SHELLY1

Hi I have been reading this forum for 6 years now I can't believe it has been 6 long hard years. I have been married for 23 years the last 6 years my husband has been or is addicted to crack cocaine . for the 1st 17 years never did any sort of drug was completely against them then we gave his cousin who was more like his brother a job when he got out of prison for drug dealing . All of a sudden the man i married who was home every night worked hard great dad loving husband just disappeared and didnt come home for 3 months I was clueless by the time he decided he wanted to come back home he had lost his business sold all of his tools his trucks got repossed etc and I was still clueless thought he just went through midlife crisis I soon realized he was doing crack with his cousin and all of these people that I had never heard of he would disaapear for nights days weeks meantime I am struggling to raise two teens and keep a roof over our heads .I kept believing in the man he used to be and could not believe that a drug could control him well long story short I have been lied to stolen from my daughter has followed his footsteps and is being sentenced to 1 and half years in prison for an attempted burglary this is her second felony and I have been through he!! with her and him I kept reading here and seeing all things being repeated here that i have been living The police have been here so many times usually because of fights about his and her using and then coming home after being gone for days I would lose my cool because this is my home not a flophouse . Well anyway my husband decided he was going to get his old life back so he started rebuilding business he is a carpenter . We live in avery small town that I am ashamed to show my face in because of my daughters crap so then what does my husband do he gets down payment on a job and while I was at work my daughter and him went partying and blew almost 2000 dollars all he had left after buying most of the materials for this job so I told him I wasnot going to help him out of this he was gonna have to figure out a way to buy the rest of the materials so he did he worked a few side jobs bought a few things then I went to pick him up from job after I got of work and he was gone he called me up crying that he majorly screwed up so I was thinking great he finally got busted . I have turned him and anyone that I find numbers for into police figuring they wont remove him when I beg them to and they have told me I can not lock him out etc maybe if they bust him it will be wake up call .He will actually get the help he needs and actually go through with it , so anyway he wasnt busted what he did was stole a check from homeowner and wrote it out to cash for 500 and walked over to the only bank in town and cashed it with his license. so he like my daughter will now have a criminal record which is one thing he has managed to not get in these 6 years of he!!. believe it or not he is actually going over to the house to work tomorrow I told him he should come clean to homeowner but as far as any help from me not to expect any. I am burnt out from trying to keep him and daughter out of trouble. He got on phone this morning and started making calls to rehabs and called me at work to let me know . He said he will face everything that he has done and deal with it . I am thinking to myself well duh you arent going to have any choice this time . What really is killing me is I am a retail manager and it was bad enough having my daughters name and picture plastered all over papers but now so is my husband . Oh I didnt mention I have a son who who is named right after his father and he is going through hell cause he had to face the humiliation of what is older sister was and is doing but now his father is doing it in our small town at least before he was going to a city that was 50 miles away but then my daughter introduced him to local dealers ughhhh.I know I have an enabler all these years and instead of helping I hurt them but I a was gullible and believed love would win I never used drugs was never really exposed to drug scene and just never knew how bad it could would and did get. It has made me an untrusting cynical person who works her butt off lives life the right way always has a smile on face for public even though my mind and heart is crying and all i can think about is getting home to hide in my house and gardens because I have forgotten what fun is . I dont trust myself to have fun because over the last 6 years the few scattered months when AH and daughter werent using and little pieces of normalcy returned I might actually laugh with them or start to enjoy their company and when that happened it would actually shock me and my husband would say how nice it was to see me laugh again and then within a day ot two he would blow his clean time and disappear so that the depression could settle back in it has made its self quite comfortable in this shell I call my body. So anyway I have prayed a read this site and reread and reread melody's book . I didnt seem to be getting anywhere every where I turned the law put a roadblock in my way I have heard no restrain order because of no violence etc etc etc . So I gave up stopped trying to control them both and my daughter did what she did so now the laws will help and now that he has screwed up maybe it will be his wake up call or it will at least give me some breathing room to try to remember what living life not just existing was really like. I know everybody has asked me why dont you just walk away start over etc etc etc . My house is almost paid for and yes my credit is destroyed from credit cards that helped me survive when i was working my butt off but not making enough money . but now I have a decent job that I can live on comfortably and my motgage is only a quarter of what rents are now days so I stay here I came to the conclusion that if I let them live whatever way they wanted they would end up burying themselves and hit their lows but I never imagined it would take this long or be this hard. So anyway I wanted to thank everybody on here because even though I havent ever really posted other than the occasional thankyou to somebody that posted something that gave me hope or didnt make me feel so alone or stupid I have found great strength to keep going and going and going which for a while was real iffy I wanted to just disappear but couldnt because of my son who is a terrific kid and loves his mom and even though he is 18 he still tells me so even if his friends are around. :praying

URMYEVERYTHING

I think this is the most important thing out of your entire post. Give yourself a pat on the back despite all the turmoil you have been through to have raised a great son who adores you. Almost makes all the pain go away.

Welcome back to SR. We're here whenever you need us.

bluejay6

Shelly,

So good that you are here. I think all the reading is starting to sink in . You are beginning to release your husband and daughter to live life as they choose and you are taking responsibility for changing your own. That is emotional health. You are ON recovery road.

You didn't mention going to Al-Anon and if you haven't tried it, I think you should give it a go. Maybe in your small town you're afraid to show your face at a meeting for friends and families of alcoholics and drug addicts. Well, let me assure you that every person sitting in that room has suffered because of someone's addiction and most people don't show up at Al-Anon until they are right where you are at now: exhausted and depressed. Please do try a meeting or two.

Shelly, the fate of your husband, your daughter, your son, and you....all are in God's hands. The First of the 12 Steps of AA and Al-Anon is: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable." [as yours has]

The Second step: "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." [we do lose our sanity, our ability to reason and make rational decisions]

The Third step: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him." [however you see God, a Higher Power in your life....that spiritual power is GREATER than the power of addiction and by rebuilding oneself spiritually, a better way of life can be had. Addiction destroys the spirit of both the addict and the spouse and the battle really becomes a spiritual one].

Stay on the road, Shelly. Again, welcome.

Bluejay

teke

sorry you are going through all of this and i'm glad to see you on the road to your recovery and i'm glad to hear that your son is doing well, i'll keep you and your family in my prayers.

SHELLY1

Thanks to everybody . You have no idea how much this forum has meant to me . over the years I have let myself become a hermit more or less never letting in to my life and seperating myself from everyone who cares about me because I felt so stupid for putting up with this for so long. I have been just working working working . I want to start living feeling and loving and being loved again. I want to know what it feels like to only have to care for myself and son and not concern myself about my daughter and husband . Yes I believe in a higher power and my old way of thinking was I must have done something really bad in a past life to have all of this hurt being brought on me. My new way of thinking is Hp was giving me so many opportunies to break free of this mess and instead of letting AD and AH figure out how to get home , how to get car out of impound how to get out of any messes they had made I would step right up and do what I thought was the responsible mother wife and clean up whatever they had done . It never mattered if I had just done a twelve hour shift and had a 3 hour space to get sleep so I could go into work for another 12 I would be out picking them up guzzling coffee and smoking cigarettes like a mad woman to stay awake. Now I am putting myself and son first which completely angers them. It amazes me how a grown man can be jealous of his own son . And it amazes and saddens me that I can rely on my son more than his father . So yes everybody It has been a very slow awakening for me and I assume that is because I have never been considered a bit!! and thought that if I started saying know etc people would think less of me but I have people who are aware of what I have been going through telling me that evryone who counts and knows me and my family knows I have done everyhting possible to help them and it is about time I start helping myself. I am sick of playing the martyr and have realized I don't want people to feel sorry for me or pity I want my self respect back because I feel like I also lost that. ok I have rambled on long enough I hope that someone will read my posts and realize that they aren't so alone and get the guts to post sooner than i did it feels good to spill my guts to people who know what I am going through and yet dont know me personally and wont judge me or tell me why dont you just do this that or something else like it is that simple . It really really isnt simple

teke

good for you shell. sounds like you are on your way to a new beginning. like you, it took me a long time to join this forum. i guess fear of the unknown may have been a reason for me but i'm eternally grateful that i finally did sign on and trust me, my life has not been the same since.

i'm still praying for you and your family. oh btw, rattle on, i do it a lot.

rayofsunshine

Welcome Shelly! Keep reading and posting there's so much support and encouragement for you here.

I remember when I started putting myself first.... I also remember when I stopped accepting the blame ... when my AH would "use" and stay out all night or weekend... we'd argue when he'd come home and he'd blame me and my nagging as the reason he'd left in the first place. It was so freeing just to realize it wasn't my fault. I wasn't that powerful. I would actually laugh when he'd try to turn it around on me after that. Cause it was so predictable.

Glad you on on your recovery journey now and taking care of YOU!