Today, as much as I try to think strong, it’s almost impossible. As much as I would like to keep up the positive vibe on these pages, the path to Sobriety is not always so. We all still have our bad days, and they need documenting too. And if this is to be an entirely honest mirror of my thoughts, it does belong here. Ultimately, this blog is not only my diary, but my safe, anonymous, purge space, and things do seem easier to deal with when I have expelled all my thoughts here. Then they are out of me. Like sweating out a cold. Men blog anonymously, women talk to their friends and move on at the speed of light. But I do apologise in advance. I never said I was the Dalai Lama after all.

It started at work when a friend of mine brought her 2 week old baby into the Charity Shop. She had given birth to a little girl. She was absolutely amazing. So small, her eyes a deep blue and with the first waves of soft blond hair above her porcelain-like face. And with that unique smell about her that only newborns have. I fussed over her, and told her mother how beautiful she was. But then a sudden realisation hit me. And almost as suddenly, I had to excuse myself to the bathroom where I proceeded to cry just like a baby.

It is a year almost to the day since the reason behind why this blog exists, and the reason why I slid down that never ending spiral that led to my subsequent addiction and abuse. 12 months ago the baby I was to be a father to was aborted without consultation. The mother terminated the baby and ended the relationship in unison because I wouldn’t agree to her demands to quit her £45,000 a year job with a 20% Government pension and pay off her £10,000 bank loan to have the child. Those were her non-negotiable terms.

As much as I tell myself that it was the right thing to do in the long run, it just doesn’t wash today. As much as I know with a 100% certainty that the child, myself and the mother would never have remained together, it still hurts like hell. In fact, it hurts only slightly less right now than I felt when I got a call telling me she had booked a termination for the next morning and that there was nothing I could say to change her mind, and to tell me I was not allowed to come with her or offer support, or mourn the passing of our unborn child together.

She felt I couldn’t support her if I didn’t agree with her decision. But then, as now, that strikes me as a really shallow and selfish thought. I could have, and I’m sure it would have helped us both. I know it would have helped me. I know it would possibly have also saved our relationship. And I felt I had a right to be there. But I didn’t have any rights. I drove to her house that night before it happened. I wasn’t sure why. Possibly to try one last time to ask her to re-consider, or to just stay with her overnight and cuddle her, and hold her hand through what I knew was going to be a defining moment in both our futures. She wasn’t there. When I tried to contact her, she wouldn’t answer her phone and instead texted me that I should just go home. I had a key but I sat outside her house for maybe 30 minutes, cried a lot and then drove home as I had been told to do. Instead, she went with her sister and a girlfriend. I spent the whole day of the abortion alone on my boat getting as drunk as I could muster.

It still hurts for a multitude of reasons but today there are only 2 that are foremost in my mind. The first is that I wanted to have that child so very much. I was the right age, I was more than financially stable and I thought I loved the mother very much. I already had children of my own but that happened when I was a mere teenager and as such I had made all the mistakes that young parents make. I was not much more than a child myself when my children were born. But I hoped I was now wise enough to do the job properly, and excellently placed to provide a loving and stable environment to raise a child. I was self-employed, had 6 figures in the bank with all the trimmings that such an income comes with, and owned not 1, but 5 homes to choose from to house my new family. If I was not well placed, then who the hell was?

I think she saw the birth of the child as her way out of a job she was at the time extremely unhappy in. I tried to compromise with her, asked her to take a year off Maternity Leave and then re-consider. Who knows, she may well have ran back to work after a year of Chinese torture-like sleepless nights and never ending dirty nappies. I was more than willing to share all the responsibility with her and support not only her and our baby, but also her own 2 teenage children. But what I offered was not enough. She never tried to justify her actions. We tried for 2 weeks to save the relationship but with the amount of resentment on both sides, it was clearly impossible. It ended as messily as you can imagine with her only apparent worry being that I might contact her family and tell them the true circumstances. I believe even to this day her immediate family have absolutely no idea that she was even pregnant. If I had wanted to tell her family I would have done so well before now, or named either her or myself so it could be searched for on the internet. But I have chosen to do neither and never will. This is a totally anonymous blog as is made more than clear time and time again.

The other reason is far more obvious. It’s every single word of this blog. I don’t have to look too far for the reason I sunk into the oblivion of addiction. All those hours, day and months of sorrow and tears. All those sleepless nights. The feelings of utter hopelessness, the bereavement counselling, the isolation, the loss of direction, self-respect, confidence, self-worth and purpose. And then the innocent, good people I hurt as a result of where I had ended up with my addiction to Alcohol, prescription and other drugs. The friendships lost due to my prolonged spell in Crazy-land.I very nearly burnt my hand off one night in an alcohol-fuelled accident that took months to heal. I was so permanently drunk that I didn’t seek medical attention until days later. I had no support, no family to turn to. I dealt with it by getting so wasted that I can barely remember anything from July last year until January of this year. That’s some blackout.

How did she deal with it? Well, she was dating again within days and also decided to publish a blog of her own (not anonymously I may add) running me into the ground on as many sites as she could find. I want so much to hate her, but I can’t. I don’t even resent her, I resent myself for allowing her to take up airtime both here and in my head right now though. I don’t have hate in me. My Doctor probably summed it up best when he said that “bad things happen to good people”. That’s all there is to say at the end of the day. In fact, I wish her well, and hope she has found her happiness. I think all this really goes to show that men really are the more sensitive sex. Or weaker. She was so Black and White about it all. I’ve never understood that. For me it was so emotional, but for her it must have been that and intensely physical too? I had no idea it would effect me so much. It has changed the way I relate to women and I still don’t know whether that is a permanent view. I really hope not. How do I ever trust another woman again, without doubt and totally sincerity?

Of course, the positive of this is that I finally fell to the very bottom of the abyss I was living in. And from there the only way was up. If I’m honest, what happened was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In truth, I had only come out of a long term relationship 9 months previous that also left me in a very bad way with a woman that couldn’t have been more different to the one in question. An honest, gentle and loving women, and in reality, it was this loss that signalled the start of my road to addiction. I’d like to say I needed this further pain like a hole in the head. But deep down I now know I did need it. I needed to be stripped bare to allow the rebuilding that has since taken place. This time, I start from a new base. Of course it’s been harder than I can ever really express with words, but it had to be done. There are no easy solutions.

And so for today, I will allow myself to mourn, and to remember. But I hope with every ounce of willpower that I possess, that tomorrow, on Day 99, I will once again be able to focus on the challenges ahead with a pure soul and a sober head. And let’s face it, if I got through today without having a drink then I guess I must be doing pretty well. And I was right. Sharing my feelings out in cyberspace has made me feel better. I’ve done the hard yards and come too far to turn back now.