Research

 

Addiction: The Disease

Epilogue

(This blog runs chronologically backward so this is the last post. I hope to fix it one day. Sorry for the confusion)

This story, it seems, is over. There is nothing left to say about my ex, or the drug that tore our little family of three apart. He is not part of our lives now… and from the looks of it, never will be again. He has disowned my son for the most part, in order to afford himself the life he wants, to keep chasing the same dream he was chasing when I met him at age 19. He will be 50 next month. And looking at that math tells me I spent too much of my precious life worrying about him.

I will go to work at some point, or I won’t. My son’s health and future are uncertain. But we will find a way. That is all another story for another time. I have no reason to keep writing this one. Still it is hard personally, after five years of crying over and escaping to this blog, for it to stop. All along, I wished for a happy ending. All I am left with is uncertainty and determination.

My advice to anyone who loves an addict is this: Come to terms with the fact that THEY WILL NEVER SEE THINGS FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS, YOUR MONEY, YOUR CHILDREN, YOUR HISTORY TOGETHER, BROKEN PROMISES, APOLOGIES OR ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE THEIR DRUG OF CHOICE OR OBTAINING THEIR DRUG OF CHOICE.  In the end,  addicts are all the same, no matter what brilliant beautiful kind of person they were before they starting using. Love them too much and too long, and they will become your addiction. Save your love for someone who loves you back. Care, but keep your guard up. You cannot trust someone who is using.

This took me five years or more to learn. If you have read this entire blog, you read as it slowly dawned on me. If someone had told me this in the beginning, I may not have believed it. I would not have wanted to believe it, thinking somehow the man I married could never succumb to his addiction. But he did. And nothing will ever be the same. No one, I learned, is immune.

I leave you all with one of my favorite quotes:

“When you are going through Hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill

We have and we will.

Finis

My grandmother is 87, and she is not doing well. I went with my mother to see her last week… She looked unnaturally thin and frail. I held her brittle hand, and it felt fragile, with skin like rice paper under my fingers…  I thought to myself  “these were the hands that made the best Thanksgiving turkey and dressing ever” and suddenly realized I will never taste it again.

It was hard watching my mom get upset. And I know the inevitable… which is going to be very hard for us all. She is my last remaining grandparent… part of my earliest childhood memories. She often showed love, or should I say tolerance for me that my parents just couldn’t muster. She was always straight-forward, but she had a good sense of humor. And she always had a book. I truly believe I got that from her.

Now the ever-forward march of time finds her here… alone, except for her children and grandchildren, who come and go… dividing up doctor’s visits and worrying on the phone together. But it isn’t life… not as she knew it… or wants to know it, I think. She has buried her husband, and both of her sisters. She is losing her memory. She has a lung infection and she is too tired for a normal day. How much can the body take? Even a strong one?

We all have our limits. And one day, probably soon, she will breath her last and leave us. If she is not suffering, I cannot cry except for selfish reasons.

I find a bit of comfort in that she is in a “nice” assisted-living facility (meaning it’s taking all her money to live there). I feel uneasy there though…  I can’t help but wonder if that is what we are all working so hard for?… at best? It’s disturbing, those places… full of people who were too sick or old to enjoy everything they had worked for in life, who couldn’t be in their home or their families’ home, so they ended up there. In little rooms with a few pieces of yesterday.

I almost know what that part is like. Pieces of yesterday, indeed.

But I also know other things she taught me, like laughing instead of crying … even as you struggle to survive. That is a great legacy my grandmother will leave us. And I’m glad because life has handed me a lot to laugh about. Like now… we are in the dreaded gap between checks and  jobs. Hopefully, soon I’ll be waiting on my first paycheck… but right now I am waiting on the phone to ring. Again.

Last week, I spoke to my ex, and it was like a rerun of last summer. He has flipped from friendly, rational and helpful, to full-throttle Dick Mode. Probably because our son needed help with some medication. Mr. Full-Time Job told me he didn’t have enough extra money. (Extra money? I don’t even know what that is). He also told me that our son was grown now… and therefore on his own (which  translates to  “I don’t want to help you, even though I know you need clothes and a dentist visit”).

Then to top it all off, he called our insurance company, cancelled an automatic draft and dropped my car insurance… the one and only thing he has done for us since he left. I find it especially cruel since I am the one who has to run myself ragged getting the proper food in this apartment. But like everything else, there is probably a underlying motive. He isn’t just making like hard on me, he wants insurance on his SECOND vehicle.

He pulls all this after I tried to so hard to overlook his self-induced stupidity and found myself trying very hard to rise above all the excruciating pain he put me through — for the good of OUR son.

But now we are done. My son has decided his father no longer deserves the title of “Dad”…  My heart hurts for him. He doesn’t deserve this.

He, like almost everyone else who “crosses” that family, has been written off. And I get  really angry just typing that sentence… but it only makes me more determined to help him find some happiness in life. I am aware that I cannot MAKE him happy. But I will die trying. And I will not subject us to one more shouting match, or tearful argument. We have changed our number and I already feel relieved.

I think of my grandmother, her body surrendering to age, sickness and pain… How strange that disappointed, broken hearts also reach their threshold and give up. They keep beating but they die. The only hope is that for broken hearts, there may be a tomorrow.

My son and my grandmother both know who loves them and that is what matters. That is what is important… not the people who are gone, but the ones who will stay with you, love you and hold your hand, until the end. We just have to let the rest go.

Echoes

I’ve mentioned them before, these dreams I have.

This one was vivid, and no doubt brought on by an unexpected phone call earlier in the week. My ex called and started berating me for being a negligent mother. Of course this ended with me crying and our son on the phone, trying to yell over his father.

In my sleep, my mind created a quite accurate compilation of all the hate and blame that my ex has directed at me since our divorce. Cocaine made him an angry person, or brought out an anger I had never seen. And this became the person I knew… the one who shows up occasionally in the back of my mind or in my nightmares. In the dream he verbally raked me over the coals, hit below the belt and said every critical thing that I already say to myself… only in the annoying, condescending way only an ex-spouse can deliver. In my dream I reached out to touch him and he slapped me away.

I sat there with my stomach churning, my throat closed and echoes of disdain in my head… It was his voice… What is wrong with our son? Why is he so skinny? Something isn’t right here. Why is he not better yet?  It’s been almost a year and a half since the last head injury. Why is he still having headaches? He should be better.

YOU ARE NOT DOING SOMETHING RIGHT.

I know, logically and without hesitation, that my ex could not survive a week taking care of our son. If he also had to go to work, I am afraid he would leave our boy on his own after two days. His father just doesn’t comprehend the feelings, pain or needs of another human being. It is one of the strangest things about him. He can criticize me, but he will not offer to come show me how to do it better.

Right now, he doesn’t want to answer his phone because he knows I need financial help. He knows I am again between temp jobs, and we have two weeks to wait for Dylan’s check at the first of the month… He knows our rent is behind. In my dream, my fear comes out of his mouth, in his voice: You are going to lose that apartment. There is no way you can dig yourself out of those bills. You are taking advantage of my son. He gets a check. Where does the money go? You need to get up off your ass and get a job.

YOU ARE NOT DOING SOMETHING RIGHT.

In waking life, he complains to me about money, living in a house with my name still on the mortgage.

If I could I would say:  Sell the drums that we bought, that I PLAYED for 11 years… Sell the new car you bought and help your son! I have lost everything. Why can’t you give something up? Besides your family? I don’t have time to watch a 2-hour movie, but somehow you do whatever you want.  You have a rock band. You eat in restaurants. I guess that’s fine, except you are a father, with a son on disability who could sure use some groceries, some company, or some new clothes. Yes, if I could say all that I would. I think I have said it, in bits and pieces. But he doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say… his problems are all that matter.

From these dreams. I wake up shaking, sweating, and crying… I want to throw up. It’s almost like being back in the house with him… Except I am alone, and all too aware of it. I don’t want to be a failure. I didn’t think I was one… but even though I don’t live with him anymore, he still makes me doubt myself. Even in my sleep.