Learning to trust myself III

[heatherg]

it was amazing towards the end of our R, I could tell if he was going to drink that night by how he acted during the day...there was a pattern.

Definitely. I always knew because he wouldn't eat dinner or would decline an invitation from others or myself to do something that he would normally have accepted (because he wanted to stay home and drink). So much of the non-alcoholic's energy gets wrapped up in the alcoholic...only someone who's been through it can understand I think. The mornings after he drank, I would count the cans so I would know how many he drank. Then he got to the point where he would not put all his cans in the same place. So I would count how many were in the fridge when he started and how many were left in the fridge the next morning and subtract the two. I can't even tell you why it mattered to me, but it did.
And then of course on a 'non-drinking' night, if he accepted a beer from someone, I never knew if it would stop at 5-6 or continue on to the full event. And when we came home from someplace if we had been out drinking, of course everyone else would go to bed, but not H. He'd stay up and continue drinking.
The experience drove me closer to the edge than I will probably ever know. I HATED him. But when I could put it out of my head, I loved him and we would seem normal. But it was always like a secret that I kept. When people would tell me I had a great H or whatever the topic was, I would always think "If only you knew". I did not have a perfect life and I did not have a perfect H and I was not lucky and I was not happy. But to tell anyone that would only have made me feel vulnerable and weak. I'm competitive, I like to feel like I've done my best and achieved my goals. My M was a far cry.