Gotta Say!

I began writing the previous post within fifteen minutes of the conversation between me and my husband that inspired it. I spent eight hours composing it under the influence of the emotional agitation of our confrontation which was still strong enough when the time came to click ‘publish’ that I barely hesitated. After posting, I was left with only two hours for sleep before my 24 hour stayover at Grandma’s. I began to regret that post immediately upon awaking but I had only twenty minutes to prepare to leave and no access to the Internet at Grandma’s. My feelings about the post swung back and forth uncountable times between then and the first chance I had to get online again late Sunday night.

I’ve chosen to let it stand. For the time being anyway.

This is because of the high contrast between the feelings that are associated with the urge to delete it and those associated with the desire to let it stand. The need to delete is prompted by guilt and shame and embarrassment but the price of giving into it seems to be a feeling of helplessness and isolation and a sensation like gagging or suffocation. Meanwhile, the urge to let it stand promises (and for long minutes at a time now) delivers a sense of relief, freedom and even dignity. It might me ugly but it is true and it is my truth. It just so happened that I was involved in preparing a post about my propensity to self-censor and the roots of that in my upbringing so I was primed to ‘pull the trigger’ when my husband handed my the weapon of his permission to blog about his less than admirable behaviors even tho I knew he was not sober at the time.

So now you know. Along with all the other challenges I’ve confessed here, I am married to an alcoholic.

I do still feel the need to apologize for the saltiness of some of the language in that last paragraph. There had been more which I took out. I ended up mostly paraphrasing the sense of what he said as he was not nearly as articulate as my rendition implies. Nor as ’pretty’ shall we say. He’s an ex-Marine after all and had been sipping his suds for seven hours or so. I’ll leave it to your imagination.

I’m still working on that post about self-censoring. It seems to be a theme my consciousness is working with both waking and dreaming in the last several weeks. My husband may not have been sober but he was amazingly insightful and told me the truth when he said that I make too many rules about what I can and can’t write about.