First Night at the Beach

I am sitting here in my friends enormous beach house waiting for my soon-to-be ex-husband.

Our children are wandering through the house, laughing, fighting and playing.

I am deep in thought.

It seems I am always waiting for you.

But tonight, finally, I am at peace with it.

It seems sad to me that you hid your drinking from me. I suppose I set it up that way because years ago, towards the end of the first extended rehab, we both signed a contract. And I told you if you relapsed, I would leave you.

I did not want to live through that hell again. I thought it would break me, and it nearly did. But I survived.

I remember how much fun we used to have together and it makes me sad. How much I would have loved to at least enjoyed your relapse with you. And I know how crazy that's sounds, but it still makes me sad. I wanted to at least have fun with you then. It was a horrible time for me. There was no fun. Not ever. For years.

Instead, you kept it for your "friends". And that hurts. Because I was always at home with our children, hoping that you would make it home to us. And there were many times I was not sure you would make it.

I spent so much time in anxiety and worry. And looking back, I have blame in that too. I wish I had known how to live my life in spite of that.

It seems like everything in life comes back to acceptance. And it was never that I could not accept you, I could not accept what you would do to me.

I remember my mom's dad. How I adored him. He was an alcoholic. An emotional alcoholic. But he never hid his drinking. And I think that's what the hardest thing for me to accept with you was that you were always hiding the drinking. And that hurt. Because it made me doubt myself. At times, I thought I was crazy.

Now I see that you did what you knew and I did what I knew. And there is no judgement in that. Only sadness.

But there is now also gladness for the knowing and for the children we created. Because nothing is ever in vain.