Free Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife by Brenda Wilhelmson Page B

a new car. Our Jeep has been having transmission trouble and I told Max we’d probably be trading it in.
    “Make sure you buy a nice car because I don’t want my friends thinking we have a crappy one,” Max said.
    This town is sickening.
    [Saturday, February 22]
    I’ve got to dump my sponsor, Lida. Lida is the last person I would have picked for a sponsor (which is probably why I haven’t mentioned her until now). Lida was at the first meeting I went to on December 8, and she attached herself to me. During that meeting I was feeling sorry for myself, sniffling, and half listening to the people speaking. But Lida’s comments knocked me out of my self-absorption.
    “Feelings, yeah,” Lida said. “Yeah, they’re important, yeah. You know? Um, I’ve got to talk about my feelings. That’s what you’re supposed to do at meetings. Yeah, talk about your feelings. Yeah, uh, a lot of meetings you can’t do that. Um, so I go to meetings where I can, uh, talk about my feelings.”
    This went on for five stupefying minutes. When the meeting ended, Lida cornered me.
    “Do you have a sponsor?” she asked.
    “No. This is my first meeting.”
    “You need a sponsor. I’ll be your sponsor. Here,” she said, handing me a piece of paper with her phone number on it. “What’s your number?”
    Lida called me a couple days later. I was her only sponsee—go figure. I learned that she is a suicidal head case, spends a lot of time on her therapist’s couch, doesn’t believe in meds, and in her mind is qualified to psychoanalyze me.
    A couple of days after that, Lida called me again. I happened to be angry with Charlie and started bitching about him. “He takes his boots off and leaves them in the middle of the stairs for the kids and me to trip over. I whip his shoes down the basement stairs and you’d think he’d get the hint, but he keeps doing it. I just threw his boots into the basement again. This morning he shoveled the sidewalk because I asked him to. He’d never have done it otherwise. He barely shoveled a shovel’s-width snaking path full of clumps. Now the shovel is lying in a mound of snow in the backyard. I’m looking at it from the window right now.”
    “Why do you think you’re so angry?” Lida asked.
    “Why?” I asked, totally irritated. “Because I expect Charlie to be a partner, not behave like one of the kids. I expect to nag my ten-year-old into a crap job, not my husband.”
    “I think there’s more to it than that,” Lida said. “We need to look at this and examine it more closely.”
    Another time Lida told me I was in denial about my alcoholism.
    “Alcohol wasn’t my favorite drug in high school or college,” I had told her. “But it was my downfall because it’s legal. It became my drug of choice after I became a parent. I think anyone can become addicted to drugs or alcohol if they keep doing them, regardless of genetics.”
    “No,” Lida said. “Your alcoholism kicked in the day you took your first drink. That first drink affects alcoholics differently than nonalcoholics. It’s a disease we’re born with.”
    “I didn’t like my first drink,” I told Lida. “I drank non-alcoholically for a long time before I developed a problem.”
    “You’re intellectualizing this,” Lida said testily. “And you’re in danger of drinking again. You could die!”
    I don’t believe I’ll die if I drink again. I suppose anything could happen, but I don’t see myself picking up a drink, guzzling the bottle, and killing myself in the process. I didn’t share this with Lida, however, for obvious reasons.
    A couple of weeks ago, Lida called me at dinnertime. While I was talking to her, Van showed me some of his drawings in his
Blue’s Clues Handy Dandy Notebook,
Max asked me a homework question, and Charlie motioned me toward the dining room for dinner.
    “Hey, I need to sit down with my family and eat,” I told her.
    “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Lida snapped. “I’m