Cocaine Widow

Well I’m all cleaned up and ready to go back to work. Even though I have a few more weeks of unemployment left, I need the money. Gas and groceries have taken up most of our household budget, leaving less money for the little extras that until now, were taken for granted. Like my Starbuck’s hot chocolate, buying new DVDs on payday, and of course, cocaine.

I think about cocaine now, I guess like every addict, when I need energy. Or when I’m stressed out, even though it really only amplifies my anxiety. The goal is not to relax… it is to get things done without pesky things like emotion or exhaustion getting in the way. I only assume it is that way with other addicts… it seemed to be the case when my husband was using. I don’t know what it is like for anyone else. I don’t talk to anyone about it. I let my cravings pass without mentioning them. They are pretty easy to ignore at this point, but that is because things are going well. And because I am on antidepressants, which make me indifferent, which in this case, is good.

I look back over the posts in this blog and remember the confusion I felt about my husband’s addiction. And while I have never reached the depths he did on his way to rock bottom, I understand now how easy it is to lie to yourself. To justify your use, to convince yourself you can hide it, and to promise yourself this will be the LAST time. Maybe because of what I saw it do to my husband, my marriage, my child and my bank account, I can’t allow myself the luxury of not thinking or worrying, which I fear leads to not caring.

At one point I remember my husband telling me he was a junkie. He wasn’t in denial, he had given up. He just said to himself, “I am an addict and that’s just the way it is.” How he came back from that is still a mystery to me. Many addicts have children and spouses who love them deeply, and yet they cannot quit. They cannot keep a job. They lose everything.

Why was my husband different? He says he simply decided he could not lose his family and sought help. The very thing I hoped for when I started this blog. But it took a long separation for him to decide he didn’t want that life, and while living apart was hard, living together again now is even harder.

Recovery and the fall out from the damage both of us have caused, and suffered, keep our happy ending dangling in front of us like a carrott. There are issues. We have discussed counseling, and it probably couldn’t hurt. What sucks is that things cannot be fixed in a day, problems cannot be resolved overnight, as much as we want them to.

I know we will never have our old life back. I only hope we can fumble and grope our way through to a new and better one.