Bill came home three days later, he’d been sober the whole time he was gone, but immediately started drinking. While sober, we talked and, I thought, ironed out some things. But as he grew more drunk, he got nastier. Finally, he said, “Just go [expletive] your friend Ed,” who had been nothing but kind and supportive to me and the children. I stood up to leave the room and he apologized, saying that was out of line. I dropped the subject and we did go to bed.

Our sexual relations also grew more strained over time. I no longer initiated physical intimacy. Part of me, deep down, didn’t want to, but I would respond if he initiated it. Alcoholism and abuse affect all areas of a relationship, not just the obvious.

Not long after he kicked everyone out and came home, we moved from that small town to Tucson, where he worked, and still does, as an electrician doing commercial construction. I thought that with a change of scenery, that by relocating, things would get better as we started anew; in effect, starting new lives. I was wrong. It only got worse until it cost me three of the most important things in my life. In The Blaze Rages, the cost of denial, of burying my head in the sand is far too high.