In part one I talked about the beginning of my relationship with an alcoholic. In part two I talked about how it gets worse. We start off part three with her being sober for two months. She gets into a sober living house (a house full of 5-9 women who are also trying to be sober, who support one another while being held accountable for behavior and sobriety, who go to meetings and do outreach for others who are struggling). She goes to AA and NA meetings, starts working the 12 steps with her sponsor, takes her medication. This is what I’ve always wanted. Sustainable sobriety. I think that person from two years ago is going to magically appear. Do you know what happens when you remove the coping mechanism that someone has used for over a decade? It’s not easy. It’s a struggle. Without alcohol, she was short-tempered, cranky,…

Yesterday, in part one of my super long story about my last failed relationship that put me through the gauntlet of change and transformation, we left off with my partner at the time finally admitting that she was an alcoholic. Talk about relief. Everyone always says the first step is admitting you have a problem. I got this huge surge of hope, and my first thought was “Okay, this is salvageable. This situation is something that I can now handle.” It’s no longer “I’m going to try to drink less”. She’s admitting she has a real problem. She’s admitting she wants to fix the problem. And that’s something that I admire. I thought this was her rock bottom. She was in the hospital after spiraling out of control with the drinking and the depression and the self-loathing. There became a new layer with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. You’re here,…

There was a time when I shared nearly every aspect of my life on this blog. It’s been over seven years, nearly a decade since I pressed “publish” on my little Blogger blog. I’ve grown a lot, shared a lot, written a lot. I’ve talked about my decision not to have kids, my anger issues, my breakups, the ugly truth of my life before self-care. If someone really took the time to read this blog from beginning to end, they’d know more about me than 90% of the people in my life. I used to worry that I was a bit of an over-sharer. Who wants the majority of their life cataloged on the internet? But it’s for a purpose and it always has been. I share the messy stuff in an effort to show everyone else who has that messiness that they aren’t alone and that life doesn’t have…