Longer Reply

Yes I cheated - I read all the other replies too.

I don't agree with any 100% - but I don't disagree with any 100%, either.

Anyway, the reply is for you, shadowdweller, not anyone else, so I will reply directly to you and like I hadn't read the others.

But there is also no help I see that would be helpful.

Because, from what I read below, you are not having realistic expectations about life. I wish for many things in this world - but dreaming of them and actually expecting they happen are two very different things. Some can be directly worked for by me, and in those I do something; but yet some others cannot and then, St Francis -like, I have to accept the things I cannot change.

You are asking life for more than life can give you at this moment; imho. And you are also not even helping life bring about what it actually can.

That way, indeed, no help would be helpful...

I was so proud of myself and so happy when I managed to stop drinking months ago. But what I hid so well was the fact I started again a few weeks after, and haven't stopped. Sometimes I really want to stop, but then I see reality in front of me and I want it all to go away.

I will now proceed to disagree with almost everyone else here.

Unless your are:
...neglecting your daughters' care for alcohol.
...neglecting your job and other responsibilities you have for alcohol.
...doing dangerous things while drunk.
...doing stupid things while drunk. (which includes physical or verbal abuse on your daughters, eg)
...spending more than you can afford on booze.
...medically banned from drinking, or suffering effects of chronic alcohol intake.
you should not have to quit drinking.

The truth is, I never ever got the impression that your drinking itself constituted a problem. Only you know, of course. But while drinking is not the best you can do with yourself, it should only be seen as a problem if and when it is a problem - and I don't see the problem unless you fit any of the above conditionals. Which I have no reason to suspect, based on what you write.

Most of all, you should NOT value yourself on your ability to stay dry. Move to Saudi Arabia is not the best advice people can give you, even if it looks so at first glance. You are more than your drinking or your staying dry, and it's hardly that the only thing that you'll be remembered for, negative and positive alike.

I know what you mean about escaping reality through drinking. I have done it, and sometimes still do it, I have to admit.

And frankly... well, again, that is certainly not the best a person can do with themselves... but... sometimes you just need that moment, and that momentary window of peace and calm and of not feeling the pain... I am sorry to say this but I don't think anyone is exempt from that - anyone in life, at that!!! not just GC, but least of all in GC, with the reason we have to make our community. And I certainly don't think drinking that off is too large of a sin. If it doesn't turn into the above conditionals, at least.

So, even if you have the purpose of quitting, remind yourself that restarting doesn't mean you are less worthy as a person, and that everyone does indeed need those stages of abandon even if their method differs from yours.

Truth is I hate my life. I have everything that would make a 'normal' person happy, and I *should* be happy, but it just makes it more painful.

Actually - "normal" people will complain they don't have a woman.

I think people on GC are more likely to envy you...

I very, very much envy you, for one...

I believe there are a certain group of people that live off their emotions, that are meant to love and be loved and can never be free until they can love. I can relate to Van Gogh cutting of his ear for love, I would do more. But I am doomed to not love, and the void is killing me.

But again... because you are expecting from life more than life can give you at the moment - and that is inevitably a recipe for being unhappy with what you do have and do get; and for not doing anything to change the parts, big and small, that you can change.

I am sorry to treat you this harshly - but YOU, nobody else, screwed it up with Emma; YOU, nobody else, took away from yourself the chance to love and be loved. And yes I know some of the things you'd have wanted to express were / are illegal, but certainly not all of them, and yet you, nobody else, lost even that.

I don't have any girls in my life (not even daughters as you do) - and it IS sad, and it DOES hurt like hell... but I know it's a conscious decision and thus I don't complain about it because I know it's a consequence from everything else that I brought unto myself.

A single dad, their mother is completely unavailable, so I am all they have.

Isn't that, thus, all the nobler a mission??

But I don't want to be here, don't want to live this lie pretending to be the normal dad all the while drowning in my own despair because everytime I fall in love it is doomed to be unrequited.

Because you mix both parts of the sentence. Your fatherhood and your love life are apart and should be apart - and that'd be the same regardless of your orientation. Your viewing them in a single sentence IS a problem.

Not to mention how *wrong* society views my love.

Again...

Your selfesteem should depend on you. Not on the bottle remaining unopened. And least of all on how people who have no business having an opinion view your love.

And faced with the certainty of never seeing her again, after holding on to hope beyond reason, I fell hard.

Did I tell you already that hoping for one unlikely or impossible thing and expecting it are completely different things??

Well, that's what I mean.

Having something to believe in is one thing - different from setting yourself up for failure.

I can't talk to her about it, because she is jealous I guess.

No, it's not that.

It's that she doesn't feel very well with de facto pimping her friends out to her dad.

'cause that's what it looks like, to her.

Where before she saw no harm in my interest in her friends now she keeps them away. So, another reason for me to fall hard.

Well you committed the mistake already, and there's no way to correct it. But let all other dads take the lesson.

This is exactly why you should either come out from birth and always acknowledge from the start that you are a paed, so they always see it as natural and part of life and don't suddenly suffer a radical change of viewpoint... or wait until they are out of your aoa, and ideally independent or soon to be and tell them then, when it no longer has any direct relevance on their own social circle. The more in the middle you do it, the more the chances for it to go bad in the way it's gone bad with you.

They view it as if you had changed the rules of the game all of a sudden - of course, you didn't; but, once again, that's how it looks from her viewpoint.

And I can't get help. I thought of AA, but without being able to talk of my reasons for drinking, what is the point?

Who cares??

Many of the people who arrive to AA once had reasons for drinking, but eventually Dionysus took life by himself. He does that often.

That said, I reiterate my position that from what I read from you, you might be exaggerating the problem with your drinking.

Are you sure THAT is your main problem, again??

In a way, acknowledging my GL has backfired. My kids know and that is backfiring. The only girl that comes around is Penelope because they know she is neutral to me.

Because you hid it at the same time for too long and yet not long enough...

And because you, even if it's not your intention, are treating your daughters as your personal pimps.

How about banning every kid from coming to your home?? You'd offer to drive your girls to their places all they want - but banning them from your home.

Don't tell me it hurts - of course it does.

But I don't see how that would be worse than what you have.

And it would convince your daughters that you see them as more than sisters-in-law.

And I think sometimes she knows with how much she tortures me with her flirting.

Of course she does. But you are wrong by allowing yourself to be tortured - because later you start thinking of other girls; and THAT is the real torture. Please make up your mind already - if you are still going to let her do it all, then enjoy it for its own sake and don't think about other girls during or after. And if you are thinking about other girls then stop her dead on her tracks with no regrets, because Penelope might like it now, but it isn't fair to either of you (or your daughters, at that) to use her as a substitute. She isn't your free lap dancer, either.

Part of me wants to be the best person I can be thinking that I will be rewarded eventually. But I don't care.

You are your own reward.

And if you don't grasp and understand it and act towards it, nobody can do it for you either.

My heart is dead and I am just waiting for the rest of me to follow. And don't get me wrong, it's not just about Emma, it's about everything. I hate this world and my life and most of all the fact that I am not allowed to release my heart and love like I am meant to.

OK... again...

"God, please give me the patience to accept the things I cannot change...
...the strength to change the things I can change...
...and the wisdom to tell the difference."

When do we begin???

You cannot singlehandedly make the world become what it should - but you can do your own grain of sand, and even that is important. But you also should stop expecting that tomorrow it will all, magickally and without having moved a finger, be / become all right...

I guess the help I need is a good friend to slap me in the face and entertain me when the call of the bottle become to great. But I am not allowed friends. The people I call *friend* are few and have no idea who I really am. I have done such a great job at hiding myself that nobody knows me.

Having read all the replies, I think that's what we're trying here.

I just want to run away and find a place in this world where I can be accepted. But my girls need me, so I am stuck here. Perhaps with luck I can get through this and move on after they have grown.

Don't use them as a pretext.

If you want to move, talk it out with them. There are many good reasons to move, even many non-paed related ones that I can think of that probably apply to you - and to them.

But don't use them as a pretext to stay put.

After all, do you really want them to grow up in the same place that denies you the chance to love???

I know I wouldn't.