the other hand quite sad because it is kind of a heart wrenching thing to be doing and just a generally awful circumstance to find myself in.  I really wish we had never had to be here.

 

I am not however a disaster.  I am fine.  I have been much more of a disaster than I am right now when dealing with this earlier.  I do think this is a good step.  Sam and I both plan on attending my brother's wedding over 4th of July, the bitchbarn reunion the next weekend, celebrating my birthday at the end of June, and taking a huge vacation with his family right around the time I am to move back in (if all goes well), so this is definitively not a step towards the end of a relationship so much as a step towards fixing what is broken in it.