Week 1

Friends, I’m writing from a calm, peaceful, quiet, EMPTY home for the first time in more than 6 months. The kids have returned to school (for now... in 2020 we have no idea how long that will last...) and I’m making tea with the pup at my feet (she misses them and I am boring).

It’s been 4 months since I confronted my husband about his drinking issues, which of course turned into a game to see how much I was willing to put up with, and where I would draw the lines. I stuck to my guns. Held my bottom lines. Let him fuck it up and didn’t save him (that was the hardest part).

Last week I put my bottom line into action, and presented him with an agreement for when he can be here to spend time with the kiddos. At first he was angry, and then sad, and then remorseful, and when I still stuck to my guns he went back to mad again. When I still didn’t budge he agreed to my plan. So.

This was the first week of reclaiming my house and my room and my bed and my goodmornings and my goodnights. No more walking on eggshells. No more feeling someone’s bad vibrations before I even open my eyes. No more bitter air. Living with an addict is rotten. It sucks the joy out of everything. There is so much space now for the lightness between my ribs, for my thoughts to float freely, for steady breath.

There is also time, all of a sudden. Ever since I became a Mom I haven’t had much of it. The “nights off” I do get are carefully planned around coven schedules and quickly filled with obligations. Suddenly twice a week I need to find something to do. (The Mister took a job out of the city and has his own place up there, so we have an agreement for the time being where I leave and he stays in the house with the kids for his “time on”.)

At first I was excited about this; I’ll crash my brothers place and smooch my nieces, or hang out with my bestie at her place smoking joints, maybe I can catch up with someone I haven’t seen in ages! But when my day off came I was feeling too emotional and raw to want to be social. Max was working, and though she offered it, there wasn’t enough time for me to drive North to her house where I could curl up on her couch alone. I wished out loud for the pre-pandemic days where I could have just taken my laptop to some busy coffee shop, used the free wifi and nibbled at pastries while I killed time.

“Why don’t you go see a movie?” Max asked. Nah. Who in their right mind would go to a movie theatre for fun right now with all the covid bullshit, I thought. But the more we talked the more it seemed like a possible idea, the theatres are empty, some of the larger ones are being run with only three staff, legally anyone in the building needs to wear a mask. I opened the movie app for the first time in half a year. A theatre on the other side of the city was playing a special filming of the one-woman-stage-show Fleabag! (I’m the HUGEST fan of the show, and PWB in general!!!)

Apparently recently separated emotionally fragile women who are trying to kill time are exactly who would go to a movie theatre for fun with all this Covid bullshit. And there was nobody there. And the sweet 17 year old (who was running concessions and the door alone) hooked me up with free snacks. And I had the whole theatre to myself, so I sat in the back row alone and put my feet up on the seats and burped really loudly and laughed and cried through a monologue I had only dreamed of seeing live in New York last year.

After the movie I took the long way home, with the pretty view of the lake. And then I sat by the water and watched the sunset before heading home to take over. And yeah, I still had a panic attack that night because being away from my kids is hard, and this change feels unbelievable and the last few months have been so fucking sad. But I also took myself out on a really nice date, and I’m doing a really hard thing.

I’m doing it.