Full Time Care

Oh my goodness. Last night was supposed to be a bit of a party for my partner and me, but it turned into one of the worst New Year celebrations I’ve had in… well, for as long as I can remember!

It started out quite well, with my partner having a tipple and enjoying listening to music while I was, for my part, bathing in the luxury of having a working connection again. Things were rolling along nicely as I sat myself down to prepare our dinner, peeling potatoes, getting the chicken in the oven and so on. Then the trouble started.

You see, she didn’t stop drinking and started obsessing over things that make her anxious. I had dinner ready by about 10:00pm, but she’d decided that she absolutely had to finish a letter she was writing to her analyst. So I ate alone, while she ranted and raved in the next room over her inability to express what she wanted to say. Quite normal when you’ve downed two bottles of wine, my dear. Of course, in this state, it was absolutely impossible to convince her to stop writing and join me to see in the new year.

She then started worrying about my birthday present and whether I will like it. As with most drunken conversations, this dragged on and on, went round in circles and started to really wind me up after a while, but she wouldn’t let it go. For two hours. At the same time, she restarted her letter twice, failing dismally to produce anything cohesive.

So, by 2:00am, I had eaten alone, listened to her whine and worry about my present and sat waiting for her to finish her letter… for FOUR HOURS. By this time I was livid. It was her idea to celebrate the new year, after all, dammit. She couldn’t even put together two sentences by that time, either - she made absolutely no sense at all, she was so drunk. In the end, she ate the salad I’d made for her, ignored the main meal, then virtually collapsed from fatigue and alcohol consumption, having emptied almost three bottles on her own. What an absolute waste of time and effort on my part. Thank you so much. I hate alcohol.

Today, she has a massive hangover and feels terribly guilty about the whole thing. So what? It’s not like it’s actually going to encourage her to change anything. She’ll make promises, she’ll say she’ll stop, she’ll say this year will be different… and in three days’ time, I’ll be sitting listening to her incomprehensible drunken crap again.

Happy new year.