Carrying the Message.

I went with my Nar-Anon family last night to a small town a couple of counties away to help a fledgling Nar-Anon group get their very first meeting off the ground. My Nar-Anon sponsor, being our matriarch, lead the meeting, and we all told our stories of what we were like before, what happened, and how we've changed in recovery.

It really is an honor to be able to be a vessel for this message. I hope we helped someone who was there last night, but I know that we helped by bringing that little bit of light to people who are still suffering.

Step One, Round Two.

I’m on my second round of 12 stepping, and this time, I’m doing a study online with a group of women I’ve met through the “internets.” It’s been interesting watching the changes in me.

I’m using the same book as I used in my first go-round, so the responses to the questions are present as I work through the material a second time. It’s been interesting observing what has changed and what has remained the same.

Read the rest at The Second Road.

Headaches.

One of my jobs is causing me some grief. I am excited to have something to obsess about that isn't my husband. Isn't that insane?

I find, however, that even when I'm obsessing about something that isn't my husband, I'm still inadvertently obsessing about my husband. I'm an expert at obsessing about him. The problem at my work involves a few issues that allow me to obsess about my husband vicariously. For instance, people expect me to think for them instead of finding information for themselves. I'm in situations where I'm expected to be more responsible than is my fair share. These situations remind me of home.

There are also moments when some of the folks I'm around at this job are irrational and angry. Irrational and angry is quite familiar to me. Irrational and angry people make me feel kind of like I have razor burn on the inside...like I have razor burn on the inside, and someone is drenching it with alcohol. My insides are rather irritated. If you could see my insides, the parts where I keep my emotions, it would be really red and festery.

I'm not doing a good job of using my tools presently. It's been a while since my step group met, and I'm not able to get to as many meetings as I used to make. I can't go to yoga as much as I like to go. I'm not sleeping enough. I'm not praying enough. I'm tired and hungry and angry all the time. I can feel all the effects of these slips, but there's not a damn thing I can do about it until one of these jobs lets up.

Blinding white light.

My step group is finishing the 12th Step tomorrow. I'm expecting to explode into a blinding corona of bright white light of healing, health, and harmony.

I'll let you guys know how that works out for me.

Promptly Admitted It.

nataliedee.com

"Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it."

-Step 10

I got a chance to practice Step 10 this morning! Yay!

My husband had promised to run an errand for me so that I could go to my Saturday afternoon step workshop. I'd counted on him running this errand, as our group won't meet if more than one of us can't come. Already one of us wasn't going to be there, so I needed to know ahead of time if I wouldn't be able to come so that I could let everyone know.

A few hours before it was time to go, he got a phone call from his family inviting us to come to dinner. I told him that it wasn't a good day for me with the step group meeting, but that we could go out there after my meeting. He said he would just get his mother to come pick him up, forgetting that he'd agreed to run the errand for me. Instead of reminding him that I needed his help and that he'd agreed to do something for me, I freaked out. I blew up at him.

I yelled at him, yelled at myself, and I got myself all worked up. He yelled back, but the things that he was yelling were, "Stop yelling at me! I forgot I said I'd run the errand! I'll just do the errand!" I couldn't hear the words he was saying, couldn't evaluate the actual events of the actual moment because I was busy resenting and reliving events that are long gone. I was busy being angry about times when I'd wanted him to hang out with family and he'd chosen to use instead. I was yelling about times in the past when I'd needed his help and he'd promised to give it and failed to follow through.

And while I know that these are reasonable things for me to be frustrated about, I also know that these things have happened, and they are over. I have chosen to continue trying to make this marriage work, and this marriage...this man...includes these events. I can either find a way to let them go, or I can get out of the marriage. There really isn't much room in between.

Taking a line from my playbook, he retreated upstairs to escape from my insanity. It took me a few minutes of crying and praying and asking for guidance, but it wasn't long before I saw the situation clearly. I was upset about nothing that had to do with today. My husband had recognized that he'd made a mistake, apologized, and agreed to do what he'd said he'd do. I was yelling about the past, about events that had no bearing on today, and I'd gotten myself hurt, hurt my husband, and made us both upset.

So guess what I did after taking that little bit of personal inventory? I went to get him, took his hands, and told him I was sorry. I explained where I was coming from and that I knew it was unreasonable, but that there were some things I was still really angry about. I told him that I'm working on letting them go, and that it's going to take time, but that I promise to try to slow down in the future and think about what is really bothering me. If it's stuff in the past, I'll try to let it stay there so that we can both face today on its own terms.

And guess what I got in return? I got validation! He put his arms around me, and he told me that he knows that he's hurt me a lot, and that he understands that I've got to work through these things my way, but that he's really trying to do the right thing for me and for himself. And I got a lovely afternoon and evening with my husband. It was kind of a miracle.

It really does work when you work it.

Hope Vs. Desperation.

"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave everything behind they have ever believed in can hope to escape."

-William S. Burroughs

Sometimes, especially now that I am a Zen Master Blackbelt Detachment Warrior Of The Order Of Nar-Anon, I feel like I'm watching a race when I watch my husband struggling with his recovery. Yesterday, recovery was leading relapse by a nose...who knows what we'll see today.

I watch him wanting to get better but battling such a well of despair, fear, depression, guilt. It sometimes seems like he doesn't think he deserves to have the wonderful life that is waiting for him on the other side of his sickness. Sometimes, I'm so afraid for him.

One thing I never understand about him, and about addicts in general, is the need constantly to be perched on the edge of some precipice. Instead of taking care of problems before they become too huge to be manageable, my husband pushes and pushes and pushes up against walls and deadlines and boundaries until there has to be conflict. He has waited 3 weeks, for instance, to begin the process of reconciling with his family member who employs him. At this point, he is very close to being unable to work, which will mean he won't have money for methadone. I understand that he hasn't felt well while his dose has been adjusting, but I don't understand why the promise of feeling so much worse when his methadone runs out hasn't been enough to get him out of his stagnancy and on the phone.

It's always like that with him...always, he creates situations where he is on the verge of a crisis...so much of what he faces is so perfectly within his purview of control. I can't understand not taking care of stuff before it spirals completely out of control.

Which is why I have to focus on me, not him. I have to reign myself in, often, before I let my thoughts get carried away in trying to understand his thoughts. If I'd married a schizophrenic, would I constantly try to understand why he wanted to wear a tin foil hat? Nope. So why am I constantly trying to understand my husband's addictive behavior? It's outside of reason, in the land of tin foil hats.

Recap.

"I'm just going to go to bed," he told me when I got home from work. I'd come in and found him in bed, as usual lately, staring at the television. I tried to lie down next to him, put my arms around him for a few minutes before beginning my nightly detachment.

"Oh, that's good," I said, my face buried in his hair. "I got a call from a Nar-Anon friend who is having a rough time, and I told her I'd come over."

"Whatever. You're going out to get fucked."

Hmmm.

It seems my husband needs desperately for me to be doing something wrong. He isn't too fond of my ability to detach from his struggles...but he also doesn't seem to like it too much when I get in his business and boss him around. He doesn't seem to like very much about anything.

"All day long, I look forward to when Law And Order will be on. It's all I have to look forward to," he said as I was getting dressed. I expect this was meant to make me feel guilty for going out with my friend, and possibly also I am supposed to feel guilty for not leaving him my computer when I go to work or letting him use my car. I take the computer with me and I keep the car because he has proven pretty resoundly that he can't be trusted to respect my things...and he knows all of it.

I hate this situation. I hate that he is suffering and that there isn't much I can do for him. I hate that it feels like my only choice to remain healthy is to stay detached from his situation and take care of myself. If I am demonstrative and affectionate, he says nasty things to me. If I try to leave to avoid hearing hurtful things, he lays on the guilt. It's unpleasant to come home, and it's hard to watch him hurt like that.

It seems really up and down, too. He came home from the clinic this morning and got in bed with me, put his arms around me, and talked for a while. It was obscenely early, but I woke up for a few minutes to talk and play with him. We had a good morning, and it felt like I was having a nice visit with my husband. I left to go to work, came back home, and I find him all cold and resentful and sad.

"Going out to get fucked." It's such an ugly phrase, and such a senseless thing to say. I am uncomfortable with how these things bead up on me now. It's good that they don't penetrate, but it also means that he's saying awful things, and I just walk away without responding. I'm not upset, but he's not experiencing consequences for his behavior...

But then, he never does have consequences when I get upset. My upset doesn't bother him...in ways, it seems like it functions as a reward almost. Maybe his consequence is that I don't respond anymore, that I just stay away.

So that's us, tonight. Who knows who we'll be tomorrow. For today, though, I've got some stillness underneath all the stuff that's boiling on the surface, and that's enough for me.

A Sudden Panic.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live."

-Dorothy Thompson

He called to ask when I'll be home. I told him I'd be going to the meeting straight from work unless he would like to come with me. He pretended not to hear the part about coming with me, and said, "So you'll be home late?"

And suddenly, I was full of fear. Panic. Sadness. He's not been to a meeting in nearly a month, and I've been doing a good job of not caring about it. It's his recovery, or lack of recovery, and it's not my business. My business is to take care of myself, whatever that means.

It has been good for me, I think, to let go of his recovery, to let him handle it or not handle it and to keep it very clear in my mind that all I can do is react to his behaviors. If he continues down this path, and it continues to be unacceptable to me, then eventually, I'll get out of the unacceptable situation. It's healthier to let him figure it out on his own and to figure it out on my own...

And yet tonight, I'm scared. I'm scared because I know what path he's on, and I don't want him to go that way. I want him to be ok, and he's not ok enough, not yet. I want it to happen faster, whatever "it" is. I want release from this fear, from my anxiety over his future and our future together.

I do want it. Apparently, I don't want it enough to leave. Not yet.

I made a new friend this weekend. In talking to her, we ended up kind of revealing our life stories in that way that you do when you meet someone nice and you hit it off well. Telling someone new my adventures as a junky's wife gave me an interesting sense of perspective. It was interesting to me that I had to tell her these deeply personal things about myself in order to be able to explain who I am and how I'm living. My role in this relationship is a huge part of my identity presently, which I don't like. I'm a junky's wife, still. I'm working on myself, and I'm growing, and I'm doing the best I can; but still, at my core, the most essentially true thing about me is that I am married to a heroin addict. My life is built around reacting to my husband's disease.

I am predicting for myself such peace if I can ever get over this hump. I'm finally growing tired of the drama, the trauma, that I've been bathed in for so long. I just kind of want things to be quiet, to have time with me, to figure out who exactly it is that I am.

Bottomless.

"I got you this," he said, handing me a fruit cup. We stopped at the grocery store on the way to work this morning. He shoplifted a fruit cup for me to have for lunch. I hate it when he steals, but he meant to do something nice for me. It's like so many things between us.

We talked at the meeting last night about different people finding their bottoms, finding that place where they knew they had to change. You hear about addicts hitting bottom, but the parents and spouses and other loved ones affected by addiction often have bottoming-out experiences as well. People talked about realizing they needed to get away from the person who was disrupting the serenity in their homes...needing sleep, needing security. For some, it's missing money and the unpredictability of the addict's behavior. Others mentioned disappearing valuables, violent outbursts, feeling like they no longer knew their loved ones, feeling unsafe in their homes, feeling ashamed, feeling tired of being taken advantage of, finding paraphernalia...

I left feeling strange, and I think it's because I've done all of this. Where is my bottom? When will I be tired of being tired enough to stop? I'm afraid I'm bottomless.

It's like living with a pet. The pet might piss the floor or chew your shoes or leave lots of hair around, but if you love the pet enough, you tolerate these things for the comfort it gives you. I'm tolerating boxes chock-full of dirty syringes, unpredictable behavior, constant disruption of all the work I'm doing to make myself feel sane, safe, secure in my home...and I'm tolerating it because there are sometimes such moments of sweetness, such beautiful gifts. Sometimes, my husband is there, if only briefly, and I keep hanging on, hoping that one day there will be more.

Reservations.

"Relapse is never an accident. Relapse is a sign that we have a reservation in our program."

-Narcotics Anonymous, Basic Text, p. 76

My husband has a big box of reservations that he was storing in our kitchen. It's kind of the strangest thing I've ever seen. It made me embarrassed for him.

I was looking for a tea bag in my kitchen cupboard, and there was a strange box. I pulled it out and opened it. There were about 20 syringes in it, in various stages of disrepair. There were 4 lighters, none of which worked. There were little tiny pieces of wax paper, which I've come to identify as the packets heroin comes in...tons of those. Old paper towels. The plastic that syringes come in. Some fucking spoons.

I go to him with the box. I am rather, strangely, unperturbed. "What is this about?"

"What?" as if he's never seen the box before.

"This box, full of old syringes? Trash? It was in the kitchen?"

He was embarrassed. He said he'd leave. He said he can't get rid of it. He swore it's old. He said he'd take a drug test. He swore by the sex we'd had ("Do you think we'd fuck like that if I was using!?" And it's true, his penis is a veritable barometer to his sobriety.) that it wasn't possible for him to have been using.

We'd had such a good weekend...I don't know how to process all this. I don't know why it's there. I don't know why it's in the fucking KITCHEN CUPBOARD, for the love of god. I don't know what I want.

Entirely Ready, or, Festering Resentment Syndrome.

I skipped my meeting last night, and that was a foolish thing for me to do. I skipped it because I am tired. I am tired because I am suffering from festering resentment syndrome. Going to a meeting might have helped me to process my festering resentments.

Festering resentment syndrome is an ailment common amongst the wives of junkies. During the days, I'm happier than I've been in a long time. We wake up together, go to the clinic, stop to get coffee, and I drive him to work. I enjoy our early mornings...we make sure to get up with plenty of time to talk and laugh and hold each other before we get out of bed, and I like our long car ride with lots of time to talk. I go to work and enjoy my job, and he is working now, too. It's still not perfect...he's contributing nothing near his share yet. But, he's contributing. He's paying for his own treatment. He's engaged in the business of living again, engaging with me. It's progress.

We get home from working and cook together, play with our dogs, go to meetings if it's meeting night and watch a movie or television if it's not. We talk, a lot, and we talk a lot about Stuff, like the big Stuff that we need to talk about if we're going to make it to the other side of this crisis. Things are going in the right direction.

I am growing, too. I'm not harboring resentments the way I used to. I'm working on the things I need to work on to be able to let them go...or at least I think I am. Little things don't bother me like they used to, at least not until I lie down at night.

It's almost as if there's some resentment convection oven inside of me. I stuff and stuff all the resentments I think I'm letting go of deep inside it, and then, late at night...ping! The timer goes off. My resentments are ready!

Night before last, for instance, the resentment that woke me up at 2:30 in the morning was about a stolen camera. It wasn't an important camera. I never used it. It was an old film camera I'd had years ago, and he'd pawned it. I hadn't even missed the damn thing...he told me he stole it and pawned it in another of his great confessional moments. I don't care about the damn camera....or at least I don't think I care. But shit, at 2:30 a.m. last Wednesday night, I woke up absolutely enraged over the damned camera. Enraged. Crying. I had to get out of bed and go sit in the bathroom and sob and punch the wall.

Last night, it was an elaborate lie he told me last February. He was repairing a part of our sunroom, and I had paid for some of the parts. His repairing it himself was meant to save us money, but man, he'd sure needed to borrow and borrow and borrow and buy and buy and buy, and from what I could see, nothing was progressing on the project. It was before I'd found his needles, and so it was before I knew exactly what was going on with the money; however, I knew something wasn't right, and I told him I wasn't going to give him any more money. He freaked, and he called me at work, petulant and angry, reading off a long list of items that he HAD to buy to be able to FINISH the project, and didn't I WANT to have nice windows in our SUNROOM? Didn't I want to improve the VALUE of the HOUSE? He railed and railed at me so much that I figured I must have been being crazy. Surely, I had to have been behaving in some kind of crazy-ass way for him to get so upset at me. Surely, there must be some explanation for why our $200 project had turned into a $500 one, and there must be some reason why he needed another $100 to be able to finish it properly. Surely, I was being unfair.

I woke up last night, reliving every minute of it...angry with him for lying, and not just for lying, but for that crazy-making kind of lie that makes me doubt my own sanity. I woke up angry at myself for ever doubting my own sanity and my own management of my own goddamned money for even one fucking second.

I thought I was over it. He was using. I was in denial. It was before Nar-Anon. We're growing. Things are better now. I know what was going on. I know what is going on.

But apparently, I'm not over it. I'm not done with hurt and anger. I can keep myself away from it in the sunlight, in our sweet mornings together and in our sweet nights before the lights go out, but when they do...it's like these goblin resentments just drip from the walls, just rip from my insides and pour in from the outsides. I lie in the dark, enraged, frustrated, sad...counting resentments like sheep.

Oh, I want it gone. I want this stuff to be over. A friend of mine was struggling with the "entirely ready" language of Step 6...but boy, I'm not. I am absolutely, entirely ready to let this shit go. I am entirely ready for a full night's sleep. I am entirely ready to find the right path for healing myself from all this shit, for letting it all go. I love my husband. He's a good man, and he's doing the best he can right now to become a better man. I am ready.

Balance.

I want things to be fair. I am beginning to doubt that we will ever achieve anything like "fair."

Before heroin got my husband all unhinged, we had at least an outward appearance of balance in our household. While I always ended up being more responsible for taking care of all the decisions, signing all the papers, and generally being the adult, he at least managed to muster up enough money to pay half of all the bills. If rent was $500, he gave me $250. If the gas bill was $40, he gave me $20, and etc. I generally ended up paying more often for groceries and other household incidentals, but he would usually pay for movies and dinners out and other luxuries. I always handled more of the housekeeping, but it was ok with me. He wouldn't do it right, anyway, and if he lived alone, he wouldn't do many of the things that I wanted done. He didn't care about about the house being kept up, and I did, so I made it my problem. If I asked him to help, or if there was a mess that was clearly more his than mine (art supplies or a pile of his clothes, for instance), he'd take care of it.

It felt balanced. We didn't have a lot of money, but we always had enough for our bills without having to struggle, and we usually had enough to go out at least once or twice a week. I could sometimes buy a new shirt or a new pair of shoes, and sometimes, we could both take a day off and go somewhere together.

And that's what I want, back. Balance. It doesn't have to be a perfect 50-50 split...I understand that he's going through something extremely difficult, that he's had a major setback in his life. I can be supportive, and I can be patient while he gets himself back on track. I don't understand, however, his willful refusal to contribute what he can in situations where it would be easy for him to make a show of helping.

I was cleaning tonight, and he kept talking about all the things he was going to do to help. He kept lying on the couch, talking about all the things he was going to do. "I'll do the dishes, and I'll clean the floor in here, and then I'll finish up that laundry, and then I'll start the yard work." And then he sat and sat and sat some more, and I kept cleaning and cleaning and cleaning around him. I have gotten used to his words being damned near meaningless...his expressions of intent have more to do with the man he'd like to be than the man he actually is...so I didn't even get upset when he didn't do the things he'd said he was going to do.

That's progress for me. His refusal to contribute to the housework to make up, at least a little, for not contributing to our financial livelihood drove me crazy for a bit. I was feeling very proud of myself for not getting bent out of shape, for just taking care of the things that I wanted taken care of and kind of ignoring him.

But then, I found a new thing to be upset about. When I was about 20 minutes from being done with cleaning, he announced, "I'm going to bed," with this sheepish look on his face. It was this look that I've become familiar with over the last year...a look that says, more or less, "I am acting like an asshole, and I know that you know that I'm acting like an asshole. I don't want to stop acting like an asshole, however, because I'm an addict, and it's all about me and how I feel, and I feel like acting like an asshole right now. I would prefer if you would not observe me acting like an asshole, so I'm going to go to bed now and pretend to be asleep instead of just doing the dishes like I said."

Boy, that pissed me off. He went to bed, and I mopped the floor.

And now I'm all wrapped up in negotiating my feelings. It bothers me that small shifts can throw me off kilter...I have such a delicate balance of my thoughts and emotions, and whenever I think I've got everything neatly tucked away, a new resentment rears its head.

I know that patience will repair a lot of the damage that is still hurting me, that time and recovery will wear the resentments down for me and changes in his behavior will break down my protective walls. I know it consciously, but my heart still is raw.

Watching.

I don't like watching him hurt. I want to fix it. Imagine that.

He's all over the place, mostly doing well, but occasionally being really consumed with guilt and shame and pain. It seems almost as if the bad moments are worse for him than they have been before. He's finally feeling like a person again, contributing to our livelihood, participating in the world...and it's hard to realize that he's missed a year of his life and hurt everyone he loves, everyone who loves him.

Last night was meeting night, and he fled the meeting in a hurry. I found him sitting on a bench by himself, looking upset. He used to like this meeting, but a few weeks ago, someone mentioned methadone, and the group largely trashed MMT as a valid tool for sobriety. He's afraid that folks know that he's on methadone maintenance because I've told the people in my meetings, and he's convinced that no one is talking to him anymore.

It might be true. I don't know if some of the people in my meetings might talk about their experiences with their spouses. I think, though, that he's likely paranoid and upset with himself for being dishonest. It might be better if he finds a meeting that isn't affiliated with my Nar-Anon.

It hurts me to see him hurting, though. It hurts to see him sitting alone and feeling rejected. It's hard watching him work through all the crap he's working through. I want to help him, and I can't. I want to take some of his pain off of him, feel it for him. I want it all to be easier for both of us.

Zzzzzz.

toothpastefordinner.com

Scouter says I'm boring. I've been on a blog vacation, I guess, ignoring my Junky's Wife duties. Those of you who've been with me from the beginning remember how I used to post like every fifteen minutes, and then for a while, I posted every day. Now I'm posting just sometimes. There's so much changing that it's hard to know what to say here.

Mr. Junky is still doing maddeningly well with his MMT. He's a big old barrel-full of fucking happy. I've spoken with a few experts, and it's apparently the case that methadone is the cure for EVERYTHING, and it makes you know EVERYTHING...and not only do you know everything, but you know it really, really loud.

And while he sometimes works my nerves with his loud, loud brilliance, it is very nice to see my husband. He feels better. He looks better. He's helping around the house. He's working and bringing the money to me. He's working really hard on himself. At the present moment, the man I fell in love with is here. The drug addict who has been occupying his body is hiding. That's a beautiful thing.

I finished my fifth step this weekend. I met with my step group, and we all told each other our business. It was really good to hear everyone talking about their darkest secrets, and funny to realize that all the dark stuff really isn't so dark, so precious, so unique. We're all really similar in so many ways.

One thing that working the steps has made me realize about myself is my need to do everything perfect is kind of insane. I kept feeling all this anxiety that the other members of my group said they'd also felt about not doing it right, not talking about everything, not figuring myself out enough. When I heard the other folks saying the same stuff, it occurred to me that they were being ridiculous (funny how easy it is to spot ridiculous thinking in other folks!). The steps don't have expiration dates on them. We can come back and re-evaluate later. I've got plenty to work on with the stuff I've already uncovered about myself, and I can come back and see what else crops up in the future.

See, Scouter? There's everything and nothing to say. I'm strangely wordless and bored with my drama. I usually find me to be so fascinating! I'll get it together, though, for you if for no one else (pleaselovemei'llworkharderi'lldobetter!).

I'm Ready.

"When God wants to speak and deal with us, he does not avail himself of an angel, but of parents, a pastor, a neighbor."

-Martin Luther

I've had some real gifts in the past few days when I've been hurting so much. From your generous, kind comments to folks being unbelievably generous at my meetings, I've seen my higher power's hand moving in my life, giving me the help and the guidance I've been asking for. I've had nine months to get ready for this hard stuff, and I'm ready. I didn't ever look at it like that...training for the real battle that's to come, but that's what it was.

I'm alternately grateful for the work I've done to get to his place and terrified that all the work I have done wasn't a means to an end...it was just a beginning. What's ahead is scary and long and hard.

I'm not up to telling the whole story yet, but my husband is really, really struggling to get clean right now. He's probably going to begin MMT on Monday, and he's suffering right now with withdrawal. It's hard, hard, hard. It's hard watching what he's going through, and it's hard going through what I'm going through. I'm doing the best I can to remember to take care of myself, but right now, that's pretty basic stuff. My big victories have included taking a sleeping pill so that I made sure I got a good night's sleep last night instead of staying awake fretting about him twitching all over the place and remembering to eat today. My big goal for tomorrow is to take a shower and do some work.

I don't know too much about what is next for me, but I do know that the sun rises and sets for me with that man. I'm not done with him. A part of me is terrified by it, this love that doesn't have a bottom...but mostly, I know I'm where I want to be. It's hard being married to an addict, and it includes days like the last several. I've chosen to be here, and I'm ok with where I am.

No Fight Tuesdays.

I like this painting from Gary Wick. It's called Choppy Waters. The sea is all messy and choppy and beautiful and colorful, like marriage and life and love and truth.

We agreed today that no matter what happens, we're not fighting. If I come home and there are five heroin needles sticking out of his eyeball, we're not fighting. If I ask him about the five heroin needles and he lies and lies and insists that they are not heroin needles, that he's just today been diagnosed with a special kind of eyeball diabetes, that ninjas sprang forth from the walls and attacked him with eyeball needles, we're still not fighting. And he promised that even if I come home and scream at him that I know there are heroin needles somewhere in the house and demand for him to show them to me in a complete fit of absolute insane hysteria, we're not fighting.

It's been a frustrating couple of days. We've had all this affection and fun and happiness and clarity between us, but it keeps getting kind of chopped up. We'll fight, acknowledge our urge not to fight, and then fight some more, and then apologize and make up, and then fight again. It's getting pretty exhausting, and so we declared No Fight Tuesday No Matter What. We can always fight tomorrow.

It's meeting night tonight, for fuck's sake. I'm ready for one. I miss my BFF, and I'm tired from a busy weekend. I'm behind at work, so I'm spending too much time in the office, which diminishes my time to take care of myself. I need to go on a long walk, but it probably won't be tonight. A meeting will do me good, though.

Oh, Thank God.

It's meeting night tonight. I am so very, very much in need of a good meeting. I got charmed out of my last meeting by the garlic bread at G's family's dinner and the very sincere look in his eyes when he told me that he wished I'd stay and eat with his folks.

I know better than to skip my meeting, and really, he knows better than to talk me out of my meeting. Without a good dose of Nar-Anon, I end up stomping through our house with rage in my eyes like a zombie. I wake up in the mornings with my mind already agitated, cycling through all the things he's done wrong, worrying about all the things he will do wrong, fretting about how I'm going to find a satisfactory stopping place for this MADNESS.

He is in his second day at a job that seems to be going well. I hope this one sticks. I'm sweating it, though, as the schedule is going to mess up the meeting that we like to go to together, the one with Nar-Anon and NA in the same building. He'd started to develop some relationships with folks there, so now he'll have to find a new meeting and start fresh. It won't be as easy as it was to just go when I'm going. Even though I know it's been his thing and he's come to value the meetings for how they've been helping him, I also need the peace of mind I get from him having his own program to work. I guess I'll worry about it when the time comes to worry, and focus on keeping my side of the street clean in the mean time.

My side is getting a little weedy...

Rare Form.

My baby was fussy tonight.

My husband behaves sometimes as if he were a giant slobbering infant from hell. His mood was foul, which made him break all our plans for the evening to go lie in bed and pout. Generally, I am very good at detaching from this scenario. When he is pissy and miserable and whiny and shitty to be around, I go away and protect my sanity from his bullshit. Tonight, however, he'd had a job interview, and we'd talked about us updating the website where he keeps his portfolio to make it easier for the boss to evaluate his work. I'd agreed to help him with that.

While he was hiding in the bed, pouting and pretending to go to bed, I started fretting about how he needs to update the site. I'd volunteered to do it for him, as I'm more proficient with the whole web thing, and he acted as if I were shitting in the kitchen sink (this phrase courtesy Damsel In Distress) by offering to help. His response was absurd and stupid.

I know when this addicty dramatic (and this phrase courtesy EJ) behavior is coming. I can see it coming from a thousand million miles away. I know the scenarios by heart, and I know the response that I need to have prepared to prevent myself from getting entangled in his insanity.

Is that the response I have tonight? Nope. I tangled.

I realize later that the reason I engaged in his whiny, shitty behavior is that I'm excited about the prospect of this job, and I wanted to do everything I could to help him get it. If I could update his website, that is me helping him out. I also was upset that he shitted our plans for the evening in favor of lying on the bed with the covers over his head feeling sorry for himself for his headlong dive into self-defeat and self-destruction. I was upset that instead of going to the meeting tonight, he sat in the car. I was upset that he was doing that goddamned addict dance of need and rejection, want and repulsion. I was upset that there was a goddamned needle in my yard this weekend. I was upset. I didn't respond right. I wanted his website updated, and I wanted him to want it, and I wanted it now.

It's better, and I'm better. I like to have these little lapses into participating in his mad dance so that I can remember why it's so important that I don't. I can't participate. It hurts me.

Grace.

The single clenched fist lifted and ready
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

-Carl Sandburg

I am noticing a shift in my response to stress that is another lovely side effect of spending a lot of time thinking about how to heal myself, my marriage, my life...there have been many side effects of this whole recovery business in my life, but one of the most remarkable for me has been this new found ability to turn the other cheek.

From really big, offensive behavior by my husband or others to really small, annoying things like dumb blog comments, dumb traffic problems, or any of the myriad dumb things that used to push me over the edge into nearly paralyzing anger, frustration, and despair never quite touch me...at least not on the good days, and even on the worst days, they touch me less.

I'm learning that all the getting worked up does is get me worked up. Crazy people are going to act crazy. Dumb people are going to act dumb. I don't have to participate in it, put my head space into play...not this head space that I've worked hard to carve out in the midst of all this chaos.

But it's sometimes, really, even better than that I don't get upset. This morning, on the way to work, someone pulled out in front of me. I had to slam on breaks. My coffee spilled on my pants. I breathed deeply, and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. An incident that could have sent me reeling into a full day of frustration and fixation on the negative turned instead into an incident that started my day out with a lot of laughter.

Recovery, for me, has become this prism, converting the big black shit stream that pours into me from the outside into goddamned rainbows of delight. I don't know why or how I've missed this simple shift in thinking...I don't know why it took the better part of three decades for me to figure out that the key to being happy was, damn it, just to be happy. No one can make me miserable without my permission, and I'm not signing any more slips.

The Junky's Wife is not featuring miserable. Not anymore.

Rises And Sets.

...i make these promises but all my promises hurt
it's like they never get a lift off
so if i'm being honest with you
and it seems like i'm being cruel
at least you didn't get a rip off...

-Ryan Adams

Lovely, pain in the ass husband of mine...sombrero dancing my soul!

My sponsor and I talked for a while before the writing workshop yesterday. We talked about our fears. I told her that sometimes, I'm afraid that by learning to detach, learning to take care of myself, to say "No," to cope with my husband no matter what he's doing, I'm learning to accept a situation that won't ever be right. It's apparently a fear that many of us share...that the relationship we're in won't ever be right, that the best our partners can do won't ever be very good. That we will grow and grow as people, which is really a beautiful thing, but that we're somehow handicapping ourselves from growing by staying in relationships that are only ever going to be as healthy as our partners.

One of the things I've liked best about Nar-Anon is how similar I am to these folks who seem so different from me. The first time I went into a meeting, I was afraid when I saw everyone. I thought I wouldn't fit in, that it wouldn't be right for me, that everyone was older than me. And then I was surprised that everyone was older than me, as I'd figured that this whole junky's wife business would be the province of folks in their twenties. Surely, by the time I'm in my 50s, all this addiction business will be behind me! Right?

But I've come to really cherish the way that I'm so similar to the people in my group. We're all different ages and races and from all kinds of backgrounds, but we're so, so similar on the inside. We're broken and blessed in that same way...that extra dose of empathy that convinces us we can fix everybody, bear any weight, handle everything single-handedly.

It was good talking to my sponsor, though, as it helps me to see that she goes through the same shit that I go through.

And in the end, it doesn't matter. The sun rises and sets for me with my husband, and I'm not going anywhere...not today.