The Return.

I spent Saturday night out of town with a girlfriend, and I came back home yesterday. I was a little worried, and I prayed all the way home about my return. My husband and I have established a stupid pattern for when we reunite after I go out of town. We hate each other. We treat each other like strangers, invaders, and enemies.

Before addiction undermined the deep current of affection and attraction that initially drew us together, we came back to each other after being away like lovers should. We were eager to see each other...passionate...affectionate. I would anticipate coming back home and falling into his arms and smothering him with kisses. Once the addiction started wreaking havoc on our relationship, though, it became different. I'd drag back home, stopping frequently to avoid the inevitable arrival at the scene of all the pain. It was liberating to get away from the dark cloud that hung heavy over my husband, and I hated coming back into it. I hated seeing him, and I hated that I knew shortly after I came in, he'd be distant and cold or angry or he'd ask me for things that I didn't want to give him.

On his side, even after the madness of active addiction stopped, he'd feel resentful that I had left him. He's chained to the methadone clinic, and it's been a long time since he's been able to go out of town. He's lonely, bored, and frustrated, and sometimes the one bit of relief he gets from the repetition of being home alone all day, trapped in his sick mind, is me. He's not always warm and fuzzy to me, but he does appreciate my presence and look forward to it. When I go away and am not around to take some of the weight off of his dark cloud, it makes him angry.

So we'd come back together, pissed off at each other before we'd even begun to interact in any real way at all.

Last night, though, I prayed that we would be able to see each other through God's eyes. I came in the door, and he rounded a corner away from me. I felt a surge of anger rise in me...he can't even say hello? I came to him, put my arms around him, and gave him a kiss. I felt his body melt against mine, and I felt his heart open to welcome me back home. "There's some dinner in the kitchen if you'd like some..." he said, tentatively.

My little gesture of affection allowed me to see his affection. Changing my own attitude, ignoring the voice that was asking me to see what is wrong with him above all that is right, opened my heart to all that was good.

Who Am I Kidding?

"No."

Our marriage counselor had just asked me if I'd choose my husband now. We'd met individually to talk over some of the last several weeks' events in our marriage and to talk about some of the dynamics she'd observed in our relationship. I'd been talking about how bad the past had been and my fears and hopes for the future, and she'd been encouraging me to think about what was happening--right now--in the present moment.

"If you can't be healthy and choose your husband now, you should get out of the relationship," she'd said.

"That's hard, but I don't think I would. I don't think that I'd choose him, now, if we didn't have such a past together and if I wasn't hoping that the future might be better."

"You've got some thinking to do."

I left her office with a head full of anxiety. I had a lot of things to think about, but I had gotten some clarity at least. I went to work, and after my class was over, I came home.

My husband met me at the door. He is such a beautiful man that it takes my breath sometimes, still. He took my hand, and we sat down together. He pulled my head against his heart, held me close and kissed me. I looked up into his eyes and laughed on the inside. Who have I been kidding?

I do choose him. Today. Always.

Besotted.

I've tried to get you out of my head but I can't seem to get you out of my flesh. I think about your body day and night. When I try to read it's you I'm reading. When I sit down to eat it's you I'm eating. When he touches me I think about you. I'm a middle-aged happily married woman and all I can see is your face. What have you done to me?

-Jeanette Winterson,Written on the Body

I've quoted this bit of Jeanette Winterson here before, I'm sure. A friend of mine sent it to me at the time when I was between marriages, running amok between and among possible lives. I identified with that single-minded obsession she describes, and I'd forgotten how it felt until lately.

I am thoroughly besotted with my husband. I'm exhausted in this lackadaisical, satiated way. All I want to do is be near him.

He's a mess, but he's a self-aware, present, loving mess, and he's doing the best he can, which is more than I ever expected. I've missed him. We were separated for almost a month before his hospitalization, and before the separation, he'd not been present in this way for a long time. I think it's been since August, really, that I've seen this side of him. That's a lot of months.

I'm going on with my life against my will. I want to stop everything and pay attention to my husband only. I want to stay home in bed with him and rub his back and kiss his face and tell him he's going to be ok.

I want to enjoy him, while he's here, without letting down my guard too much, without worrying about the future. I'm having a hard time letting myself fully wake up to these pleasant, present moments because the past and the future are so scary.

He's been to three meetings in three days. It's a big deal. He's sometimes crazy, but when he says things that are hurtful or when he's hyper-sensitive in that maddening addict way, he calls himself on it. He's trying to take clean up the messes he's made, slowly but surely. It's all good stuff, and it scares me, and it fills me with hope.

Best of all, though, is he is mine. He's a mess and he's my mess. We sleep all wrapped together like vines. I wish there was nothing else to do in the world. I wish that vines would come up out of the ground and grow over us, fold us into the ground.

The Both Boat.

A message from my guru:

You are having a problem with finding happiness within self. Probably this is a problem that comes from your childhood. Probably also your husband is having this problem as well, and for a while, you were sailing in the same boat. You were very happy in the both boat, but now, you are going in different directions.

I really, really loved his "both boat." We did find happiness in the both boat. For a long time, my husband fulfilled all my needs. He was my god, my social life, my career, my muse. He was everything to me. It was really, really beautiful and felt really, really good when it worked, but I see now that it doesn't work. It can never work forever. We can't keep sailing in the both boat.

He came over last night and spent the night, and it was an interesting exercise in boundaries. He wanted to stay for a few days, and I had to work through a lot of stuff to figure out what would be ok with me. The idea of him for one night felt wonderful; the idea of him staying for three or four days with no definite end felt unbearable. I can't express what made the difference between those two scenarios, but it was clear to me that I was happy for him to spend one night, but not several. I told him that he was welcome to spend one night, and I was afraid that he'd react badly, as my setting boundaries have never been happy for him.

He actually reacted well. We joked about how we're on vacation from each other, and that it's probably best to keep some space. I told him that I like the distance, and that I hardly hate him at all now. He said that he still hates me a lot. We giggled.

I am recognizing that I can find a lot of options if I am authentic. If I look into my own heart to find my answers, there are many possibilities of what I can do with my life. The options aren't either to live with my husband and be miserable or to live without my husband and be miserable. There are varying degrees of separation that might be what we need to save our marriage, and I'm happy that, at least today, we both seem able to navigate our separate boats.

I enjoyed falling asleep in my husband's arms. We both had a hard time getting out of bed this morning. It just felt good to be together. It felt good to be together and feel good about each other. It's been a long time coming. He went to work, and I worked from home after meeting with my guru. He came back here later in the evening, and we had a few minutes together. I am glad we had those minutes because they reminded me of what I can't live with: He called the next door neighbor, who came over to exchange video games. They were loud. They both had big shoes that got dirt on my clean floor. I got angry that my husband was messing around buying video games while I struggle to pay the bills.

I'm not ready to have my peace disrupted with his need to socialize with big, loud, pot-smoking men. I'm not ready to stay out of his business about money. He's not ready to devote himself completely to adult relationships or to make grown-up decisions about money. We're not in a good place to come together, no matter how much we love each other. It's clear to me from the contact we have.

Another thing I'm happy about that has come from our new "dating" relationship is that we are going to get marriage counseling. I'm on a waiting list at a place that offers income-based counseling for folks without insurance, so it will be affordable. I'm excited to have a third party help us to work through our issues and to help us set goals. He's very good at telling me what I need to do, and I'm very good at telling him what he needs to do. To have someone outside the relationship help us to see what we both need to do to be able to live with each other seems really, really helpful.

Today, I have a lot of hope.

Dear Husband,

It's getting a little better every day, but still, at least for a few minutes each day, I feel like I can't breathe.

Today, for instance, there have been two times where I've lost my breath. The first was this morning. I went out with some friends for breakfast, and there is a duck pond by the restaurant where we ate. I was doing ok. These are friends in recovery, so it felt good to be among my people while I'm feeling so raw inside, and I felt as centered as I've felt since you left. But I stopped for a few minutes when I left to look at the geese and the beautiful, black swans, and it seemed like my heart might break. They were beautiful. You are beautiful. Beauty hurts my eyes now. I don't want to see beautiful things because I can't see my most beautiful thing.

And then there was a song. I'm at a coffee shop, and I'm trying to work. I haven't been able to get anything done all week, and I committed to myself that today, I'd get caught back up. I can't get financially behind, and I can't let my work pile up until it becomes an avalanche. I had great intentions of catching it all back up today and tomorrow, so I left the house (which honestly is feeling a bit haunted in your absence). I was working along pretty well, and then I hear that song by Amos Lee that you liked a few years ago called "Colors." Remember that song?

I know we all,
we all got our faults.
We get locked in our vaults,
and we stay..

When you're gone,
all the colors fade.
When you're gone,
no new years day parade.
You're gone,
colors seem to fade,
colors seem to fade.

I thought it was so charming how you liked that stupid, sappy song. Now, it reminds me of you walking around our first apartment together, singing. It reminds me of you grabbing me and throwing me down on the bed. It reminds me of the joy I found with you, the pure, sweet joy that we had before it got so ugly. God, remember the first day we were in that apartment together? Remember looking around and realizing it was going to be us, ours? Together!

I've also been pretty mad at you today, or at least mad at your disease. I've been hurting too much to be mad, so I'm hoping that getting angry will be progress. I woke up this morning with the word "parasite" in my mouth, and I had to say it out loud. It was beating its wings, and it needed to fly. You see, it makes me really, really angry that you're starting to be able to make a little money on your own, and that at the same time I'm getting good at enforcing my boundaries. What it feels like is that you've been sucking the life out of me, and as soon as I start to tell you, "No," and you start to be able to take care of yourself, you're casting me off. I don't like the idea that I've been a free house near the methadone clinic for you. I don't want to have been your host body.

But it is whatever it is, and I'm powerless over it. I kept going and going and going until the waters were rising up above my head, and I had to make a move. You're moving, and I'm moving. Maybe we'll move back together one day.

But today, what I want is the hooks you have in my heart to let me go. I want 24 straight hours of being able to breathe without feeling these panicked snakes crawling up my throat. God, I love you, and I hope you're ok. I hope we both are.

Love, love, love,

Your wife.

Let's Pretend.

My husband and I are pretending that his fit yesterday morning didn't happen. It's really healthy.

Totally healthy.

I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm feeling pretty detached from the whole affair after talking it through with some friends. Today, I've worked a lot, looked up information on 12 step support groups for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and played with this website, which Stagnant Artist showed me. I went to a meeting. My husband and I ate hot fudge sundaes together and flirted.

He's really upset with a lot of things, poor man. He's upset that his mama didn't love him right when he was a little boy. He's upset that I'm getting stronger, which manifests mostly in a lot of "No" as far as he's concerned. He's upset that he's gotten himself in such a bind. I see him working really hard in a lot of ways to pull through this time, but I'm also astonished at how quickly it can all fall apart.

He's just so stunning, and I do enjoy touching him.

I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I do know, though, that I'm feeling centered and clear. I'm going to visit some people I love dearly this weekend, and I'm excited. I'm caught up a bit with some work, so I can relax for the first time in a while. I'll get a break from my husband, which always opens my heart a bit to his struggle.

I Remember.

At this point in my life
I'd like to live as if only love mattered
As if redemption was in sight
As if the search to live honestly
Is all that anyone needs
No matter if you find it

Last night at our meeting, there was a moment when I was suddenly overcome with a memory. It was one of those gut-wrenching, visceral memories, and I could feel it all over myself.

I hadn't seen my husband in months. He wasn't my husband yet. He wasn't my boyfriend, either. He was nobody, and yet he'd been so much to me for so long.

He'd called me earlier in the week. He had been in jail, and I knew he'd gotten out. When he called, it was as if I'd always known he'd call. I answered the phone call. He told me he loved me. I told him I loved him, too. I started making plans to see him.

I was married to another man, so I started telling lies to him to excuse myself for a weekend. I said I was going to visit a friend, and I packed my things and went to see my lover.

To that point, I'd been so painfully loyal to my first husband. It had felt like an exercise, being committed to him. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do. I'm not sure if it was ever what I wanted to do. The relationship was over, and had been for a long time. He was cheating on me, and he was drinking too much, and I was passionately in love with another man who'd only just gotten out of jail. Everything felt so important, so tremulous and real and rare. I felt like I was blooming. I decided to let go.

I drove 3 hours to reach him. I felt no guilt. There was a bird-like thing inside of me, the kind of thing that pulls birds South. I wasn't sure of where I was going, but I didn't have to be. I knew he'd be there when I got where I was going, and that's all that mattered.

He met me in the driveway, put his arms around me. He'd looked so awful the last time I saw him. He'd looked strung out, and a few months in jail had done him good. He'd always been the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. I always felt like I could drown in looking at him.

He lead me inside. He closed the bedroom door, and he kissed me. That's what ran over me last night, in the meeting--that kiss.

We were talking about making amends, and I was talking about how I felt after writing a ninth step letter to the first husband, and telling the story made me remember that first kiss. I married him in that moment. It was a while before we were actually married, before I was actually divorced even...but it didn't matter. It was all technicality after that kiss.

I think back on myself at that time, and I recognize that I was being carried by a tide much bigger than me. I often want to judge that incarnation of me and the bad decisions I was making, but I was doing the best I could at the time. I was so in love, and I was so afraid, and I was so hurt from the first marriage, from life.

I was so in love.

Sometimes, I forget that the man who drives me so nuts now is that man who had such a hold on my heart. And sometimes, I remember that feeling, and I don't think I'll ever be able to let it go.

----------------
Now playing: Tracy Chapman - At This Point In My Life
via FoxyTunes

"You Look Beautiful"

"You look beautiful," he said as I was leaving.

"So do you," I said, bending over to kiss him goodbye.

"No I don't. I look awful. Don't look at me."

I wonder if he looks awful. He looks lovely to me, truly. Lying on the couch, infuriatingly unemployed, dopesick and miserable, he's beautiful to me. It's funny how that works.

I'm Better.

I'm better. We talked a lot. I think he heard me, and I think I heard him. Neither of us is going anywhere tonight and probably not any time soon. We're real fucked up, crazy people, but we're also fucked up, crazy in love. It hasn't stopped. I can't take my eyes off of him when he's in the room with me.

Sometimes I think the story of my life will be a battle between passion and spirit. Tonight, passion is winning. Passion usually wins with me.

Smitten.

My husband shaved his head today. He's got a great head. I'd forgotten about the greatness of his head in being concerned with the curliness of his hair. I loved his hair. I thought that I might mourn its lack when he shaved it off, but I don't. I love his head now, white and bristly. I love every knot and twist and vein.

He looks tonight like the man I fell in love with, and that's a little sad. It's sad that he's not the same, not the energetic, creative, clever young man who first made me lose all sense of myself. Or he is him, but a little unwound, and I'm different, too. I'm softer around my edges, and also a little unwound. We're getting older. I'm glad we're doing it together.

The best of him is still there, though. I know it. The core is the same, and that's what I love. It's what I recognize.

On Love.

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.

-from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

Go read all the rest of Kahlil Gibran talking about love. It's been a while since I'd read it, and it's one of those priceless pieces of poetry that changes every time you read it. I love that about good art...it reminds us of what we're here for.

Clarity.

I'm trying really hard...

I know. I know you want to be better. I know you want to want to be better.

Then why aren't you happy? You won't sleep with me, you won't look at me...

I thought I'd be able to see things, see changes...I thought I'd see money, I'd see you having a sponsor, see you working steps, see you going to meetings. And I thought there were things I wouldn't see, too. I thought I wouldn't see needles anymore, I wouldn't see you sullen, withdrawn...

I'm slow. I know. But I'm trying.

I am ashamed of myself. I've been doing this for too long. I keep waiting for something to be clear for me. I keep waiting not to be in love with you anymore, not to have any hope left. I keep waiting for you to take some steps in the right direction. Nothing is ever clear...

I love you so much.

I know. I love you, too.

Isn't that clear enough?

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.

My Will Be Done.

I've been praying lately, a lot. Most of the time, my prayers are kind of trench prayers..."Help me. Help me. Help me," but sometimes, I get a little more sophisticated:

"Help me. I am afraid. I am trapped, and I need guidance. Please help me to know what I am supposed to do. Please show me what you want for me."

I realized this weekend in my step group while working on the Sixth Step that I might be standing firmly in the way of the plans of who or whatever is on the other side of those prayers. I ask for something to show me what I should be doing, and I get needles. I get a goddamned needle, that ugly orange goddamned needle, that symbol that started my new life when I first found it this time last year. I see that I'm standing in the same room, looking at the same thing, in the same situation.

I hate it. It hurts me and it fills me with rage, and I don't do a damn thing about it. I'm facing an edge of my "entire readiness": I am entirely ready to grow, entirely ready to move out of this impossible situation, but I am absolutely not ready to remove my husband from my life.

I've been reading a lot about God and gods and all the different manifestations of holiness around the world, and I've been finding the Hindu gods to be really illuminating. It's a construction of spirituality that's real distant from anything that I could ever be comfortable with making my own, but learning about the different functions that the various gods perform has given me some insight into the work that my own higher power can do for me. This week, I'm in love with Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, but also the planter of obstacles against which we are meant to test our mettle, to overcome and grow. I'm not sure if I should be invoking the power of removal or respecting the obstacle I've been given and testing my will to love in spite of all.

And also, I just don't want to be without him, my darling, needle-bearing obstacle. I'm not done with the sound of his heartbeat when I put my head on his chest, with his hand in mine, with his arm around me while I'm sleeping.

It's always so confusing, understanding what is right.

It's The Story That I Love.

I think it's a curse that many writers have. I've read too many books. In books, when a heroine faces a crisis, when things get really hard, there is going to be a turning point. Things are either going to get much worse in an obvious way, or things are going to improve. In even the most postmodern, experimental, morally vacuous novel, there is some sense of something like resolution, or solution, or something. I often find myself waiting for that moment when all the answers become clear...when the moral or the message that I'm supposed to be understanding becomes obvious to me, or when the pivotal plot point emerges, when the hero saves the day or the anti-hero destroys everything.

Then again, maybe my anti-hero has been destroying everything for quite some time, and I'm just not acknowledging it. Hah.

I've seen myself do this in relationships in the past...I find myself so in love with the idea of the story that my partner and I are creating that I have a hard time letting it die. "But we've been together for so long! But we were so in love! But it would be so nice to tell our grandchildren how we met!"

My husband and I have a great story, and it's a story I'm good at telling. It's my favorite story. I judge all other stories alongside it. I look for the main characters in the best art, the best poetry. It's the story I've lived by for years. I don't like these latest chapters. I don't like the way it seems like it's going to end. I don't like the incredibly repetitive nature of the last several months, the languishing crises, the floundering heroine and the stagnant hero.

But I'm still clinging to it, still holding on to the intensity of those first moments of recognition, the memories of the first time he kissed me, the look in his eyes when we got married, the warm reunitings and painful partings that marked our tumultuous early years. I want it to end with grace, or not at all. I don't want to just fade out.

Why I Love My Husband, Or, Comments.

"It is an honor for a man to cease from strife, but every fool will be meddling."

-Proverbs 20:3

Once again, I've been struggling against my urge to shut this site. I try to be very detached and spiritual about the whole business, to recognize that people's misperceptions of my life, my writing, and my relationship really have much less to do with ME than the lives and relationships of the folks leaving the comments. So often when we read, we project our own lives into what we are reading...we choose a character we identify with, and we read our experiences against his or her experiences. We try to imagine the decisions we would make if put in that person's position.

I am also struggling because I like the interactivity of comments...I like having an audience that talks back. However, as that audience has grown, the time it takes to moderate, read, and occasionally respond to comments has grown as well. I wonder if it's worth the time and energy. When I am about to begin a post, I spend a lot of time sorting through my feelings about how people are going to respond to what I'm going to say. Even if I don't censor myself, I fret a bit about whether or not someone will take a sentence or two out of context or misinterpret my meaning. If I turn off comments, I might be better able to focus on what is important...to focus on writing down my story, which has been incredibly healing for me.

So I don't know yet what I'm going to do. I think I will sometimes have comments on, and sometimes have them off depending on how distracting I find the likely responses. In this post, for instance, I am not going to allow comments. These are things that I need to say, and I don't think that feedback will be especially helpful for me or for my readers.

I have found that when I have the urge to respond to comments, I'm not generally doing anything that is very healthy...but there has been a theme running through a string of them that keeps nagging at me, so I thought I should respond. Several people have asked why I stay. I've addressed the "Why I Stay" topic many times, but not so many times lately...so for newer readers who are more inclined to leave a comment than to look through the archives for their answers, I thought I'd write it again. It also is good for me to remember these things, so here they are:

I love my husband for his creativity, and I love him for loving me for mine. It's something we share, a love of art and writing and creative expression. I respect his aesthetics, and he respects mine. That art business is what heightened the intensity of our relationship from the beginning, and it remains the hingepoint where we always come back together. Nothing is more fulfilling for me than the time we spend being creative together. We have a studio in our house with all our art collection on the walls, and my favorite thing to do in the whole world is to write up there with him while he paints or draws. We can share so much in those quiet times. I've never had that connection with anyone else, and it's something I cherish.

I love the way my husband touches me. I love his hands and his mouth and how they always find their way to my body. I love his skin and his hair and his face and his smell and everything about his physical self in the most raw, earthy way. I love his appreciation for my body, too...I love his attention to detail, his eyes that seek out imperfections as signs of uniqueness. I love the way he thinks I'm beautiful, the way I never feel ashamed.

I love our story, from the way we met through all the years of parting and reuniting and the constant recognition of a feeling that was real, that wouldn't go away, and that was the most beautiful thing I'd ever experienced.

I love my husband's compassion. Like a lot of people who had a rough childhood, he understands pain...he empathizes with me and with other people when they are suffering. He is nice to our dogs and cats. He likes babies. He rescues spiders and roaches and other bugs instead of squashing them, and I think that's really cool.

I love the way we fight. I love that I never doubt his love for me. I love the way he always acknowledges my perspective, even when I'm being kind of insane.

I love that I can tell him anything and he will never judge me. I've been more honest with this man than with anyone I've ever known, and he accepts me through and through. I'm more thoroughly myself with him than with anyone else.

I prefer my husband's company to anyone else's in the whole world, ever. He's funny and fun and smart, and he likes me, too. In past relationships, I always felt like spending time together was a struggle, but with my husband, it's natural. We enjoy each other. There aren't many times when I want to do something without him, and he always wants me with him as well.

He doesn't hang out at bars or run the streets at night. I never wonder where he is. He answers my calls. All of these are advantages over men I've been with before.

I love my husband's recovery, and how it brought me to my own. I love being on this journey together, and I love the healing that has taken place. When I'm in a good frame of mind, I'm grateful for my husband's addiction because it made me have to take a look at myself. I'm stronger because of it, and so is he. We'll be stronger together, too.

My husband has a nasty disease. He is treating it. If he had cancer, I wouldn't leave him if his recovery were difficult. While his addiction recovery is in the earliest stages, and while it's not perfect, and while it's painfully slow, he is in recovery. He's doing the best he can, and he's trying to become a better man. For me and for now, that's enough. We are young, and we haven't been married very long, and I have a lot of hope for us to make it to the other side of it.

For more on why folks stay with addicts, you might read my friend MPJ, who has eloquently pontificated on the subject here, here, and here.

Letting go.

I'm interested in weighing things lately, or maybe not weighing things. Not actual things...more like ideas and situations...kind of keeping a running risk-benefit analysis going at all times. I'm not sure if it's healthy. I'm not sure if it's better to keep tabs on what's going on than to risk sliding into complacency, or worse, denial.

Most basically, I ask myself, "Does it hurt more to stay or to leave?" And for a while, this constant, vigilant examination of my position made sense. For a while, it was touchy over whether or not I was hurting more in the relationship or out of it.

It's clearer now. Every night, he builds a fire. He's working, our home is warm and safe. He feels better and looks better. I feel better and look better. Things are better...but I still have one eye on the door. Always.

I'm not allowing myself to enjoy this good time. It's a simple thing...we're having good days. We're happy. I should let it go and be happy.

Letting go scares the shit out of me. I've learned that it's the answer, that it's the only way to find peace, but I keep taking the reigns back over my own life even though I know I steer recklessly. Instead of trusting in the direction my life is going, I'm looking for some sign, building up my fortress, as if I can stop any future pain from coming.

And it's dumb because I know I can't stop it. I can't predict it. I'm always blindsided when the next crisis emerges...it's never what I expect, and all my dumb preparations are just dumb. Lifeless, silent, dumb, ridiculous waste of precious moments. Good moments.

We showered together last night and washed each other's hair. He closed his eyes while I rubbed the shampoo into his scalp, relaxing into me, enjoying the warmth and the touching and the clean shampoo smell...I kept my eyes open, watching him. Watching his breaths rise and fall. Watching my wallet in my pants pocket. Watching his arms, his ankles, his eyes, for signs of using, as if it would make one bit of difference if I saw something. And so I rob myself. Only half of me is present in the moment. The other half is resenting the past and dreading the future. Calculating, planning, hedging my bets. I guess it's better than when I was completely absorbed in fear and regret...but it's not where I want to be. I want to let go.

Sometimes

Sometimes I'm too in love to get out of bed. This morning, the air was cold, but my husband's arms were warm. So were his smile and his lips and everything else.

Sometimes, it's all worth it.

Lunatic, Lover, Poet

...and when we touch,
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

-Anne Sexton

I'd like it if one day, things could be simple. Decisions wouldn't have to be so dire or so urgent. Life could be easier, not all passion, all fury, all love and death and breathlessness.

Or maybe not. I've made every choice I've ever made in search of breathless urgency, passion, love, and death. I've always wanted to make sure that no matter what, at the end of my life, I'd know I'd always followed my heart. And I have. I've followed my heart right into some fucking messes, but I've followed it.

Touching.

Tonight, I remembered to appreciate the man sitting across from me at dinner. He reached across the table to take my hand, and I gave it to him without one iota of doubt, fear, or question. It made me think of the early days of our relationship, when every touch was stolen.

For years and years, his presence would consume a room. Not touching him could occupy all of my mental resources. Our relationship would be active and then not, on and off, but always, always, the tension between us was dense and palpable. If we were located within the same geographic region, his hands would find their way to my body, his breath to my neck. It might be brief, stolen, painful, but it was always true, always certain to happen, and always backed with a deep, honest hunger. I was terrified and thrilled by him. I could barely meet his gaze for fear of getting lost in it.

Tonight, I can look this man straight in his eyes, and I can tell him that I love him. I can let him kiss my neck and let his wonderful hands roam with their native familiarity all over my body.

"Nobody can tell me that I can't let you touch me!" I announced to him. He laughed. "And I can touch you whenever I want!"

That's a gift. It's something that once seemed too distant, too difficult, too impossible to ever realize, and it's here now. If we can be husband and wife after years of hiding, we can do anything together.