Droopy

Just five years ago my life was quiet and I knew my youngest was on the right path as he neared his goals to graduating from High School. I still had my daughter's sobriety to deal with, but that was her mission not mine and I had been able to just put her out of sight out of mind. I was satisifed in my career and finishing my Bachelor's Online. My love life did not exist and had not for many years as my children came first and now that they were headed for adulthood I realized change needed to be happening for me, but unsure of when and how. I met this wonderful person at my best friend's home during a bring your own dish and play cards get together. I had attended one before in which this person had been there and noticed me. I remembered his smile, but he says he was too shy to talk to me. I had allowed my son to borrow my car that night so he kept calling wanting to know when he should pick me up as he had to go to work. This wonderful person assumed it was a boyfriend calling me and left after a game of spoons. Our next meeting was much more intense as his cousin asked me if I would go out with him if he asked me and I said yes. I couldn't believe I said that and then he and I talked until midnight way passed his bedtime. He called me the next day and we have been together ever since. Our baggage has now caused us to be on a rollercoaster as addictions have controlled the drama in our lives. Not only from our children, but from siblings and exspouses too. My husband told me he too had addictions for many years with meth and went to prison for one year about 14 years ago, but he stated that did not cause him to want to quit. He said that something inside him finally happened that he decided he was done with it. When his mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor in which she had numerous surgeries over the past 8 years and his father was diagnosed with with lung cancer just two years ago had some effects that pushed him to believe sobriety is where he wants to be as he wanted to enjoy what little time he could have with this parents whom he had a great relationship with to the very end. They had forgiven him for all the horrible emotional pain he had caused the family. Whe I met his parents they were very loving to each other and to their children. Yes they were enablers, but their love for each other and their family was always present. My husband was a pharmacist until he finally gave up meth. He became a caregiver to both of his parents until their deaths 10 months apart last year. Now his son is on a rollercoaster ride with alcohol as he has given up meth he has replaced it with alcohol. Yes his parents have not been the best role models as his mother is a practicing alcoholic and his parents have been divorce since he was three. His stepfather was physically abusive, emotionally and verbally. We have found this out recently as his son has been sharing things my husband says he has heard for the first time. Although he was not always a good parent either he is now trying to become a good parent. I realize this is a long post, but I have needed to be honest about my husband's past and I can't with family members as they would not understand.

Zoey

Droopy, Hi, I think I had trouble following, maybe because I didn't read your previous posts well enough.
I am however very glad you posted, this is a great place to write out things, it just makes us feel better.
I cannot comment on childern or step-childern, but sounds like even tho your hubby got in trouble in the past he is doing good with being clean and sober now right???
I hope so.
If you were answering some ones questions or comments I feel they stopped by to read this.
Hopefully you and everyone in the family will work it out , hang in there gal.

megamysterioso

((Droopy)) SR is the greatest place in the world to share our experiences that others without addictions in their lives truly CANNOT understand. I'm sorry that your husband's son cannot find his way. As a former addict himself, I'm sure your husband knows that it DOES take that "something deep inside of oneself" to seek recovery and succeed in recovery. There is not much you two can do for his son other than pray. He too will need to find his way on his own time. My prayers are with you and your family and it sounds like you have already overcome so much.

Cynay

It a rough way to go.... but there is something in you post that is beautiful.

With all your struggles with addiction issue .... I bet it is wonderful to be with a man that has been there and really understands .. chooses to be sober and you two can keep a stable relationship within your marriage.

Everything that happens around your relationship may be a struggle, but that sounds like your safe haven... does not matter what he did then, what is he doing now?

Droopy

This is just a tidbit of what has been going on in our lives as my husband's siblings are also practicing addicts. When my husband's sister came to help be a caregiver at the end of her father's life she stealing and abusing her mother's pain meds as well as use her credit card to buy others online under her mother's name. His brother was living with his parents as he had been arrested for trying to growing with the intent to sell and selling pot to an undercover cop. He got 3 years probation when he showed that he was his parents sole caregiver so the judge was kind enough to not make him do anything. In other words NO CONSEQUENCES for his actions. When my husband decided not to pay his son's rent is when things started to spiral out of control for him as we decided it was time he hit bottom as he was using meth. My husband's sister asked her nephew to get her some pot and he was trying to stay away from these people and she had recently had the nerve to tell me that she was exercising "Tough Love" as she could not keep giving him anymore of their parents money as she knew it was not going towards food or rent. She also had the nerve to say to me that she and her brother had finally forgiven my husband for all the horrible things he had done during his addiction period and that I should tell him this "Tough Love" towards his son has nothing to do with him. Okay that totally made no sense to me when she said it or now as I write it. His brother began drinking more heavily after his father died and he still was the sole caregiver of his mother along with his sister. We did assist in caregiving when they would allow it as they feared we would discover their addictions and put an end to it. We were aware of the addictions, but uncertain how to make it stop without causing his mother emotional or phyical harm. I called my brother in laws probation officer to inform him he was drinking heavily and that he was living in a house in which his sister was using pot. Due to their addictions we had found out that his mother had fallen and had been left on the floor over night as neither sibling could lift her up and by early morning they called us to help. She was soaked in urine and my husband was furious. When she broke her hip the last time she fell we had to make she was safe and placed her in a nursing home that also allowed abuse to be dispensed to his mother by the staff at the nursing home so we took her home. My huband gave his sister an ultimatum of going back to live in California with her husband or he was contacting the police about her addictions and abuse he has seen going with his mother's care. Yes she went home to her husand. Things improved accept for his brother's drinking addiction and his mother's will to live. She basically did not want to live as she was ready to be with her one and only true love. She felt she was burden to her children and yearned to be with her husband. This is more of the rollercoaster I have been needing to talk about and have in other posts, but as I put them all together it seems like a life time rather than just 5 years. There is much love I have been able to experience in this rollercoaster and their is much emotional pain I have had to deal with and I have also had to face my own daughter finding sobriety and her trauma of being raped and accused of molesting a child in the preschool that she had worked at in which the alleged rapist's family accused her of this so she would not focus on pressing charges against him. To shorten this long post up she did not press charges and neither did they and she move to a different state as she and her fiance had already been planning so they could finish their college degrees. There has been joyfulness and sorrowfulness happenings that have passed through my life in the past 5 years. I guess I have written this so that if others are feeling they have jumped onto a rollercoaster in which addicts are the ones controlling the direction I am here to say that you can get off. Not allowing them to take control is the best way to let them know that you will not allow them to control your life they can only make decisions to control their own.