.
I keep thinking about the what-ifs, which always get me.
I keep thinking about the possibility of him being in a sober house and still using. I think the codependent in me is coming through heavy today. I keep thinking about what is going to happen if he gets kicked out of this sober house because he's using, or what happens if he comes home after months and months and uses again.
I know all of these things are out of my control and if he wants to get high, he will get high. I'm confused by how I'm feeling. I think I should be happy and feel good because he's going through all the steps I wanted him to. He went to detox, got into a sober house, goes to 7 meetings a week, participates in everything the sober house does, is starting to work again. I feel like I should be okay and start feeling normal again and I'm not.
I worry all day and night that he's going to relapse. I don't want to live in fear, and that's what I feel like is happening now.
Hi Pock: Just from my own experience with an AS, what helped me a bit was allowing myself just for a little while, to "go there". I had to allow myself to go ahead and think the worst, to think about my son relapsing, using while in rehab, using immediately after rehab, sniffing the stuff, shooting it up in his arm, smoking it up, even allowed myself to re- live the times of my son lying on his mattress in his bedroom, barely conscious, and me getting up the courage to touch his arm or leg to see if it was going to be warm, or the icy cold of death from respiratory distress or overdose. I allowed myself to think it, grieve for it, cried, and then accepted it as one possible reality. Only then was I able to start letting it go. It wasn't magic, it didn't happen overnight. It's a process, this letting go. You know how children go through growth spurts? Like when you haven't seen a niece or nephew for 3 or 6 months and then it seems like they've grown so much in such a small amount of time? I think our spiritual growth process is like that, it happens slowly, sometimes in spurts, but it moves forward if we nurture it and allow it to grow. We may not know it while it's happening, but then we look back and see how far we've come and see we really have made progress from where we began.
Worry will still rear it's ugly head from time to time, I suppose somewhat like a recovering addict's cravings. But the worry decreases over time. When I find myself worrying, I have learned that I need to consciously get busy in order to re-focus myself.
And on a bright note, I had one of those normal problems yesterday that you were describing
Went to place a small, light box on the top shelf in the laundry room and the whole shelving unit crashed! It was one heck of a mess! Know what? I laughed and called my husband, and we giggled like teenagers that finally we had a problem that didn't involve drugs, offspring wanting money or in jail, or drama from our so-called adult kids. Then made plans to have fun building a nice, new wooden shelving unit in there.
It'll happen for you, when you're ready.