The summer seemed to fly by. Before I knew it, my little girl was starting kindergarten, and our little apartment was starting to get smaller and smaller. She was feeling cramped and anxious. It seemed like all we were doing was screaming at each other and desperately trying to make things work. We dedcided it would be worth it to try and move to something bigger. Maybe it was just the space that was making us crazy.
We started falling into a routine, and looking for places to move. Our days were spent working, and helping with homework, and our nights were spent falling asleep next to someone neither of us really knew anymore. The only thing we were consistently fighting about was her drinking, but for some reason things felt more like we were roommates than lovers.
We finally found a bigger place and moved into a two bedroom apartment south of town. We were still fighting, and she was still drinking. Now she was drinking and lying. It was like every time she opened her mouth, a lie popped out. She was going to dinner with a friend. She’d be back in a couple hours. A couple hours turned into all night. She’d come home so drunk she couldn’t stand up straight and she’d start screaming at me when I’d ask her where she was, or what she had been doing.
Our daughter would stay up sitting outside the bedroom door, hoping we’d stop screaming long enough to hear her when she tried to tell us she was scared, or had a nightmare. She’d sit in the same corner of the apartment and pretend not to cry when I would follow her out of the bedroom and around the house crying and begging her to stop lying to me. To stop drinking. She would sit in her little corner and pray that it would all stop any minute. And then it would end with her packing her things and me screaming at her to leave.
It was a constant back and forth. Throwing her out, her shutting down and leaving us. It got so bad one day, we were shoving each other and screaming and hitting until she finally pushed me into the glass doors heading out onto our patio and put her hands around my neck. Pinning me into the door. I was crying and begging her to let me go, she was drunk and screaming at me to stop. My brother showed up to our apartment, and grabbed her away from me. He yelled at her to leave and I begged her to stay.
This would be us for the next three months. Screaming at each other to leave, begging each other to stay. Accusing each other of lying, or cheating. She would threaten to leave and I would sit in front of the door, crying and begging her to stay. And then came the day I planned a huge birthday surprise for her. Not only had I planned her birthday, I had planned to propose to her.
I bought our rings and rented a room on the top floor of one of the most expensive casinos in town. I managed to get bottle service and VIP entrance to one of the nicer bars inside the casino and invited every one of her closest friends. The only thing I asked her, “please don’t be drunk when you get to the room. Please. That’s all I ask love.”
Her friends wanted to take her to the wine walk that day and meet at the room later that night. I asked them again, “please please don’t let her get drunk before she comes to the room. I really have a lot planned for her.” But that didn’t really seem to matter to anyone.
I was getting everything in the room ready and periodically checking on her. It was getting closer to when everyone would start showing up, and I was waiting for her to arrive. She showed up completely wasted. She couldn’t talk or keep her eyes open. I looked at her and said “I asked you not to drink. That was the one thing I asked. That you not be drunk when you got here and you couldn’t even do that.” She laughed at me and said “it’s not a big deal. It’s my fucking birthday. Are we really going to argue about this? Seriously??” The rest of the night was spent being ignored and laughed at by not just her, but all her drunk friends too.
I was so incredibly angry I decided to just drink and try to have a good time anyway. But I couldn’t. She just kept laughing at me and making fun of me in front of everyone. Belittling me and telling everyone how stupid her birthday was. She ended up getting to the point where she wasn’t even allowed to come back into the club because she was too drunk. I couldn’t find her anywhere. By this time I was crying not because I was sad, but because I was angry, so angry I wanted to scream. I felt stupid, and alone, and unappreciated. I felt like I had done everything to make her birthday special and she had just taken it and thrown into the garbage. So I called him.
I was drunk and angry and upset and alone, so I called him. He had a girlfriend at the time and she was on her way to pick him up from the party. (I had invited him to come too.) I told him what had happened and he said he’d come sit with me until he got picked up. I was shaking and crying and the minute I saw him I walked straight up to him, grabbed him by the hand and took him to our room. I didn’t say anything. Just led him to the room.
As soon as we walked in, I started taking off his clothes and kissing him. He picked me up and everything was a blur from there. That was the first night we had spent together. My girlfriend, downstairs, belligerently drunk, and unable to access the room without a key, and his girlfriend. Sitting in her car, calling him over and over again, waiting to pick him up in the parking garage. It was the first time I had ever cheated on her, and it was the first time I realized how I really felt about him.
The Storm Diaries 