Kansas Serenity Weekend in Overland Park, KS

Hi. I'm Mikaela. I am a very grateful member of Al Anon, and I my home group is in Springfield, Missouri. Even though I'm from Republic, I go to meetings in Springfield, Missouri. That was my watch.

Maybe I'm not supposed to pay any attention to the time. Stay. Oh, I'll just hold it. Anyway, I go to the high end Al Anon family group. It's a great meeting, and I like it.

And fortunately, some of the people that go to that meeting came up here to support me, so I appreciate that too. I've been in the program for 9 years, which is amazing to me because when I was new in the program, if you told me that you had been in the program for 9 years and that you had been asked to speak at a conference, I would have thought you were an Al Anon goddess. I would have been so impressed. And I'm here to tell you that I know better today because when I they asked me to speak, and I was born and raised in Kansas City. So there was the fear in me.

My instant fear was, what if my parents wanna come to this? And I thought, well, I'll just have 2 talks prepared. 1 if they're there and one if they're not. So you can see that 9 years in the program does not make a goddess because I still am very sick on occasion. But I am glad to be here.

I'm kinda nervous. This is my first time speaking in this way, so, bear with me. And, I will share my experience, strength, and hope, and do the best that I can do. I was, I come from a family of Irish Catholics, which I'm sure surprises many of you. And, that seems to be a pretty common theme in the AA and Al Anon rooms.

But, I am the 3rd of 5 children. I I have an older brother who's 3 years older than me. I've got an older sister, 17 months older than me, and then, 2 younger sisters. And my parents, I grew up in a very loving, supportive home. If you'd asked me when I got here, I would have told you that I came from an extremely functional, loving home.

We didn't have any problems. We were very normal. Now that I have some recovery, I know differently. And my, my father is, a very funny, entertaining, loving man. He's he would do anything for us.

He was very generous. He, was also very moody, and and you never knew what to expect from my dad if he was going to have, a mood swing and and just, you know, go into an anger or tirade. And and I started at an extremely young age doing everything in my power to prevent those rages because they scared me. I I was afraid of confrontation and so I would do whatever I could to prevent those. So I became, somewhat of a compulsive cleaner and fixer and and trying to mediate anything that was going on in our house.

And I, I remember my mom and my dad would call every day before he came home from work. And I would be hanging around the phone asking my mom, was dad in a good mood? Was he in a bad mood? What kind of mood was he in? And and then that would dictate my next, you know, half hour until he got home.

Whether I just went and sat and watched TV, or whether I started picking up the house, or or, you know, going to make sure that my siblings weren't fighting, or that everyone had their homework done, or whatever. I was I was doing whatever I could that so if he was in a bad mood, he would come home and we wouldn't set him off. You know, I know today that I didn't have any control over that. It didn't have anything to do with what I was doing, but at the time it seemed important. My mom, and my dad, I you know, he is a very heavy drinker.

Alcohol was so common in our household. That's another thing. You know, when I got to the program, I could not name 5 people that I knew that didn't drink. I couldn't name them unless they were maybe people that I worked with, you know, that I didn't socialize with. We grew up with alcohol.

It was just a part of life. There was nothing unusual about daily drinkers in our house or my parents' friends or our relatives. Everybody drink. That's just that's just what we did. And, my parents were daily drinkers.

And my dad, you know, today I wrestle with even though it really isn't in my business. I you know, sometimes you make it my business, is he an alcoholic? And and, you know, the answer the only answer I could give to that is he shares a lot of characteristics that are described in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, beyond that, it's it's his deal. My mom, is another wonderful, generous, caring, supportive person.

She was a stay at home mom. She did everything for us. We were all super involved in extracurricular activities. We were on the go all the time, and she was there being our, you know, our cabbie and and, our cheerleader and whatever we needed. She also would benefit greatly from this program, probably both programs.

Once again, you know, is she an alcoholic? It's not for me to say, but she too shares a lot of characteristics that are described in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Daily drinker, you know, it's it's nothing. Her parents drank all the time. My it was just alcohol was just common.

But she was she and I had a great relationship. We are a lot alike. We share, we just are a lot alike. We share the same personality, and we we, we really connect, which is kind of scary. No.

She she's a wonderful person. I'm kidding. My, so growing up, we were we were very blessed as far as loving and being taken care of, and and we were not neglected or physically abused or anything. I was afraid of my dad's anger, and I know I've carried that with me into adulthood because I still have an incredible fear of confrontation. My older sister, my 17 she was 17 months older than I was and we were, in competition and at odds with each other from the get go.

And she sensed in me that fear of confrontation and she, in my opinion, prayed on it. And, you know, I I remember being little kids and getting money to go up to the neighborhood grocery store. And we each had our money and we had our items picked out and hers cost more money than she had. She turned around and said, give me your money. And I said, no.

And she proceeded to make a scene, and that's all she had to do. I handed my money and ran out of the store. You know? And I that's what I'm saying. I learned early on that it was a lot easier just to give in, give them what they want, and get out of dodge because then I don't have to face the confrontation and the scene and and be embarrassed about it and and all that.

It was easier just to give whoever it was what they wanted and get out. So, you know, enter martyrdom. Then I'm I'm the big sacrificer, you know, and in our family, that was that was thought highly of. You know, if you if you were so willing to give of yourself, you know, what what a great person you are. Well, Well, but I was doing it to the point where, you know, I didn't have anything left.

I was just giving it all away. But like I said, my sister saw this in me early and she she used it. She used it to the hilt. So, growing up, we were in a lot of competition, she and I. I was I had a lot of friends.

I did well in school. I was pretty athletic. You know, I excelled in athletics as far as, basketball and soccer soccer were probably my main ones, and played varsity in high school, and that kind of thing. And my sister didn't have a lot of friends, and didn't apply herself in school and as a result, didn't have that grade of grades. And and, she didn't excel in sports the same way that I did.

She did in her own way, on club teams and that sort of thing, but not through the schools. And, she resented that in me a lot and and pointed it out. And whenever I had success, she would make it her point to come in and and knock me down a peg or 2 to the point where it was once again, it was easier just to, you know, be the martyr and say, you know, whisper my accomplishments over here so that she didn't hear them because I didn't wanna listen to her berate me or or put me down for for what my success. So that, you know, once again, I'm learning to accommodate somebody else to make me more comfortable and to prevent those scenes or ugliness or or whatever it was I was trying to avoid. In high school, I got a car for my 16th birthday, which was a gift from my godfather.

Well, it was just luck of the draw. You know, there were 5 kids, 10 godparents. I just happened to get the one that was a bachelor and didn't have any kids, so he showered me with gifts. Well, one of them was a car for my 16th birthday. And this was a family joke in our house.

He got bond at a party when I was a little kid, you know, when I was a baby and so I buy her a car on her 16th birthday. And everybody held him to that. You know, he called up the next morning and said, did I say anything I should regret? And my dad, of course, said, yes. You said you're gonna buy Mikaela a car for her 16th birthday, and they gave him so much trouble for that that he did it.

He said, well, I'm going to. If I said it, I'm a man of my word. I'm gonna do it. And he did. He did.

But, you know, nobody thought that was weird. Nobody thought that was odd that he was so drunk he had to call the next morning to find out if he had said anything or so the story goes. But anyway, he came through, bought me a Mustang for my, 16th birthday, and, my sister was extremely jealous of that car, as you can well imagine. She my brother was kind of had his own car or whatever. He'd bought 1, worked hard, I'm sure, and bought his own car.

And so she and I would fight over this car, and it was easier to give in. You know, she drove that car as much as I did because she you know, well, that's not fair. You got a car. What about me? I didn't get a car for my 16th birthday.

You know? And and it sounded very plausible at the time. Sure. Here you can have it. So she and I shared the car.

My there's a point to this. My junior in high school, I started dating somebody who, believe it or not, shares a lot of characteristics that are dry described in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And our relationship was very sick, as you can imagine. He was, extremely jealous all the time and and pretty much, you know, we spent our relationship me defending myself that I wasn't cheating on him, which makes me laugh because I was only a junior in high school cheating. You know, I mean, I wasn't.

Never did, never thought about it, but that's how we spend our time. I did not. I'm not interested in anybody else. You're the only one for me. Oh, you did too, you know.

So it it was a sick relationship. We had fun together. We drank together. I also was a big drinker. I've discovered it when I was a freshman in high school.

It was an accepted practice in my home, so I started drinking on the weekends and I was a heavy drinker. I drank a lot. I was a blackout drinker, you know. Sick behavior all the way around. But so he and I started dating, you know, based on alcohol and me defending myself, just more of the the same behavior.

You know, he was my dad all over again and my sister to a certain extent. So my senior year in high school, I tell you the story because it illustrates so much sickness that I had and and the behaviors I have. But I came home from being out one evening, and, I almost reminded everybody to turn their cell phones off before we started because it was funny when it happened last night. But how do you get them to ring like that? Those are fancy.

But anyway, okay. I've gotta remember where I was. Senior year. So I went out one night with my friends, didn't run into my boyfriend, came home, and so I'm talking to him on the phone and he had gotten word from a friend that I was at this bar and left out in the parking lot with somebody else and then came back into the bar later. Didn't happen, You know, his friend must have been extremely bored that night, so decided to stir up a little stuff with us.

So I'm I'm telling him, no. I didn't. No. I didn't. I was with my friends.

Call my friend, you know, defending myself. Well my sister stumbles in, literally, stumbles into the room and says, give me your car keys. I'm gonna drive my friend home. And I said, you know what? You're drunk.

I'll drive her home. Just give me 5 minutes to finish fighting with my boyfriend. And, she, you know, goes into a tirade about how I'm so selfish with the car and I never let her use it and, you know, and her friend had to be home 20 minutes ago and all this stuff. So I went out and said to the friend, I'll take you home in 5 minutes. I don't want her driving.

That's fine. I don't want to be in a car with her. So I went back and I'm talking to the boyfriend. I'm telling him I've got to go. I've gotta get off the phone.

You know, my sister's getting angrier and angrier, and he is I'm not finished talking to you. Well, you know, I didn't have the wherewithal to hang up on him. Okay. Well, I wasn't cheating on you, you know. And so finally, I get off the phone with him and I turn around and she's coming after me.

Now she was had the propensity to be a violent drunk. She was coming after me, so I was trying to defend myself. And I'm running through the house, away from her, trying to get the keys, telling the friend, get in the car, I'll meet you out there, you know. And and, my parents are home for this and never woke up, which is kind of telling in in looking back in retrospect. But so she's chasing me around the table, and we're doing this dance around the dining room table.

And she takes off and comes up and starts kicking at me. And as I'm running away, she got my hand and kicked my hand. Well, at that point, I broke loose from her, got out to the car, and I'm sitting there and I put my hand or I mean, my face in my hand, and I looked out and my finger was, like, pointing out the wrong way. And I thought, my god. You know, my hand is broken.

It's broken. And so I take the friend home and I come home and my sister's passed out, and I think, well, it'll be better in the morning. So I go to bed that night and I wake up in the morning and of course it's not better. It's all swollen. It's it's, you know, it's very painful and my first thought is, what am I gonna tell my mom and dad?

Not that, you know, my sister in a drunken stupor beat me up, you know, in essence, but what am I gonna tell them because I had to cover for her. I couldn't tell them that she was drunk or I didn't feel like I could tell them that. So I went to my mom and made up some story about how I'd knocked my hand into a car the night before. Well, you know, what could I have been doing to do that kind of damage to my hand? I have no idea.

But anyway, and she said, well, she didn't ask any questions. You need to go to the doctor. And I went to the doctor and they, you know, wrapped it all up and did whatever they did. And I got home and I thought, my sister is gonna feel so bad when she sees my hand like this, because prom was in a week and I had this hideous thing on my hand. She had no recollection of it.

None. And I said, you don't remember chasing me around the house and kicking me last night? None. So not only, you know, did she not remember it, she didn't feel bad about it because she didn't remember doing it. So I didn't get anything out of the deal except a broken hand.

But, you know, to me, that story illustrates so much about how sick I had gotten, and at that point, I was only a senior in high school. I I still had plenty to go. So, I went into college. I eventually, believe it or not, broke up with that guy, and my sister went to a college out west. She went far away from me and, she was looking for a geographic change.

I know that today. She wanted, to go somewhere where she could find new friends and and, you know, start over and get a new start on life. And and I went to a college here in Missouri, a university here in Missouri. And I went and, studied and drank my way through college and and managed to enable her, you know, thousands of miles away because she would call me up and say, oh, I spent my, you know, house payment. Oh, okay.

Well, what do you want me to do about it? Can you send me some money? Well, I had less money than she did, but, you know, but I would help her. I would either send her my house payment and call mom and dad and say I lost my payment or or, you know, somehow we would come up with a story where I was the bad guy because I wasn't the one who was always messing up. She was, so it was a lot less suspicious to my parents if I did something and I bought into this.

You know, I was I was enabling her left and right. I know that today. You know, I couldn't see it at the time, but I know it now. And she, you know, used it. She she took full advantage of it, and I helped her.

In so this is in college. So my junior year of college, my sister called me up on a Thursday night. I'm gonna get a little weepy here. Do we have anything? I don't I didn't think to grab any Kleenex because I thought I was gonna be strong.

I was gonna need any. She called me up on a Thursday night and said, I'm really depressed. She said I I've gotten to the point where I can't get out of bed in the morning. And I, you know, I didn't have any concept of that. I said, you need to just suck it up.

You know, you're you're out there in Wyoming. You need to do what you can do and get up in the morning and thank you very much. Get up in the morning and do what you need to do to, get by. You know, mom and dad are paying for you to be out there and and you need to do what you need to do. And and I I feel so bad about that because I didn't know how to help her.

I didn't I had never experienced that kind of depression, you know, and I still have until this day. I I couldn't help her. I didn't have the recovery that I needed to help her. And, that was a Thursday night, and she said, don't worry about it. I'll be alright.

I'll be fine. Don't worry about it. I said, why don't you talk to some of your friends out there? Oh, I will. I will.

Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. And that's what I wanted to hear, you know, because I didn't wanna face that there was really a problem there. Sunday morning. Now who knows why I hadn't gone out the night before Saturday night?

You know, I went out every night in college. I, you know, I mean it. I was a big drinker. I I was out partying all the time. That's probably the only Saturday night in my whole college career that I didn't go out.

You know, divine intervention or, you know, who knows? But anyway, so Sunday morning, I wasn't hungover, which was nice. And, the phone rang at 6 o'clock and and they said that I had a visitor downstairs at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning during finals week. And I'm like, well, who is it? Who could be there?

And, and this girl said, well, I don't know who it is. And I heard in the background, tell her it's her brother. And I knew immediately that something was seriously, seriously wrong. So I ran downstairs and I got halfway down the spiral staircase and I saw my brother over there. And I just stopped and I said, who was it?

Who is it? Who's that? And he said, you know, Megan, your sister. She killed herself last night, and as hard as this is for me to admit to you all, there was an instant. It took me a long time to realize this, but there was an instant of relief of relief because she was so sick and I couldn't help her.

And it was it was like, this was this was the answer. You know, death was an answer. I know better today because I've met people who were as low, if not lower than she was, and I know there's recovery. I didn't know that at the time, so it seemed like a it seemed like an answer. Needless to say, this was devastating, you know, and I I felt really guilty.

I I played a major role in her life and, it wasn't a helpful role. It wasn't helpful at all. I can't go back, but I can I can act differently today? And when people need my help, I can steer them in a in a recovery way. I can help.

I can be a lot more helpful in a in a healthier way, in a recovery way. I was, you know, my family was just devastated. You know, I mean, it was awful. It was horrible. I I it was it was so tragic.

I couldn't even begin to describe it, but being the martyr that I was, I decided that my parents needed me and I wouldn't go back to college. Fortunately, they had the sense to say, that's crazy. Why would you stay home? There there's nothing you can do here for us. So they sent me back to college, and I was able to get get on with my life.

Fortunately, I didn't have to, because I wanted to just dwell on that and stay in it, and and that wasn't gonna do me any good. And they were able to see that fortunately, and they sent me back back to school. So that was a good thing. About a year later, I met, the next person in my life who shared characteristics as described in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I started dating this this guy, and believe it or not, we had kind of a sick relationship.

He was a heavy drinker and so was I, and that's probably about the only thing we had in common. We enjoyed each other's company. We had our families that kind of knew each other, and and we started dating each other. And I graduated from college and and continued dating him. And that summer, a professor of my sister's, the one that died, was out in Wyoming and he took a job on an Indian reservation as a principal and called me up and said, do you wanna come and work for me on this Indian reservation?

And I thought, in Nebraska 4 hours away? I I don't think so. You know, that I I wasn't a risk taker, and then that didn't appeal to me at all. So I was telling though, like, my parents, you know, that I've been offered this job and and they were like, oh, yeah. She'll never take it.

And, then I told my boyfriend at the time, you know, I've been offered this job. Same thing. He's like, Nebraska? No. You'll never take it.

Well, everybody just kinda poo pooed me off and I thought, you know what? I'm gonna show them I am gonna take it. So I did. Not for the right reasons, but I packed up and moved to Nebraska for 2 years. And, during that 2 years, I dated this guy from 4 hours away.

We saw each other only on the weekends. Well, during that 2 years, we got engaged and planned a wedding, but I'm only seeing him on the weekends. You know, I'm talking to him on the phone, but that's it. A lot can be hidden during the week. A lot.

And I was so sick that I saw lots of red flags, lots of them, and I chose to ignore all of them. You know, in my mind, this was this was somebody I could marry. It was getting to be that time in my life when I should be married. I need to start that next road, and, so I ignored all those red flags. He you know, some of them.

He when our first date, he said, well, is there any way you could drive? I don't have a car. Yeah. I suppose. That that'll be fine.

I'll drive on our date, which, you know, isn't that big of a deal, but he's a college graduate, you know, is working in a liquor store. And, I I guess there's part of me that thought maybe he should have his own car. But, another red flag is I was driving back and forth to, Kansas City every weekend. It was very rare for him to come and see me and, he would get angry if I said I'm thinking about not making the drive this week. Well, we're not gonna see each other, you know, and it was my fault.

And I'm like, okay. I'll be there. And that, you know, I mean, just that that total giving of myself, sacrificing, you know, it's just such the martyr. It just makes me laugh now because I wouldn't anymore do that today. But, so one time I was getting ready to drive back to Nebraska and he said, I need you to come over here to my apartment.

I need to talk to you. So we sat down and he told me that, he was not gonna drink anymore. He was gonna quit drinking. And, you know, my immediate thought is, I wonder if this means I have to quit drinking too. And he said, now you don't have to quit drinking.

This is about me. I'm the one. And he said, I've got a problem. I'm not gonna drink anymore at night. And he said, and I'm not gonna nip anymore in the morning to get back to sleep.

And I thought nip in the morning. That's an alcoholic thing to say. And I worried about it all 4 hours driving back. I thought, my god. I bet he's an alcoholic.

He nips in the morning. That's that's not normal behavior. I can fix him. I can help him. He's going to quit.

Right? I can help him. So I got back and I told my roommate this. I said, I think I'm marrying an alcoholic. And she said, oh, poor Mikayla.

First your sister and now this. That was it. That clinched it. I was marrying him. You know?

I'm the martyr, the classic martyr. Here's here's another way to get people to feel sorry for me. And and, you know, and I I liked him. I loved him, you know, and and it was for sick reasons, but it seemed right at the time. So we proceeded in this courtship and, planned a wedding.

My mom did most of the planning because she was the one here in Kansas City and having it, but we got the invitation sent out. And it was about 2 weeks before the wedding and he said, we can't get married. I said, why not? And he said, because I have a drinking problem and I need to address it before we get married. Well, I was irate.

I was furious. You wait till after we send out the invitations to tell me this? Forget it. We're getting married. Yeah.

I'm worried about how my parents are gonna feel or how we're going to look. You know, I'm not even paying attention to this guy telling me. You know, I mean, red flag after red flag after red flag. We were gonna move down to Southwest Missouri. I had a job, our offer already.

I was gonna teach down there. He was going to the the, teacher in the school was going to retire and he was going to teach the following year. You know, it was gonna be alright. You do we can get married. It's going to be alright.

So I talked him into it. So we get married, and we go on our honeymoon, which was comical. It it was it was crazy, but it would we were up there, and he'd bend over to pick up a cooler of beer and, because we were gonna go on a boat ride and he starts screaming that he's having a heart attack. And we're by ourselves in a, you know, a town in northern Minnesota. I know nobody.

And so I'm getting the phone book out trying to find a doctor or an ambulance or, you know, I don't know who to call when your, you know, husband's having a heart attack. And, so I find a doctor, and I've gotta find somebody who will take cash, you know, and, I mean, it was just it was just on and on. Anyway, so we get there and he doesn't he's not having a heart attack. He has a pulled muscle in his sternum and, he needs to, you know, just rest. Well, the significance of this is that he was willing to go see a doctor because he that was, you know, just he wasn't somebody who would go to doctors.

No. I'm not going to do it. You know, you have to carry me in there or I'm not going kind of a thing. And so on our honeymoon, that's what he did. And and later on the honeymoon, there really isn't any significance to this except it's funny.

I was, jumping off the boat and boats move in the water, and I fell and landed on the dock face down. And I didn't even get my hands up to to stop myself or anything and I had bruises. And I'm laying there and I'm going, it hurts. It hurts. And my husband said, now now if you're missing any teeth, don't worry about it.

We'll take care of it. I was always worried about if I was gonna be missing teeth. But anyway, so our honeymoon was just a joke. It was just sick. You know, we just drank and nursed each other because we weren't feeling good.

Anyway, so we come back and we, had a month or 2 before we could move down to southwest Missouri. So we lived with my parents, and, you know, this alcohol saturated environment. My parents went on a vacation and we had the house to ourselves and my husband told me that he was going to quit drinking again. We're married now and he's gonna quit drinking, but he warned me, said this could be really bad. I could get very sick, so I need to just be in a bedroom by myself for a couple of days because I'm probably gonna go through withdrawals and all this stuff.

And I'm like, what what do I need to do? What's my part in this? And he said, just if I need water or something you need to bring it to me. You know, I don't tell anybody I'm doing this. I don't tell anybody that this is all going on in my home.

I am so embarrassed about this that it's a secret, you know. My parents are out of town, so they're not gonna you know, and he very carefully picked his times when to do this as well. So for entertainment during, you know, my first couple weeks of marriage, I would go entertainment during, you know, my first couple weeks of marriage, I would go visit my grandmother in the nursing home. That's what I was doing for fun and then I would come home and feel sorry for myself until it was time to go visit her again or give him water. You know, and and he was sick.

And I know today how dangerous that is because he could have been having seizures or anything. I didn't know that at the time, but I know today that it was dangerous and we didn't have any business doing that, you know, outside of a hospital or somewhere where he could have been monitored. But I didn't know. I didn't know he'd been drinking that much alcohol. I didn't have any idea.

So we, moved down to southwest Missouri, and I went from the kind of person who was extremely social, always doing something, very involved to complete isolation. I was very embarrassed about the way we were living. I was working, my husband wasn't. I was trying to support both of us on a teacher salary, which if any of you are in education know what a joke that is. We were borrowing money from our parents.

We would call them we try to switch off each month. You know, who did we call last month for money? Your parents or my parents? And try to switch off. We were, bouncing checks all over the place.

It it was awful. And the only thing I did is I went down to work and then I came home and sat in my house and smoked cigarettes and drank beer and felt sorry for myself. The only thing that was that was good during that time was when we would go home for the weekend. We would either go to my parents' house, you know, come up to Kansas City or go to his parents' house because when we were there, we got fed, you know, for free. We got free alcohol and, it wasn't nearly, you know, and there were other people.

But even through all of this, you know, I'm I'm got myself in the self inflicted prison. I'm still not telling anybody that we're living like this. You know, my parents came down to visit and we had our VCR in HAWK. My husband had punched a hole in the wall out of anger. Why else would you punch a hole in a wall?

I I that was probably unnecessary to say out of anger, but, and it was, and they called and said they're coming down there bringing my aunt and uncle. I went into a panic. We didn't have money to get the wall fish fixed. How are we gonna get the VCR out of hawk? You know, they're gonna know.

They're gonna know that everything's not right. So to this day, I don't know how he did it because I don't wanna know, but somehow, he paid for the wall to get fixed. He got the VCR out of hawk and when they showed up, we put our little smiley faces on and we were just the happy newlyweds living down in southwest Missouri. Would you like to go see Bass Pro? We'll take it.

And and that's what we did, you know, and I just kept covering it. And and I was, I was starting to think, this isn't good. I'm not enjoying my life. And I I started having fantasies about moving back to Kansas City. And they were I we moved into our 2nd year of marriage.

This was around, I guess in 92. And, I started thinking, you know, at the end of the school year, oh, I kept thinking that if my husband would get a job, all of this would be taken care of. If he were working full time, this wouldn't be a problem anymore. And he was, you know, gonna get this teaching job at the school where I taught the next year. Well, he was subbing there and he would they'd call and ask him to sub.

He'd say, yes, I'll be there tomorrow. In the morning, we'd wake up, he'd be, you know, in DTs or withdrawal or whatever, you know, and he'd need a drink and but he'd tell me that his ulcer was acting up and I I needed to tell them he wasn't gonna make it. This happened time and time and time again. You know, and I'm like, he's got that ulcer and and I went down there and lie for him every time. And I would be so sick on that 20 minute drive to school because I know I was gonna have to lie for him again and I I didn't like to lie, you know, I was I had been an honest person, you know.

There's another thing. I just gave up of myself. I had been an honest person. I wasn't anymore. And, you know, they're gonna be without a sub.

You know, also that they're getting the shaft because, you know, no one's gonna be there to cover. And, but I just knew if he had a full time job that this wouldn't be a problem because he'd have somewhere to get up and go every day and it wouldn't be a problem. Here's another thing about how sick I was. We only had one car and I got a ride to work every day Because I was so hoping that he would use the car to go find a job or whatever, that I let him have the car every day. And and got a ride to work, which you know, once again makes me laugh because I wouldn't do that today.

So we're moving into this next school year and he didn't get that job. He didn't get the job that had promised been promised to him. Divine intervention. Thank God he didn't get that job. You know, I don't I don't even remember why he didn't get it, what the excuse was.

I'm sure that they realized that he was an extremely unreliable, sick person. That in what they told us, but that's fine. If he'd gotten that job, it would just been devastating. But god was taking care of us, and we couldn't see it. We didn't know that.

You know, I'm thinking, why have you forsaken us? You know, I can't believe he didn't get this job. Now he's just got another more excuses to drink and and whatnot. So now I'm thinking, he didn't get the job. I'll teach here one more year, and I'm going to Kansas City.

I'm going back. There's no reason for us to be down here. I don't have a friend in the world. I'm still not telling anybody about our plight. You know?

They all may have known. I'm sure we were more transparent than I thought, but I'm not talking about it. Nobody else is either. So it got to be about October, and my husband is going down fast. And I came home from school one day, and he said, you have to take me to the doctor.

I'm so sick. And I said, well, what's wrong with you? And he said, I don't know. I'm really really sick. So he laid down in the back of the car and we had to go to a small town far away so no one would know us.

And we got to the doctor's office. He couldn't even sit in the waiting room. He had to go back and lay down in one of the, examining rooms. And he was gone for a little while and the doctor came out into a crowded waiting room and said I need to see Mikaela Wilson. And I'm like, oh, you know, that's me.

And he said, can you come with me? And he takes me into his office into his office, the doctor's office, and said, do you have any idea how sick your husband is? Yeah. I know he wasn't feeling very good. And he said, no.

No. No. I'm I mean about the drinking. He is drinking himself to death. What are you going to do about it?

I mean, this guy was just no bones about it. And I said, I can't make him stop drinking. And he said, but you can do you can kick him out of your house. You can do something about it. You cannot he's going to die, and he just kept saying that he's going to die.

He's drinking and he was talking about liver enzymes and and I I mean, I was just shocked and bowled over and flabbergasted. I I just I was speechless. And he said, are you willing to do something about it? And that, you know, I had the honesty or the clarity to say, I don't think I'm ready. I I don't think I can do anything about it right now.

And he said, well, your husband does not know I'm talking to you. Do not tell him. I don't want him to know. I told him I had a phone call and I said, alright. So I went out into the waiting room.

I'm sitting there and here comes my husband and we go out to the car and I turn and I said, do you know what that doctor did? He called me into his office and he told me, you know, and I told him the whole thing. And, of course, he was furious and said, well, we won't be going back to him. And, and so we got home and this has started the wheels turning. I'm really thinking, you know, he is a lot sicker than I realized.

A lot sicker. This is this is way more serious than I can handle. So I keep thinking to myself, you know, come May, I'm I'm leaving, and I and I've just gotta work up the way to tell him. I I didn't wanna leave him, but I wanted to leave the area. So, you know, I'm going back to Kansas City.

You can come with me or not, was was how I was practicing it. Well, in January, it was the end of January and we were supposed to be going to his parents house for the weekend. And I came home from school, and now I lived for going out of town on the weekends because it was my only time out of the house except to go to work. You know, I didn't do anything. I just was in this prison, self inflicted.