It's Saturday Night At 2:00 am...

There is a woman crying somewhere because he's drunk again.

And he's in jail.

Or he's passed out.

Or he just finished calling her vicious names and/or accusing her of horrible things.

Or he's not home and she doesn't know if he's laying dead in a ditch...

Or laying in another woman's bed.

I remember so well my "first" 2:00 am.

I know I mention it often but it's that indelibly inked on my heart and in my soul.

I will forever be able to go back to that moment and place in time and recall, as though it was yesterday, the absolute shock that my husband had just raged at me, calling me a fucking bitch, telling me to shut the fuck up and the likes. I had to force myself to try to grasp what had happened. And, as I've said, I turned on the computer and began googling "alcoholic husband," "married to an alcoholic" and other assorted phrases on the same topic.

Nothing.

Not of any use, anyway.

What did I hope to find?

I don't know.

What can I say to women now who are where I was 15 years ago?

I think I have resisted saying it because I don't think I could have heard it in the beginning years. But what I would say is this:

Move past focusing on his alcoholism as quickly as you can.

I know.

Believe me...

I!

KNOW!

How do you "move past" the most heinous of behavior?

You make the focus creating the life you desire...

Rather than surviving his drinking.

Someone asked me if my new book ("Do You Know I Cry During Yoga?") covered how I came to be ready to leave. It doesn't. Not in any sort of concrete way but I know the answer to that question:

I came to be ready to leave when it was more about my life and less about his drinking.

For nearly 20 years, all I wanted (ALL!! I wanted!) was to get away from him and his drinking. There was a desperation in me that I thought would fuel me but instead it shackled me. The more I just ("JUST!") wanted to get away from him and his drinking, the more I remained stuck. And then one day, it came to me:

I wanted my life back.

I wanted the life I had dreamed of.

I wanted the life I knew I could live.

It didn't matter if he drank or was a serial womanizer or couldn't hold a job or anything at all that had to do with him. I was no longer looking at where I was and trying to get away. I was looking at the beautiful horizon in front of me and longing to be part of it.

If you're a woman crying tonight because it's another Saturday night that he's drunk, know this: the more you focus on your life and not his drinking, the better you'll able to weather the latter.