About six months earlier, a year ago, just after my Dad had died, my ex-wife began to seek modification of the child support order for our daughter, seeking a great deal more money. In the immediate aftermath of that, I began drinking frequently in a misguided attempt to kill the pain and hurt that I had as a result of feeling manipulated by my ex-wife. It’s worth mentioning, I think, that after my divorce, I had adopted my ex-wife’s son because he wished to live with me rather than her. In any event, on one such occasion of drinking, I spoke with my ex-girlfriend, Peggy, on the phone while enraged about my ex-wife. She came over to my house next day and told me she could no longer be with me (we’d been together just over ten years then) as I had a history of drinking when angry (usually about my ex-wife) and upsetting her with my rants. I was very hurt and now even angrier. But I took it as best I could and departed on a long-planned trip to California to see my family. While on the drive out I stopped and made frantic attempts to reach Peggy which I eventually did. I persuaded her to return to the relationship, saying I would seek counseling and stop drinking.

When I returned home (S. Dakota) I succeeded in not drinking for about 2 mos. I tried to find a suitable therapist with the advice of a friend who is himself of a therapist but such are hard to find hereabouts and I never did get into therapy. In any event, overwhelmed by the mounting emotional and legal battle surrounding the support issue, I began drinking again.

Finally, in early December, 2009, just receiving word from my attorney about the income disparity between me and my ex-wife (she makes far more money than I), Peggy arrived for dinner. I (not drinking) began ranting about the situation and in the course of doing so, slammed down a pot lid (I was preparing dinner) and tossed it across the room (at no one!). Peggy arose and said “I’m leaving now” and with that left me watching, hurt, angry, paralyzed, in stunned silence. I began drinking more or less immediately and continued on through the night into the next morning, fuming angrily about having been “abandoned” in my distress. I left Peggy an angry message of “Fuck you!” on her work phone which I immediately regretted. We spoke the next evening, Thursday, on the phone and she was icy in her response to me and I knew she was about to break up with me again but nothing was said about the matter. She said she would speak with me on Friday. I took up drinking again.

In order to evade the axe blow I stayed out all day Friday and drank. When I came home, I called Peggy and she said that she was in fact breaking things off again and would not be going with me to California as planned. I asked her to please let my mother know and to have no further contact with my children. She said that my son (25) was an adult and could make up his own mind about what sort of contact he wanted with her. We hung up. I immediately called back and started angrily to recount occasions in the past when I had held our relationship together. She said “I’m hanging up now” and did so. I drove to her house to see her but she had taken off to evade me. And then I got very much uglier and angrier. I took note of all the things that I had made for and given her over the almost eleven years we’d been together, things which she had put out as a special display for her sister who had recently visited and become enraged. And I began to break those things, cards I had painted for her for Valentine’s Day, pictures I had had framed for her, etc., lots of things. I took out of her closet many of the dresses and blouses which I had given her over the years. Took from her bookshelves volumes of poetry I had given her, other books. Took from her bathroom necklaces of beads and shells I had made for her. I threw all these things away. Then, in remorse and intense pain, I began to clean up the damage, albeit ineffectually. I went home and drank. An re-inflated my rage. I went to my shed and got my chain saw and returned to her house. I sawed cleanly in half a seat-swing I had made for her porch. I went home, collapsed from drink and exhaustion. I arose three or so hours later and began a plea for help to all who would listen which continues to this day, hour and minute, not quite six month later.

I am so desperately alone in this pain.