Never Ever Getting Back Together

The calls keep coming, the texts keep coming, it's been about two weeks since I ended it for good and she hasn't left me alone yet.  I don't respond, they keep coming, day after day. Sometimes it's the standard "I miss you." Sometimes it's insults and I assume she's drunk when she sends those. Sometimes it's "You're going to regret this." The thing is, I already regret it. Slowly they become less frequent, eventually they stop. As soon as they do though, I miss them. I miss her. It'd be easy to fix. I ended it. Though common sense reminds me why exactly I ended it. I had to call the police on her, because she was drunk, in my car with my kids.

Still I feel bad. RIC needs help and I ran out on her. I don't see that much difference between her problems now, and my problems back when my wife left me. I was depressed and rather than helping me she left me. I struggle with this. I'm pretty sure I made the right decision, but I can't seem to show my work on this problem. I turn to an unlikely source for advice, the Librarian. Sure we dated for quite awhile, but at one point, before all that, she was one of my closest advisers. Besides who better to give you relationship advice than someone who you were actually once in a relationship with? 

"You have the ability to see the good in people they can't even see in themselves" she tells me. No argument there. That's kind of a flaw of mine, but if one must have a flaw that's one I can live with. She also tells me how she had an ex-boyfriend who had a problem with alcohol. He knew it, she knew it, everyone knew it, and he tried to deal with it, but he couldn't even say what the problem was, let alone beat it. 

Damn. She's never said it, I've never said it. She's an alcoholic. And the difference between me leaving her now, and my wife leaving me back then? I was asking for, I was begging for help. RIC is not ready for help. Not ready to quit. Not ready to even say the word "alcoholic."

I still don't get it though. How could she choose crawling into a bottle over being with me? I want desperately to understand this. It seems like the logical thing to try to understanding this is to try to get inside her head. Okay, maybe getting shitty ass drunk alone at home to try to understand her thought process wasn't logical, and it didn't make me feel better. It just made me drunk and sadder and lonelier. Before I passed out though I found a pair of her earrings hanging from the shelf I store my booze on. I'd forgotten she'd even been to my place, let alone been there long enough to take off and forget earrings.

I ponder just throwing them away, but somehow that seems dishonest. I ponder mailing them back to her, but damn it, I like that I have an excuse to see her. So one day after work, completely unannounced I go over to her place. I figure if she's not there I'll leave them in her mailbox, if she's drunk, I'll hand them over to her and leave, if she's there and sober ... who knows. Taking her back is not an option though.

She's there and surprised to see me. I hand her the earrings and she invites me in. I'm not sure why, but I go in. I don't take my coat off, I don't venture farther into the house than the entry way. She asks me to come home. I tell her I've been living at my home for the past two weeks. She wants me to come back. She tells me she'll go to AA, I can have access to her sponsor if that's what it takes. I tell her it's too late for that. She begs me to just give her a second chance.

"A second chance?!? I already gave you a second chance ... and a third ... and a fourth!"

She asks for another.

"No! It's too late! You were drunk in front of my kids! I had to call the cops! Then I had to explain to my nutjob ex-wife why my kids were talking about the police!" 

"Well, you could have handled it differently. You could have left me alone in the car, it wasn't like I was going to do anything other than pass out. You could have told your ex-wife I went out with the girls and had one cocktail too many before we got in the car. You could of ..." I shake my head,

"Or here's the best way it could have been handled ... you could have not been drunk! That's the appropriate way to handle that situation!"

"I promise it'll never happen again."

"You're right, it'll never happen again because you're not going to see my kids again." 

Silence. Eventually it's broken by her apologizing.

"You're right. That shouldn't have happened. I'm sorry."

 I purse my tongue.

"You know through this whole thing" I say "you've not once said what the problem is."

"What?"

"You've danced around it, but you've never actually said it."

"Said what?"

"What your problem is!"

"I'm an alcoholic ...  alright?!?"  I can't help but feel this is a small victory.  

"What's it going to take for you to get sober? Gonna accidentally leave the front door open one day and your beloved dog run into the street and get hit by a car? Do you have to lose another job because of drinking, and then lose the house because of that? Are you going to have to get in a car wreck and kill someone to stop?"

I have her in tears now. I feel bad, but if I worry about making her feel bad, perhaps I'll never get through to her. 

"I can do this, I did it for for 67 days."

"No," I countered, "you *failed* after 67 days. I believe you can do it, I do or I wouldn't be standing here having this conversation with you. But I can't fix you. I can't be responsible for your success or failure. I can't be responsible for your sobriety. Neither can anyone else. This is a journey you need to take alone. I can't make you into who you're supposed to be, you need to find yourself, and find yourself sober. I can't watch the hurt you need to go through to get to where you need. I'll want to stop the hurt and stopping you from getting hurt is stopping you from getting better."

Dejected, she glares at the floor.

"I guess that's why AA says no relationships for the first year." 

"Then do it." I plead with her. "Get in AA follow the program, get sober."  

"I don't need AA. I can do this on my own. I'm not going to live alone in this big house for a year."

She's right. She can't do it, not in this house. Living by yourself in a four bedroom house, yeah, I might drink too. I tell her to just sell the damn house then. Move in with her mom, her sister, her aunt or just move into an apartment. She refuses. The house was all she salvaged from her marriage. She claims that if she got rid of her house, then the whole thing meant nothing.

We talk some more, I never budge. She tells me more and more. She tells me the real causes of her drinking. We talk and talk and talk. The entire time I'm still in my coat, still standing by the front door, ready to leave. Finally I just don't have anything else to say. I say I should be going.

"Please don't leave me," she begs "You're supposed to love me unconditionally." 

I don't know what to say to that. I could pick apart that statement so many damn ways, but I don't. None of that would change anything. So I give the simplest, easiest, and hardest to argue with response. "Whether or not my love for you is unconditional, my ability to be with you is not."

I open the door to leave. The door hangs open. My hand rests on the door knob. They say don't turn around, but I did. 

"I ... I ..." I stammer.

I want to tell her that I'll always be there for her, if she ever really needs me, but I can't. I'm walking out the door and out of her life.

"AA says no relationships for a year, I can't promise you where I will be in a year, but I can promise you I'll check on you in a year. I hope you'll have good news for me then."

I step out into the cold and pull the door shut behind me.

I never saw her again,

This is my life now.