Alcoholism - Losing Your Cool

I've just lost my cool with Jane (bout 5 mins ago) - thought I'd come to the diary to get it off my chest. My patience is running short. I have flaws like anybody else. God, I've got my flaws. But so does an alcoholic. The point is this. An alcoholic is probably (maybe certainly) going to have personality flaws that are part of the problem causing the alcoholism. What you then have is the alcoholism, which drives you mad plus the personality problems, which also drive you mad. And these come out when she is not drunk.

Sure we all irritate each other sometimes. It's all flawed and so on but alcoholics have underlying issues that are normally more noticeable than in a well balanced person. It is these personality problems that can make life difficult for a victim of an alcoholic, when the alcoholic is not drinking.

Sometimes the whole thing is on a knife edge. There is a background pressure and anxiety that never goes away. It doesn't take much to for the calm to change to disorder and anger. Anger seeps out of the pores of the body and ignites at the silliest thing that irritates.

There is always a degree of inherent stress in households. It is rarely utopia and totally calm. But in a household where one partner is an alcoholic and the other (me) a "tired-old-pain-in-the-arse" you are going to get flare ups.

As I type this she has called out apologising. That is nice and shows that she wants to keep me around. But do I want to be around?

Photo (the photo is not me -it is illustrative only and a nice photograph) copyright By assbach

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