Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Type Post

As I sit here typing this, I can hear tree branches cracking and snapping off under the weight of ice and snow and it sounds like gunshots.  Ah, memories of growing up in SoCal :).

Not much to say about Christmas directly.  The SU and I really don't do anything.  We stopped decorating years ago since it's just us two now.  We don't make any big fancy meal (again, only us two = leftovers for *weeks*) and we don't buy each other any gifts.  (I just re-read that and, wow, we sound like Grinches!  But, really, we just don't see the point...).  Mostly we just hang out and be slovenly.  I spent today doing laundry and deep cleaning my kitchen.  Tomorrow is putting laundry away and cleaning out my pantry.  There is a sale on yarn at my yarn store but...with potentially four-five inches of snow by morning with almost a half-inch of ice underneath, I don't know that I'm all that up for death-defying driving in order to get 20 percent off the yarn I need for my next project!

The SU got drunk again on Friday night. He started off the evening telling me he was sober but didn't want to be.  As the night progressed, the usual signs started showing up.  I confronted him, he admitted he was drunk and I ended up leaving again.  Happy Holidays! :P  This time I stayed away until Sunday morning.  I just didn't want to see him on Saturday and didn't at all feel ready to come home and confront the starting over portion of the cycle again.  To be fair, he did only text me a couple of times during the day and then asked if I would rather be left alone.  My answer to that was yes, and he did leave me be.  I felt better about handling it on Sunday and came home then.

Sometimes it is really hard to have hope.  I told someone that he's like Gollum - holding on to the One True Ring of his anger and there are times I want to scream at him to just climb a ladder and get over himself.  While I know that some of his hurts are genuine, there are also some that I think he hangs on to because he's had them for so long that he wouldn't know what to do without them or what to replace them with.

But I keep digging for that hope because I had numerous years with him sober before he went back to the alcohol and I know who he is and who he can be when he is sober and also when he lets God have free rein.  Sometimes I'm not sure if the guy I married is in there anymore but then he will do or say something that makes me believe he is and I grab on to my hope again.  I definitely couldn't do it on my own, though, and am extremely grateful for the people God has gifted me with to provide support and friendship while the SU and I deal with this. 

So, no exciting posts about what I got this year or what the Christmas holiday means to me on a deep, internal level.  Just another day of putting one foot in front of the other.