Goodness. Yesterday… didn’t go according to plan. Well, we went to the party we meant to go to. I didn’t play with any friends. It didn’t seem…. wise. We fought again. It got to screaming again. I don’t feel like I’m in a position to be holier-than-thou about it.

The party was ok. We played some together and we socialized. Maybe that was what we needed to be doing just then.

Today we had a productive conversation. Like… the kind of productive conversation we haven’t been able to have all year. I sorta feel like we had to go through layers and layers and layers of nasty to get to this conversation. This morning we were able to just… lay it out. “This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. Yes x, y, and z won’t solve it… but it’s a problem we have to fix.”

I feel like we are getting to layers of honesty we’ve been burying for years.

I didn’t even know we were concealing all of this. We have been trying so hard to protect one another’s feelings in so many areas. We have been doing our best to provide what we interpreted as what the other person needed. We have both been choosing to not ask for yet more support because we both feel like we ask for too much.

Maybe we need to change what we are asking for. Maybe this is really complicated. Maybe instead of retreating and trying to make ourselves smaller we should be trying to be bigger.

This is my second day of complete sobriety. It is going better than anticipated… my stomach doesn’t hurt. I’m not feeling frantic. I’m not being nasty with my tone of voice. I’m not stomping out of the room before I have big feelings all over people. I feel like the taper plus using alcohol to smooth out some of the initial bumps of mood distortion helped. I feel like the sleep is helping. (8 hours again last night.)

I’m taking stomach acid reducing pills, nutritional supplements, and allergy medication. How come my complete sobriety involves popping so damn many pills?!

But none of them are fun.

Sigh.

I’m in a better mood than I anticipated first thing this morning. That was an incredibly positive after breakfast chat. No screaming. No fuss. Just…. this is a big fucking deal and we have to talk about it.

Why can’t we change one or two things at once instead of throwing the whole damn deck of cards in the air and saying “Let’s see what happens!”

Some seriously hurt feelings. But you know what? I don’t think I could have gotten to the point of being able to communicate some pieces of this without causing that much pain.

I don’t think I’m that good.

Noah keeps coming back to “But you say and say and say that this relationship has been the best years of your life. How can it also be so awful?”

This relationship has been the happiest period of my life. Full stop. No hesitation. That doesn’t make it perfect. That doesn’t mean it can continue as it has forever. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Our kids are changing. There are specific pieces of the relationship that must change or else.

There are pieces of it that hurt and are damaging and just aren’t fucking ok.

That doesn’t take away the fact that this is the best I’ve ever known. Both of those things can be true at the same time.

Somehow… me wanting better… is all your fault Noah. If I hadn’t had ten years of this good, would I be capable of imagining better? I don’t think so. I really don’t.

I needed to have a best friend like you who would tear himself apart and rebuild to suit me. Just like I have done my best to change and grow for you. I have.

I am not the person you met. That’s part of why some of the things I could tolerate then I can’t tolerate now.

I don’t think that means either of us are evil. But it is true that we have to change and change again.

You are my monster and I am yours. Rawr.

What are we going to do? I don’t know. But I’m glad I get to do it with you. You are my best friend. No one has ever loved me like you do and no one else ever will.