Digging Deeper

in less than one week, my mother-in-law or as i like to call her mi Suegra, will be visiting us for four days. saying our relationship fits the strained mother-in-law/daughter-in-law stereotype is putting it mildly. there is not another person or situation that causes me more anxiety or more friction in my marriage than this one. as the discussions and arguments increase as her arrival nears, it hit me how similar my behavior and thinking are around Suegra as they were around Vino.

Esposo and i agreed to her coming to us rather than him going to her (what has happened most recently) or having her at one of my family gatherings so i have support and plenty of buffers (what we've also done to manage the strain). a few months ago, i said i would "suck it up" and have her here. reason being Esposo wants her to see our kiddos, her grandkiddos, even though she has not done one single thing to earn even being called a grandmother. intellectually, i know that i need to support my husband, extend some grace to Suegra (she lost her husband almost two years ago) and suck it up. but doing these things seems to be fucking impossible.

as most of us boozehounds know, that lingering realization or knowledge that we probably have a drinking problem was there long before we actually stopped drinking. this self-knowledge that motivates us to change from red to white wine, drink only on weekends, drink a glass of water between each cocktail, be sure to eat something prior to drinking because "clearly i got so lit because i started drinking on an empty stomach." it's the voice that says "you did it again" when you wake up with a wine headache on a random tuesday morning because that one glass turned into one bottle. that reasonable voice.

so...now that i am 19 months sober, my reasonable voice is pretty loud and clear. i certainly don't always act reasonably but i listen to it more often. this morning on the heels of a nasty discussion with Esposo about Suegra, i was in my head clicking off all the reasons why Suegra doesn't even deserve to be in the same room with my kiddos, shuffling through my list of endless resentments (yes, the ones that were on my 4th step last fall) and feeling my heart race and stomach lurch just thinking about her appearance and the sound of her voice. and there it was, the annoying reasonable voice clearing it's throat and reminding me to do this for my husband, to do it differently and to just try to keep my mouth shut. that's when it hit me that i haven't struggled with anything on this level other than giving up vino.

during the last couple of months of my drinking i would stop for a couple of weeks, drink, stop for another three, drink and so on. that's when a dear friend pointed out to me that until i realized i wasn't choosing to buy that bottle of wine or hook up with a girlfriend for drinks, it was going to be damn near impossible for me to get sober. looking back, it was that moment when i accepted the fact that i lost the power to choose when it came to booze. this is what it finally took for me to become completely willing to give sobriety a shot.

dammit, this Suegra situation is a helluva lot like sobriety. until i become completely willing to do it differently and to"suck it up" for my husband, i will suffer the overwhelming anxiety and exhausting bickering. of course he has his own choices to make in regard to Suegra and he says he's finally willing to make changes...in my words "to dig deeper" or when we're really in the middle of it "to write in blood that i will never have to see Suegra again." yes, it's that intense.

fuck it's hard to do the right thing and behave like a grown up at forty. but here goes...saying it here in good ole' black and white, not blood, that i am going to dig deeper. to not just hear that reasonable voice but to listen to it and act on it.