The Alcoholic

My story about my dating life starts about 5 yrs before my marriage ended. Now bear in mind that my marriage had been over for me since my 30th birthday and I know it's no excuse and before you get too excited, I didn't sleep with the guy. I had what might have been an emotional affair.  Well it was for me anyway. An emotional affair with an Aquarius man who was always one step away from doing things ironically.

I'm a theater kid. I've been prancing around on stage forever. I love musicals and can often be found on the noisy end of a karaoke mic. I joined a couple of local community theatre groups and this is where I met the alcoholic. I obviously didn't know he was an alcoholic when I met him, I thought he was a lovely guy. We got along like a house on fire almost immediately. In fact it was like being struck by lightning. I remember when he walked into rehearsal and I thought fuck who is this guy, Fuck why am I married to a useless dickhead, fuck get a grip! 

We talked and laughed our way through rehearsals, getting to know each other was easy and exciting and I fell for that man too hard and fast. He fell for me too until a friend told him who my husband was. Shortly after that he stood in the street exasperated asking why I got married so early and ruined my life. I replied with ‘I guess I could have waited and ruined it on you’. He threw his hands in the air and walked away. Have you ever turned and walked away from a person when your entire body is screaming at you to run after them? It's electric and depressing at the same time. Sounds bleak, honestly if it wasn't so pathetic it would make a great romantic comedy. In the movie version though we would end up together in the end, real life had a very different plan for us.

Covid hit and like a lot of the world, he ended up working from home. Being alone has a way of making you face your demons and this man had more than one. Unless you are very self aware it can be hard to face those demons alone. It has taken me many years to recognise when I am running my own bull shit. So when he was suddenly forced to be alone for long periods of time with an unknown end date, he drank to cope. Alcohol is a depressive substance which is why so many people who are struggling reach for a drink. It suppresses the sad feelings making us feel alive and happy but the fix is only momentary. It doesn't really help long term and thus creates a dependency. 

We talked all the time, almost every day. We talked about our lives and how bad things were for me at home. He talked about all the women he was fucking, dangling them in front of me waiting for my jealousy to make me leave. He said he wished I was the type to screw around, he would make jokes about being an asshole and flogging the fuck out of me with a belt every night. A real charmer! The way he spoke to me sounds horrible and it was. I won't pretend it was anything but horrible. I could hear the pain behind it though, there were moments of true honesty where he would tell me he wasn't coping but then he would revert back to the usual shit. 

He drank more than anyone I've ever met. A minimum of 15 beers every day. He had a Britney Spears moment and shaved his head. He would get drunk and spend hours creating well thought out and cinematically recorded videos of himself pretending to masterbate. Actually now that I think about it, he wasn't a good guy. He's a walking red flag. What the fuck is wrong with me? I guess when you spend 15 yrs with a guy who pretended to be amazing just so that I would marry him and then literally stopped putting in any effort after I said I do, you'll take a red flag to feel anything. Depression will make you do crazy things and this is probably the reason both of us acted the way we did. 

After the ex and I separated, the first thing I did was text the alcoholic. I had a few drinks and was feeling horny. Drunk me is a raging horn bag. In fact alcohol and weed have convinced me to make many bad decisions. I texted him a flirty message and his first response was to ask if I was still married. I told him no, we talked about what had happened and then he told me I was disgusting and he thought me and the ex would end up back together. 

He has always told me I'm disgusting. I'll post a picture on instagram and he will respond with “Yuck” or “disgusting” and I always told myself he was saying those things because he couldn't tell me how he really felt. But now that I'm single I have to take what he is saying at face value. If he likes me he has nothing stopping him from telling me that but instead he tells me that I'm disgusting. The hopeless romantic in me and the realist in me are constantly battling over what's right and wrong. I want to believe there's a great man underneath all his crap. Truth is he may well be a good man but I can't make him choose to be that way. He is the only one who can make that change. You can't force anyone to do something they aren't ready to do. This is true for all our relationships, not just romantic ones. Friendships, family and workmates are all the same. If your employees don't want to work, they won't. If your friends and family don't want to be there for you, they won't. It might take losing you for them to see how good they had it but that's a lesson they have to learn on their own. The right ones will come back and apologise when they are ready, the wrong ones won't.

That's been a hard lesson to learn. People will always tell you who they really are. However, we, or I do anyway, want to see the best in people. I believe people are inherently good. I don't want to think that the people in my life might actually be something else. But this guy has consistently told me how gross he thinks i am and only wanted to be with me when i wasn't available. It took many long years for me to realise this and I spent way too long obsessing over him. I'd like to think we can be friends but I'm not sure that is even possible. Maybe a clean break is the best way for everyone.