The man I married was a drunk. Hm, he used to be a drunk? Well, what do you call him now? When his then-wife served him divorce papers, not a month after their baby girl was born, he lost it. He fell head first in a vat of beer and really didn’t resurface for quite awhile. He struggles daily to not drink. And let me just say, some days are easier than others, boy howdy.
Before we started dating, I was pretty straight forward. I won’t marry a drunk. I’m a daughter of a drunk, and I won’t live like that. I refuse. I still, slowly, started dating him.
When she got information that we were dating, let me just say, the proverbial shit hit the fan. It went everywhere. She said she was going to move and he’d never see his kid again, she was going to get his rights taken away, and she thought about how to get us to break up. Just for the sheer enjoyment of it, I guess. This woman had put this man onto the streets because of the amount of child support he had to pay. Imagine. Imagine having to live in a camper with no running water and no electricity, just to pay child support.
Right now, I can’t tell you the story about WHY he quit drinking. Not yet that is. I’m sure one day I will be able to, without crying and feeling anger and well, wanting to puke. But let me just say it wasn’t pretty.
Fast forward about six months.
7am: there’s a knock at the door.
In my sleepy haze, I stumbled from our tiny room to the front door, hair stuck straight up, and climbed on the chair so that I could see out the front window. Blue car. Crap, its her car.
THIS EARLY?? Ugh. *heart thumping in throat* For half a second, I considered turning around and going back to bed. Letting him deal with it. But nope, I swung open the door and woah, who is this man?
He asked for my husband. More drama.
This is where we learned that his ex-wife had DIED.
She FREAKING DIED. This …this woman who made our lives a living hell, went and DIED ON ME. What the hell?
This “woman” who had put us through so much had just DIED in her freaking SLEEP. I never got to vent my anger at her. She used to hold his child -my stepdaughter- hostage for months. At that point, we hadn’t seen our daughter in nearly six months. SIX FREAKING MONTHS, man. I never got to go to her apartment and beat the ever living snot out of her like I wanted to. I never even EMAILED her to try and get any sort of explanation out of her. I was trying to keep the peace. I just pretended like she didn’t even exist.
So, now I ask you, what do I do with my ANGER?
There are days I just want to scream. ALL. DAY. LONG. There are days when I want to ignore everyone. How do I make that stop? How do I get past this?
How?
*HUGS* I wish I had the answers.
Oh how I wish I could give you an answer. I can tell you though, if my husband’s ex wife dies tonight in her sleep… I’ll throw a damn kegger first. Then I’ll be standing right beside you wondering what to do with two kids who have been programmed to hate us (two live with her, one lives with us) and what to do with any an all of the anger I have inside me for her. She should be leveled with it and I just hope that one day, when the kids are grown, I can tell her exactly what a low life she is. How do you get past this much anger and disgust and contempt? With no outlet what do you do?
Is there a boxing gym you can join near you? Hitting a heavy bag is surprisingly therapeutic.
Love his child? Try to “repurpose” that anger energy into love. My mother died when I was young and I was put into a situation where I felt very unwanted (my parents had been divorced when she died and my dad had remarried).
Get it out anyway. Write the email you never sent. If you have to, create a free email address to send it to. Go to the glass recycling center and chuck glass into the pile while screaming at her. It’s cathartic I hear. Release it into the world and get it out of you. In as safe a way possible, of course.
don’t know where to put the anger. I DO know that if left to fester it will spread and grow. Please take my advice and try to work it out and then you can let it go. Don’t do what I did and hold onto it for decades. It will take you prisoner and you don’t want that surely.
I would suggest counseling, to purge..get it all out. Then concentrate on the important things: You first. Then your husband and child. Take care of yourself and get strong to work on them. That’s your circle. Work on that. It’s hard, but you CAN do it!
The airplane rule: The flight attendants will tell you to put on your oxygen mask before you put it on your child. I had no idea why we should do that until I become a mom.
Take care of yourself and then you can take care of others. That’s my message.
Love and peace to you, Rachael
like Katya’s idea…write a letter, rant, rave, let the shit fly, then burn it as a symbolic way of sending it to her.
I am so very sorry you have to deal with that specter
Oh sweetie. This is just so hard.