About 10 a.m. today, I just broke down in tears. What the hell? I'm supposed to be strong, tough and beyond all this. Sometimes I hate it when my emotions get the better of me.

What started it? My wife asked me how she looked. She was wearing a white blouse and a pair of jeans. She looked incredible. She looked amazing. She looked like the woman I love and can't have. It tore my damn heart out.

"You look beautiful," I said. She turned and walked into the kitchen. That's when I felt the burning on my cheeks as the tears started to flow.

I tried to hide it at first, disappearing into the bedroom to compose myself while my wife was getting ready for her AA meeting. Then all this "stuff" just came spilling out.

Someone commented previously about the alcoholic being in control of the relationship. That rung true for me in many ways. I feel almost like I'm being emotionally held hostage. She says, "Do this or we take the next step" (divorce or separation). What option does that leave me?

Someone else commented on another post about imagining what it might feel like to be with someone who actually WANTED to be with me and loved me. I can't. That's not reality for me right now.

I don't know if I handled everything as well as I should today. I cried. Tried to explain how I was feeling (not accusatory, but keeping it on myself) and I thought everything was fine. She went off to her meeting. No one felt weird when she returned. I called my sponsor (in Al-Anon, a support group for the families and friends of alcoholics) and made myself lunch while she was gone. At 1:30 p.m., I headed off to an Al-Anon speaker meeting.

One of the speakers was my very first sponsor. He didn't know he was going to speak that day. He was sort of drafted when another speaker became ill and canceled. This particular meeting was co-sponsored by my old Wednesday night men's Al-Anon group. It was great to see everybody again. Maybe I should start going back to that one. They are a great group of guys. I just need to make sure the kids are cared for when I do that. It's a 30-minute drive each way and an hourlong meeting.

But back to today .... When my old sponsor saw me (it's been months), he said, "My God, you've lost a LOT of weight." Why yes, yes I have, thank you very much. I'm three pounds away from hitting that magic 50-pound number. He looks great too, having lost about that same amount since I saw him last. 

"I started doing yoga at the beginning of December," he said. "While the scale isn't going any lower, I've lost a pants size."

That's great. I'm still not doing yoga.

A young lady who first started coming to Al-Anon when I led the Thursday night meeting was also there. She's a mom to two or three kids (I can't recall) and was raised in an alcoholic home.

When she saw me across the crowded room, she waved, put her stuff down on the floor and ran over to me -- offering a big hug. I gotta tell ya, having someone come to me and offer a hug is the best feeling in the world. I actually teared up just writing it and remembering how it felt. I clamped my arms around her and hugged right back. "That's the hug I owed you from the last meeting," she said. "Where were you this week? I didn't see you Thursday."

"I was speaking to a service club," I said. "It's something I do sometimes. I consider it my good deed for the week. I'll be there this week though."

And if you're getting ideas of romance, erase those thoughts. That's not happening. She's a very nice young lady who was there with her HUSBAND. She knows I'm going through some heavy stuff (just about anybody from my Thursday home group knows that).

The hug was so nice and meant so much to me. She will never have any idea just how much.

At the end of the meeting, everyone holds hands and some groups say the Lord's Prayer, others the Al-Anon Declaration and others just observe a moment of silence. One lady approached me and held my hand. I thought she looked familiar and said so.

"No, I'm new," she said. "I just started coming to meetings."

"Oh, well keep coming back," I said. "You're in the right place."

She kept looking at me throughout the meeting, so I assumed I must know her from another group. I could swear I know her from somewhere ... OR ... I bet I know what it is. She probably recognized me.

As I helped cleanup the room, one of the other members (of my old men's group) said, "While we miss you at the meeting, I still see your smiling face every week."

He meant he reads my weekly column in the newspaper. Being anonymous in this region in Al-Anon isn't easy. 

That's all I have for now. I think it's enough.