This is a letter I wrote last night to my husband. I'm not sure if I'll ever send it to him as he's gone off the deep end lately and I don't think he's ready to read it. But I need to share how I'm feeling with someone.

(I've changed everyone's names.)



Dear Ewan,

I've had the best moments of my life with you, and had hoped to have so many more. You are a wonderful, amazing person with so much to offer. You are funny, intelligent, sweet and charming, you have made me feel more loved, accepted and adored by someone than I ever thought possible. There have been so many time when I couldn't believe how lucky I was to have found you. When every shitty bit of my life was worth it because they had all been part of my road to you.

But you are destroying yourself with your drinking and you've been taking me with you. I'd give anything to be able to help you but I accept that you don't want that. Every part of me loves you still and I miss you so bloody much. But truthfully I've been missing you for a very long time as everything that's wonderful about you has been slipping away for years. I've taken off my wedding ring which is so strange, though I guess as yours has been off for a month now you are used to it.

I hope you get better, either with me or without me. Please don't fool yourself that I am the reason you drink so much. You had this problem before we ever met, that was obvious to me within a few months of knowing you. I just didn't trust my instincts because I loved you so much and wanted to be wrong. Simon has also told me that your drinking was the main reason your friendship went on hold before we knew each other. Ending our marriage won't solve your problems. I know you'd like it to be that easy but it's not. You have a pretty deep rooted problem, it will take a lot of work and honesty to tackle it.

Honesty. I know how tough it is to be honest with yourself in the face of such a hard truth. I've been hiding from this truth for years, too afraid to face it and make the decisions I didn't want to make. But I can't lie anymore. And I won't. It started on New Years Day when I told you things needed to change. It continued when I finally accepted I needed help from others to deal with this and went to Brian and then Simon for help, when I started in Al-Anon. Each step I made was to help you and I hoped it would save our marriage. I honestly thought that getting their help would somehow fix things, that your friends had the power to save you where I couldn't. Or that by joining forces we could find the answer. Even the night you attacked me so badly I honestly thought I might die all I could think about was finding a way to help you. That being forced to face what you had done to me because I was standing between you and your bottle of wine would be the catalyst to make you get help. But the more I told the truth, the more I realised there is no answer to be found, no way for me or anyone else to fix this. All I can do is save myself, and as much as I wish I could do that while staying with you, I can't. I'm sorry.

I can't honestly imagine not loving you anymore. But I hope that one day I'll stop loving you like I do now. I hope I meet someone that I can have all the things I thought I had with you. I hope I meet someone who never wears me down to the point where I am relieved that I lost our baby. I hope I meet someone who loves me more than he loves getting drunk. Someone who'll appreciate the sacrifices I'll make for him, who will recognise that sacrifice is a natural part of loving someone and will be willing to make sacrifices for me without resenting it.

I know I'm far from perfect, I know that it's possible we were never right for each other regardless of your drinking. I wonder if you never had this problem would our relationship still have ended for other reasons, even before now. Perhaps we have incompatibilities that I put down to your drinking and never dealt with as I thought that they would disappear once you stopped getting drunk all the time. Or maybe you never dealt with those incompatibilities as you were always that bit too drunk to realise how much they bothered you. I know I can be selfish and lazy and cranky. I know I'm quick to lose my temper and can be intolerant of things I should accept. I know I've hurt you when I shouldn't have, expected more from you sometimes than was fair. (Just as you have plenty of faults which have nothing to do with your drinking.) But I do believe we could have gotten through all of that. When things were good with us they were so very, very good. I still believe we could be soul-mates if such a thing exists.

I want you to know that I'm not doing anything I have done, am doing now or will do in the future, to hurt you or out of spite. But I will be putting myself first for now. It will probably mean that I do things you won't like, but if I do it's because I believe it's for the best not to get at you. I hope things dont get nasty between us, I don't think we'll ever be friends but I hope we can stay friendly throughout this. The thought of living my life without you as the most important thing in it still terrifies me, even after this month apart. I know I'm strong enough to find a way through this and that my life will be great again, even if I can't really imagine that right now. The fate I've been terrified of for the longest time has arrived and I'm surviving, I'm even happy sometimes.

While everyday now I am doing things that move us further apart, when I let myself, I still I find myself in a fantasy where it's a year from now, your drinking isn't a problem and we are together, more in love than ever. I see us on holiday together somewhere warm, with our arms around each other, looking in each others eyes, telling each other that we've never been happier. That it's been hard, but it's been worth it. I accept that at this point it's more likely that my dreams of being a superhero will come true before we'll look at each other like that again. But when I allow myself to hope with my heart that's still what I hope for.

I love you as much as I ever did. If there is still a chance for us I hope we find it before it's too late. But more than that I hope that either way I have a happy life, I think I will.
I hope you do too but I fear that you won't. I don't think you'll ever meet someone who loves you more than I do right now, because I just don't think it's possible. But maybe you'll meet someone who you'll love more than you love me, though it kills me to think that.



Goodbye Ewan, I always hoped it would never come to this.
With all my love still,
Grace