I started housesitting last night. It’s hard to describe how I felt about it.

I was definitely relieved to have so much space and quiet. My last interaction with dh was strained, at best.

It was odd to sit in a house, in the dark, alone. I felt oddly comforted.

It was lonely when I woke up this morning, but I shook it off and went and ran with my partners. Sometimes I just take comfort from hearing their feet on the pavement. Simple things.

One step at a time, one day at a time.

I can’t help but look back and think, “When did things get so messed up?”

This morning, as td was speaking to me over the phone, I literally felt my body shutting down. It is so hard to explain.

He said he was worried about me because of the dream that I had the night prior, among other things, and I just. SHUT. DOWN. I felt narcoleptic. Then I felt angry. Then I felt incredulous.

I.

NEED.

A.

BREAK.

I can’t…I don’t…I don’t know.

I don’t want to be put in reactionary position, and I feel like I am constantly being given information that just blows my mind. And leaves me bewildered, baffled, and frustrated.

Rarely have I woken up from a dream and remembered so many details or been so disturbed.

Last night, I dreamt that I was attacked, raped, and shot, in that order. The attacker beat my face, shattered my pelvis, and then shot me in the back. I remember in the dream I was lying there on the floor, praying to God that they would leave before I bled out so I would have some chance at survival. I was on my face, on the floor, trying to remain conscious. I knew that if I fell asleep, it was game over.

When they left, I got up to try and summon help – my mom came in and I remember that I was walking funnily because of my pelvis – I was also trying to keep her from seeing my back, because I didn’t want her to see the bullet wounds.

How’s that for unsettling?

Butt of a joke.

But…(insert scary news here).

In trying to get my thoughts together, I was posed a question by dh after I told him that something had to give, and that if I didn’t find that SOMETHING soon, it was going to be me. He asked me why it was our relationship or me. And for a long time, I didn’t have an answer.

But today, while I was running, it dawned on me that he can still push alcoholic buttons for me. A couple words from his mouth and I feel completely and totally insane, desperate, sometimes suicidal…like I just drank again. In our last argument, after I didn’t complete my run, I stood in the shower and thought about cracking the bottle of gin above our refrigerator and drinking it down as a representation of my own, personal white flag. My own, “I! GIVE! UP!” That is a dark and scary place for me. A place I don’t want to live in, visit, or even think about any more.

The company I keep today cannot push those buttons, because they didn’t know me when I was HER. The other me. They only know what I am now. WHO I am now. Those friends who DO know me from the glory days (hahahahahahah) do not push those buttons for me. They have been unconventionally kind and forgiving.

I have to be clear and say that I don’t think dh pushes my buttons on purpose. I don’t even think that he knows that he is doing it. I think it is instinctual, from ex-y. HIS survival mode. Given my past history with men, verbal altercation is probably the area in which I am least equipped. And most vulnerable. My bright pink underbelly. Exposed.

Now that he is not drinking as well, his barbed comments are sharper. The drunk, ” You’re boring. You’re sucking the life out of me,” hurt far less then what has been thrown at me as of late. He knows this, he said. At times I feel like it is too little too late. I ask him where he was a year ago? When I would’ve done anything to save us.

I told him it was not whether or not I loved him or not, because I do.

But it is about whether I can live through it or not.

Every so often there are moments that I think to myself, “Remember this time, this minute, this second, because it doesn’t get better than this.”

Most of the time I spend my days in fast forward rushing from place to place to place without a second to stop until my head hits the pillow, exhausted, frustrated, drained until I get up and do it all over again.

Today, as I was walking back to the elementary school site with a handful of the kids, we were kicking our way through the field, through the leaves, laughing about squirrels. We took off at a run, all linked together hand to hand to hand to hand and I was, for that second, truly happy.

A second of peace and quiet just for me.

Just for now.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. Or pleasant. Or fun. Or anything less than heart-wrenching.

When is it too much? When I met TD, I was a HOT MESS. HOT. MESS. and I know that. He told me to come stay because he would take care of me, and he did. For a long, long time. Picked me up and put food in my mouth and pushed me toward a degree and put aspirin in my hand and loved my broken little heart back into fractured pieces. That I keep trying to put together.

When I first quit drinking, I told him that if I had hurt him too much, he could tell me and that I would walk away. Or let him walk away. And I honestly meant that. I don’t know that I would have had the mental fortitude to stand by a wholly selfish person who was trying to drink herself into happiness.

And now?

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know that either of us can honestly let go of enough of the past with BOTH HANDS to move on. When we argue (which has been more often that not, unfortunately) past incidences fly up to smack one or both of us in the face. They hang there in the air, clearly unforgotten and unforgiven.

I remember that I asked him, “Is this working for you?” out of desperation and he said, “No.” And it isn’t working for me either.

But he also told me that you have to want it.

And I can’t say what I want, because I don’t know.

I did say that I knew something was going to have to give, and that if I didn’t find out what that something was, soon, it was going to be me.

We were 14 and 13 the last time I held your hand. Frozen in time and Washington D.C.’s wintery crispness, the green of your bomber jacket and the pink of my cheeks stand sharp against the pale sky. Fragmented by the knobby gnarled trees and their lingering fingers, shivering as they wait for spring. Your hand was warm, grasping mine firmly – fingers interlocked – the smell of tobacco gently seeping from your skin to mine.

We were the best ages in those days. You, too young for machismo and sarcasm; me, yet unfettered by insecurities and ugly words. Both of us raging against innocence before our 8:00 curfews.

For a second I wish I had access to the exact details from those days. The look on your face, the smell of your skin, the sound of your laugh. The slow smooth way your Spanish wrapped around me and nestled in my heart. I never told you those things. We were eons apart.

I remember the days we would make a run for it. The calls to your school secretary (it never failed to amaze me that they took my word that I was your mother) stating that you were sick.  I remember the giddy way we’d hold our breath as I dialed and spoke – shh! shh! SHHH!!!ing each other as I tersely parted with as few words as possible into the receiver as you crouched beside me. I remember the way we’d flop onto the couch with relief, separated only for a second until you grabbed my hand and we ran, laughing, to the metro.

We spent those days wandering around the mall, in and out of the museums, as many as I could get you into. There was something about standing next to you in the darkness, gaping in awe at the sheer size of the blue whale in the Museum of Natural History that sticks to me. When I think about those moments now, it’s almost as if I could reach out in to the dark and touch you, stuck there in the past.

That winter was really our last moment together. I came back that next summer and became entangled with your brother. Briefly. For which I am pretty sure you never forgave me. He was never the same to me as you. Older, yes. Which makes me feel more shallow than you will ever know or I will ever get a chance to confess to you. I will never forget all the moments that I tried to look behind the swoop of your black hair into your eyes for forgiveness, but that sweep, it hid you well. Hid you from me, heart, hands, and soul.

And what was there between us after that, really?

Time.

Distance.

The frantic pangs of adolescence that blurred all those days and days and days until you found yourself standing on a porch with your girlfriend and your unborn child and her infuriated ex-boyfriend, a gun pointed at you.

And I? A world away on some dot in the Pacific feeling the news of your death freeze me to the clammy tile floor, breathless. Regretting that I put myself in your brother’s hands instead of yours. What I would give to find myself tearing down the sidewalk outside the Smithsonian with you again, laughing ourselves into hysterics as we wove in and out of the hotdog vendors, inebriated with the freedom and possibilities of just one day.

One day I’ll meet you there. Bring your bomber jacket.

Back when I was getting out of my marriage to TSS, I only knew that I wanted one thing: to get out. Desperately, whole0heartedly, and with the only thing that felt I had left. My life. I was stripped of dignity, self-esteem, and sanity in 11 short months. I imagine that I had that wide eyed crazy look Slater gets before she attacks me.

In that instance, it truly was a matter of life and death for me.

When I walked away from him, at the ripe old age of 26, I did not give a second thought to the implications of getting involved in a 2nd marriage and relationship so quickly. Especially as an alcoholic. Looking back on the early years of my marriage to dh, I shake my head and wonder how we made it. Wading through the wreckage of the self-destructive path I was down, never knowing when I was going to sabotage myself again. <–  Believe me: I never saw it coming.

I have to laugh at my stupidity when I realize that it was always a mystery to me. Yet there it was, plain as the nose on my face.

Now we are both at a different juncture. Namely, both of us have quit drinking. It’s been a separate and intense journey for both of us, together and apart.

It’s forcing us to rewrite predetermined roles and reevaluate expectations. It has been humbling, frustrating, painful, and tearful (for me).

It’s an odd place to be. But I am coming to accept that I am in exactly the right place. Right NOW.

I fancy myself a bit of a riot, sometimes. I like to have clever little status updates. Or at least ones that do not say stuff like, “I just woke up and brushed my teeth, now I am doing some laundry.”

Having had Austin Power and Fat Bastard (is that his name?) on the brain, I put Alex says: Get in her belly! as my g-mail status about 3 months ago (seems like eons).

Because I can’t really see my own status, or didn’t care to, or didn’t pay enough attention to care, all the remarks that would’ve raised some red flags went right in one ear, floating through my empty brain and out the other.

Blunt is the way to go with me.

Finally, finally, a GOOD friend tells me, “Did you know that your status says, ‘Get in HER?!’ only?” Apparently gmail doesn’t leave space for the belly or any other extraneous body parts or words flapping about.

It dawned on me that for the last three months, anyone who has been on gmail chat with me has been requested to “Get in her.”

Sweet.

Wordsmith, I am. I blame it on my lack of visual spatial recognition.

Alex: 0

G-mail: 1

I can’t believe that it has been almost a month betweeen posts. I remember when this place was a cathartic haven for me. Thoughts, feelings, rants, raves. Anything to just GET.IT.OUT. I don’t know what has changed. I’d like to say that I don’t spend as much time in front of the machine, but that would be a lie. I don’t think I spend as much time inside my head.

Although, coming back to the island has thrown me back a couple steps. I met a new person the other day who, upon being informed that I don’t drink, called me “BO-RING!” I know that I really shouldn’t care, but it hurt my feelings. Which makes me feel like I  need to get refocused.

I also found out that people love to repeat Drunk Girl stories. How fun! I suppose people will talk about what they talk about until they talk about something else.  And, in a comparison of drunk girl stories, this one is mildly entertaining. And not that humiliating, so I guess I should feel fortunate.

I also wonder what it is about this place that makes people hang on to stories like that. Although, I know it is not only this place. I already told you that my cousin brought up a story from nearly 10 years ago about me drinking. 10 years!

I always hope that I never pigeonhole any of my friends like that. While I do remember events, etc., I don’t DEFINE you by who or who you weren’t ten years ago, five years ago, 2 weeks ago, or even yesterday! That would hardly be fair. Or realistic.

I posted on Twitter that I needed a big bowl of “Get over yourself” followed by a shot of “Get a Grip.” I wonder if they have that down at the store?

Things to be happy about: My GIANT physioball.