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If you are thinking about someone that "used to" do drugs.

Old 03-20-2014, 03:57 PM
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If you are thinking about someone that "used to" do drugs.

I don't know why I can't just walk away. I don't know how it got to this point. I don't know why I feel so much guilt. All I know is that today, for once, something clicked, and I realized that he is, first and foremost, an addict. That that is his identity, before the part where he was a soldier, or a son, or a lover, or an employee. That this wasn't "getting better", that he wasn't "changing", that he didn't have "it handled", that he didn't "used to be", but was, and that I was living with it.

I don't even know why I'm here. Maybe it's that I'm a novelist--published six times now, although looking at my life through the lens of the last year, I'd trade every single book, and gladly, for him to be sober, even though I know that won't happen. There is a part of me that wants to write, that needs to speak and be heard, that's crying, that can't stop crying.

I can only plead ignorance. I did not grow up with an addicted family member or friend. I had never tried substances myself--had been afraid to even try pot, although I did it once or twice in college. I didn't know to look for the danger signs--I was, and am, perilously naive about so many things. When he said that he "used to have a drug problem" but that he didn't any more, I believed him. Doesn't everybody deserve another chance? Who but a novelist would be drawn into the story of a character overcoming his own sordid past to transform into a better person?

For the sake of my own selfish appeasement, I am going to count the lies. So there's one.

And when I found him that one time, his pupils the size of needles, his lips blue--when I dragged him into the tub and turned the water on, because I didn't know what else to do, because I wasn't thinking, I couldn't think--and he promised he'd never again, that he could never do something like that to me again, that he was so deeply sorry and just afraid about reaching out to someone again, I believed him. Especially when he asked me to take him away from that house, to take him away from that life.

So there's two.

The medication, that one for pain from the war injuries? The other medication, to treat nightmares for PTSD, from serving in Iraq? That they "weren't addictive", that he was on the smallest dose possible? That his mother got them, because she had the insurance and could pay for it, and he couldn't, and she rationed them out to him because she was paranoid, because she sometimes took them for herself.

Oh god, it hurts to think I could be that stupid.

There is three.

The time he got so angry and suspicious about "where I was going in that outfit", the time he tried to throw me out, demanded my key, and when I wouldn't give it up, pushed me to the ground and threw my poor, tiny dog out the front? How could I have really gotten suckered by that story, the one about his ex wife and how badly she cheated on him (and what hell she must have been in, marrying someone that became an IV heroin user) and how it would never happen again--and it didn't he, he never touched me again, although he scared me, screamed at me, tore me apart with words so completely that I wasn't sure how to put myself together again.

Yes, that is four.

The days where I was too scared to come home--not because I was afraid of him, but because I couldn't take the way my skin would crawl, because I didn't know which person I would get, the angry *******, the sweet lover.

Actually, I don't feel like doing this any more.
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Old 03-20-2014, 04:02 PM
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I'm sorry for your pain Leyana but I know you'll find support and understanding here.

D
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Old 03-20-2014, 04:12 PM
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Welcome to SR, Leyana. I'm so sorry for what you are going through. You have found a place full of kind and understanding people who have been there. I hope you'll come back often and read the stories of many of us who understand your pain.

Actually, I don't feel like doing this any more.
You don't have to. You can walk away at any time. If you need help, there are resources available to you. You are still being abused even if he isn't putting his hands on you. You don't have to live like that.
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Old 03-20-2014, 04:13 PM
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Welcome to the family.


Actually, I don't feel like doing this any more.

Why don't you stop doing it? Remove yourself and your little dog from this person's life. Seems like he can't be trusted so what's left of the relationship?

You deserve a peaceful life.
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Old 03-20-2014, 05:00 PM
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I think a lot of it is/was guilt. For the entire time this was happening, I kept thinking that my interaction with him somehow influenced his ability to stay sober, for better or for worse.

It was only today that I figured out that was not the case.

I think part of me is just stunned right now. I should leave, and take my dog, too. I just . . . it's so overwhelming, to think about all of the things that have to/are going to happen.
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Old 03-20-2014, 05:07 PM
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You don't have to decide anything in the next 15 minutes. Give yourself time to adjust to the idea and make some plans. As I said, if you need help, there are resources available to help you get out safely. (((HUGS)))
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Old 03-20-2014, 05:12 PM
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Thank you. I know this sounds crazy, but just knowing that you guys are out there and that somebody cares at all about this (especially when it feels like he sure as hell doesn't) . . . it means the world to me.
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Old 03-20-2014, 05:12 PM
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I agree that you should leave to protect yourself and your dog. Yours is an abusive relationship and not one of us deserves that.

As Suki said, you don't have to move this moment. Try to put together a plan of what you will do and work toward that goal.
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Old 03-20-2014, 05:36 PM
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It does not sound crazy that you are here. There is a lot of support through SR. I hope you feel better. You deserve happiness. Big hug!
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Old 03-20-2014, 05:48 PM
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I have been where you are. You cannot worry about him. He has his demons to battle. And they are HIS demons.

One thing I would say is that you want to be very careful about how you leave. If I were you I would talk to a counselor, or go to some AlAnon meetings.

Leaving is going to be tricky. He's not going to just say, "Ok, honey, I understand."
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Old 03-21-2014, 05:54 AM
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Leaving is also trickier for me than I would ever have believed.

Yesterday, I told him that I could no longer sleep in the same bed with him; that I wanted separate rooms. We have a two bedroom apartment, so that was not an impossibility.
In the past, I've hidden in the smaller guest bedroom, using it as shield during his times of rage and irritability.

I told him that from now on, the big room was mine, with the big, new bed that we bought on credit together--in my name of course, as he has no credit, with the agreement to make payments on it together--and then, of course, I wound up paying for it myself.

I told him to move his things into the smaller room, and when I got home, it was done. He asked me if we were through, and I wanted to scream, "yes, of course we're through", but all I could do was cry, go to my new room, and lock my door behind me.

Seven, eight times last night, in between reading and rereading the same pages over and over in "Codependent No More"--a book that has quickly become my bible, become the thing read most in my kindle over everything I own--I tried to stand up, to walk out into the hall, to his room, to knock on the door, and find the words to say that he had to leave, that my own room in an apartment he stopped paying rent for two months ago was not good enough.

I got as far as the hall, maybe three times, before I crawled back to bed, defeated.

Toward one in the morning, I got so lonely, so sad, in this big bed that we always shared, that I went into his room, intent on crawling into bed with him, holding him.

I couldn't make myself do that, either, but that is the moment that I finally realized how sick I was, how deep my need for something that was so bad for me. That I had totally confused love and desperation and codependency, that I really *was* a codependent. Not a little bit codependent. Not codependent at times. That my inability to just show him the door, even after a year of bad treatment, even though the apartment was in my name, that I paid all of the bills, that I often paid his bills--that I was happier, so much happier, on days he wasn't home . . . I finally realized what it meant to be addicted to your addict, and that I hadn't escaped that fate the way I had somehow convinced myself I had.

I work at an apartment complex. Recently, we installed new lights in all of the basements; the old management had left these weak fluorescent bulbs that flickered like a horror-show. So in went these new, bright lights, and for the first time, we saw the basements as they really were, dinged, scratched, water-stained, filthy, and half-painted with an awful cotton-candy color that must have been somebody's drug fantasy.

That is how it felt, the moment I saw things for what they really were. Not some earth-shaking revelation, not some religious epiphany, just this quiet moment where something in my head clicked and I said, "oh, that's what that is. That's what that looks like. Needs paint."

I couldn't tell him to leave. But I did make some small changes, small wins, and I hold them dear to me, even though they seem stupid and little and silly. I would like to share them. I hope that if I can make these little changes, I can make changes just a little bigger, and just a little bigger, until I have my life back. That is how almost every book I have written got written--ten words at a time, a page at a time, a thousand words a day, until suddenly there was a series that was three books long, with a complete story arc--and it never felt like something big or monumental, but little and quiet, and yet it turned out big all the same.

My first victory happened yesterday. In my misery, in my escapism, a cute guy came into the office, looking for a place to live. I flirted with him a little; it lifted my mood, even though it made me feel guilty.

It wasn't until after he left that I pieced things together, saw little yellow flags sticking up out of the grass. That he was almost thirty, and had never been on a lease. That his one crime on his application was a misdemeanor OWI that was expunged while he was 16--who drinks and drives at sixteen, really? That he smelled, ever so faintly, of alcohol, at five o'clock on a Thursday. Are any of these things damning evidence? Not really. But it was enough that I felt an instant check on my level of attraction to him, that for once, instead of thinking about how somebody made me feel, how I felt bad for them, wanted to help, to understand--I thought about these yellow flags and what they could potentially mean--and through the lens that yes, there could always be an explanation--but wasn't the most likely connection between the dots the one I should use to make my decisions or calculations?

As I have counted lies, so I will count victories and truths. There is one.

This morning, I had to enforce one of my newly drawn boundaries. I told my addict that in two months, I was going to stop giving him rides to and back from work completely. He is eligible to get his license back (for a mistake he made while using no less, and oh, I wanted to UNDERSTAND, my life story and the story of my relationship has been one of me UNDERSTANDING) but has not tried, claiming that having access to a car might leave him more predisposed to using. And instead of saying, "Oh, well, you're going to have figure something out, because I don't actually have the time or energy to wake up at five in the morning and then drive you the forty miles to and back from work, and then do it again as soon as my own workday is over" I have driven him.

One of the boundaries I gave him was that he would pay for all of the gas associated with me driving him to work. Another was that if he snapped at me, for any reason, for anything, instead of treating me like a decent human being, I would pull over and just make him get out, no matter where it was. I would not subject myself to any more verbal abuse. The last, final boundary was that he try to find a way home. Previously, I had asked him to do this, but he had been "too embarrassed" and "trying to get hired in". Well guess what, he got hired in last week, and his embarrassment was a consequence of his own actions, right? And enabling was letting him feel his own consequences, right? That I should rescue him?

This morning, the first words out of his mouth were, "I guess I can't go to work today. There's no money for gas. I was supposed to get my check deposited today but it's not in there."

And OH, how badly I wanted to UNDERSTAND, to say, "I'll cover it this time--you pay me back", but that little voice, that unpainted basement with new lights, it waved at me and said, "Credit is earned. I wouldn't trust a tenant that couldn't pay the rent to suddenly start paying it without seeing the payments first, would I? Why trust him?"

And then, I saw something else with my new lights--that this was a form of manipulation, this kind of all or nothing way with him. *I have no cash! Guess I can't go to work! Not going to bother to make any sort of intermediary suggestion or devote time to an alternate solution! This is your problem!*

So I said, "I don't understand. You haven't given me any money for the rent or anything, so you should have at least five dollars." I mean, that's what a ride would be for that distance, just about.

And then I heard, "well, I paid my phone bill, and my student loan, and then my mom asked me for some money yesterday . . ."

I heard myself saying things, as if I was't even saying them. "That isn't my problem. I don't want to know about your finances anymore." This was five dollars we were talking about here, and the gas tank was on "E", and if he had money to pay for his PHONE and loan cash to his MOM and pay for his gaming subscription then he could pay to get to work.

And finally, in the end, he found the five dollars. He was quiet and respectful the whole ride there, and said "thank you" when he got out, and let me know he would ask everybody for a ride and try to find one back, and if not, he would figure out another way to get back that didn't involve me.

Is it a stupid victory? Yes. It's a five dollar victory, that's it. But for once, for once, I did not make his business my own, and actually enforced a boundary that I drew.

And to me, it is everything.
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Old 03-21-2014, 12:42 PM
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Originally Posted by Leyana View Post
And finally, in the end, he found the five dollars. He was quiet and respectful the whole ride there, and said "thank you" when he got out, and let me know he would ask everybody for a ride and try to find one back, and if not, he would figure out another way to get back that didn't involve me.

Is it a stupid victory? Yes. It's a five dollar victory, that's it. But for once, for once, I did not make his business my own, and actually enforced a boundary that I drew.

And to me, it is everything.
I don't know that there's anything like a "stupid victory," Levana. Something is either 'stupid' or a 'victory', not both.

As you've written, it takes a single sentence, a single page to write a novel with a complete story arc.

Your "stupid victory" is page one.
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Old 03-21-2014, 02:45 PM
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Wow.

I'm wordless. This is an absolutely amazing story. And I feel sorry for you that you have to put up with this.

I have no advice to give, I was in a horrible relationship as well, where we were both co-dependent, so it's a tricky mess.

But I do commend you for standing up and doing the right thing.

I hope all works out for you, and I'm sending positive vibes your way. Take care girl
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Old 03-21-2014, 03:32 PM
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Originally Posted by Leyana View Post
Thank you. I know this sounds crazy, but just knowing that you guys are out there and that somebody cares at all about this (especially when it feels like he sure as hell doesn't) . . . it means the world to me.
Oh we care, Leyana. Trust me, we care.
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