"The grass is greener but just as hard to mow"

This past week I have been going back and forth on how to approach this subject, but we're just gonna go for it.....and if you're still reading or a first time reader, welcome and thanks for the support always!

I met my ex-husband at a Halloween party, dressed as a Bears Superfan from Chris Farley's time on SNL, he was Where's Waldo, lol, it was a great first impression and we hit it off!  We ended up dating and getting married when I was 27, he 26.  We got married after about a 3-4 month engagement, bought a house, got a basset hound named Wallace, whom I hope is still kickin' it, and started our Marriage Journey.  When we were first married it was good, we had a lot of fun together, we worked hard, and we normally didn't drink much, if at all, during the week.  Sometimes on Thursday's but hey, that's Friday Eve!  Not too long after we got married I started a new job at a 3rd party logistics company, I loved that job.  This is also where I met Jay, he had worked there for a while already and we automatically became friends.  We both liked sports, similar music, similar cuisine, having fun, and you guessed it, drinking.  Now he was engaged and I was married so the 4 of us would hang out sometimes.  The first time we all hung out together I noticed that Jay's fiance would really get after him about his drinking, I never knew why, he was always fun, he never got mean and we always laughed.  My ex and I didn't argue like that about drinking, I didn't understand why she cared?  Jay and I started going out just the two of us and having after work drinks, talking about our relationship issues, our frustrations, why his fiance and he fought all the time and vice versa.  At this point my ex and I had started having issues, mostly because I had started coming home and having a glass or two of wine, more often than not, he didn't always like that, I didn't like being told what to do.  I would go out even if he didn't want to, which I rarely did before.  But I was having issues at home, I was having feelings for Jay, and the grass, as it often does, started looking greener.  I finally told my ex-husband that I was moving out and wanted a DIVORCE.  Man, what he told me I hoped would never come true, he knew I liked Jay, he wasn't blind or stupid; he said something to the tune of Ashley, you're going to end up just like Jay and you can be alcoholics together. 

So fast forward about a year later, Jay and I were living together and were looking at houses when I started getting increasingly worried about his drinking.  We drank pretty much daily but I would just have a couple glasses of wine during the week and obviously more on the weekends because, hey, who doesn't drink all weekend long?  But Jay was drinking a lot and it was every day.  We started occasionally arguing about his drinking as we were talking about buying a house together.  All red flags aside, I took a dive, and before I knew it we had a house, a car and a new puppy.  We had many more good days than bad in the beginning but as time went on that changed.  Jay was having more and more health issues related to drinking and it had gotten pretty bad;  I was scared and I had no idea what to do.  After a big health scare that had us going from a Mexican vaca with family and friends, to La Hospital, to an unexpected, first-class, plane ride state side, to the doctor, Jay needed to quit drinking.  Trying to slowly taper off, drinking more moderately and switching to wine, as you can probably guess, didn't work.  I needed to make a decision and live with this or get out.  I chose to go, because I didn't know how to continue to help him without enabling him.  Last I heard he had gotten married and was sober.  I really, really, really hope the best for him and hope he makes it, because it's hard.  

These were 2 of my greatest loves, at one point in both relationships, I would have never imagined my life without that other person.  But like the song goes, "I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger" but life doesn't work that way.  And little did I know, I wasn't only starting over at 35 as a single dog mom, I was getting ready to have my life turned upside down in about a year and a half.  Everything I had gone through in those relationships, would end up coming back full circle, in one way or another, but in the meantime, I was having a lot of fun.  From what I could remember........