May 28th
There is this girl, well — a woman. We’ve known each other for more than 30 years, we actually dated in high school. After our lives went in a different direction after graduating we nonetheless kept in touch — by airmail (yeah, we were writing letters to each other), by phone, then by emails, by internet messengers. Every time I went back home over the years I always managed to find time to see her. We both went through a lot in our lives — me a recovering alcoholic and a widower, her a recent divorcee after years of domestic abuse. We still like each other a lot, we are neighbors, we talk on the phone constantly and see each other frequently. Everything is going so well that recently I thought about sitting down with her and talking about us — where are we as a couple? are we a couple? is this a relationship? what do we want from each other? In the end, I decided not to.
Because she likes a drink.
She always liked to have fun and drinking was always a part of it. When I was drinking it was not a problem for me — on the contrary, I liked that part of her a lot. She knows about me and my recovery, she was never visible drunk when we meet in recent months (well, once I could smell alcohol on her breath but she dismissed it as “no big deal, I deserve a beer once in the while”). But — she goes to visit her friends in Warsaw monthly, they are alcoholics, she said it herself. They drink together and after she comes home it takes her several days to recover. Recently, more and more she is unavailable to meet or even to talk to on the phone — no explanation except “I wasn’t feeling well, I was in no shape to get out of the house”. I can see in her recent behavior myself from the time I was drinking. I don’t know for sure if she has a problem but it sure looks like it to me. And I know that from my twenty years of addiction, I can see small details, some words, little lies that were my forte during my active addiction in her (and not only in her — I can see it clearly in some other people, co-workers or neighbors as well). I talked with her about it. Let her know how important sobriety is for me and my recovery. She agrees, and then she does the same as before. I cannot tell her not to drink, I cannot tell her to change her behavior for me. If we were together, at best she would hide her drinking from me. And I would be suspicious about her. And that is no way to build a relationship.
I like her a lot anyway and don’t know what to do now. We can still be just friends, I guess. No one told me that sobriety will be easy and here is a perfect example. How the hell am I to build a relationship when any alcohol is out of the question for the other party? Narrow my scope only to other recovering addicts? Well, in theory, that might work.
I want to have someone close to me so much….
