Friday, July 25, 2008

"I told everyone that you don't give a fuck."


"I told her that you don't give a fuck about me, or how I'll be detoxing, or whether or not I'm comfortable. I told them you didn't want to be involved at all," my husband informed me.

The relative who he's been working for is planning to nurse him through his detox. I'm glad she will do it. I won't do it anymore.

In a lot of ways, he's right. It hurts me that he's telling folks that I don't care about him and presenting me in a nasty way; however, I can't get involved in his decisions right now. I can't be his nurse. I can't spend my money or my time on it.

It's not my natural inclination. My defaults are set to "Help" mode. I WANT to sit next to him, rub his hair, wipe his face with a cool cloth. I just can't do it. I've done it too many times. Detox nurse is a thankless, painful job, and I can't put myself in his space when that's going on.

My sickness is to be susceptible to sickness in him. When he's hurting, I hurt. I hurt myself to be able to hurt with him. I try to take it into me, to take what I can of it for him. And oh, if I could, I'd detox for him. I'd be sick and crazy and mean and miserable in his place. I hate for him to hurt...

But damn it, I've learned my lessons! I've been extraordinarily stubborn, but I've learned that it hurts me more than it helps him for me to do too much. In fact, it hurts me and it hurts him. He won't do for himself what I'll do for him, and I can't do for myself when I'm doing for him. When we get swept up in that cycle, we're both stuck in his disease, sinking. I've found a way out, and I'm not sorry.

I wish the voice in my head that wants to explain myself to everyone would shut up. I want desperately to call his relative and tell her what I'm really thinking when I refuse to pay for things for him or to sit by his sickbed. My sponsor often says that it's not my business what other people think of me, though. I have to keep remembering that it's not my business what his family thinks of me. I'm doing the best I can for myself today, and that's all I can do.