A Dent.

We have done something awful to our home. It started with my husband having an idea. He wanted to move around some furniture. I tried to distract him from his idea, and it worked for a long while; however, eventually, he decided to start moving furniture around.

My husband has great ideas, but he has a hard time following through with them. He started moving the furniture around in our house, but he never quite finished. There are living room components in the bedroom and bedroom parts in the kitchen. Everything is in a constant state of discomfort and disarray, and it seems that we have finally given up. There is trash, dirty laundry, dishes...everything, everywhere. For a while, it drove me crazy. I don't care anymore. I think my antidepressants have taken the edge off nicely.

Much of the mess is my husband's. I have managed to keep my laundry from being everywhere like some kind of lunatic confetti. My mess includes books and papers, but it's a pretty isolated area where I've stacked the books, waiting for a bookshelf to emerge out of the wreckage. Because it is his mess, I am reluctant to begin dealing with it. It's one of the cardinal rules of recovery...never do for the addict what the addict can do for himself. This is a mess my husband has made, and it should be his to clean up.

However, it is disheartening to come home and see the wreckage. It makes me kind of sad and tired. He says every day that he's going to clean it up, and he doesn't. He doesn't even begin. In fact, it gets worse...more clothes go everywhere. More dishes pile up in odd places. It's pretty crazy.

So today, I made a dent in the mess. I started in a little corner and put away what I could. Some clothes went into a laundry basket. Some shoes went into a closet. Some trash went into the trash can outside. My husband was a bit upset with me for starting. He was worried I'd put his shoes in the closet in a wrong way...although the shoes were lying willy-nilly all over the house, underneath boxes and trash and crap, he was concerned that I might crush his flip flops underneath his boots by putting them away. I assured him that I'd not hurt them, and kept cleaning.

I worked for about 30 minutes, but it did make a little difference. If I work for 30 minutes or so a day for the next million years, maybe at the end of it there will be a real house there, like people live in instead of wild animals. We'll see.

Breath of Fresh Air.

I got home from work tonight, and I made myself a sandwich. I sat in the kitchen floor, and I ate it. He was in the living room, and I didn’t want to be around him. It seemed ok to sit in the kitchen floor and eat my sandwich.

He came into the kitchen and asked me what I was doing. I found myself telling him the truth, and it was surprising to me how easily it came, and how well it was received.

You can read the rest at The Second Road.

Rational.

Rational. That's a funny word. Is it irrational that I think all heroin addicts should have to shit in public? That they shouldn't be allowed to wear clothes with pockets? Is it wrong that I'd prefer to dress my husband in a large, zipperless onesie?

I'm still struggling with this boundary business, but much of your feedback has been really helpful. And, finally, it's meeting night tonight, so I can go blah blah blah at all the folks at my meeting, and we can all bandy back and forth about just how hard it is to know what's yours, what's his or hers, what belongs to god or everyone or no one, and we can experience that glorious group miracle that occurs every time.

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.

I Need To Believe That Something Extraordinary Is Possible.

I found myself trapped in a situation today with nothing to do except watch A Beautiful Mind. I'd wanted to see it for a long time, but I had no idea how moving it would be, or how apt for this particular moment, or how much I'd identify with that Alicia character and her love's infinite stickiness.

Through her child being nearly drowned and her husband's near-attempts at murdering her, she held on. She loved.

Two of her quotes were just right. There was that quote in the title of this post: I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible. Indeed, I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible...that my husband can beat the odds against heroin addicts getting clean, that the sweet, creative, strong, centered man I fell in love with will win this battle against the drug addict that's leaching off of him. I need to believe it. I need to have faith that my love for this man isn't bottomless, pointless.

I also really liked it when Nash's friend was asking her how she was doing, and she started explaining that her husband's delusions had subsided. I do that. Folks as me how I'm doing, and I say, "Well, we're through the worst of the withdrawals," or some other such foolishness. If forced to say how I'm doing, I have to pause and really remember what's me as opposed to what's him.

But when she finally says how she's doing, it's something like:

Sometimes, what I feel is obligation, or resentment towards John, or God. But sometimes, I force myself to look at him and see the man I fell in love with. And when I do that, I become the person who loves him. And for now, that's enough.

I related so much to her, her frustration and her tenacity. When she was watching him go through the agony of electric shock, wondering if the man that she loved was really in that body, was ever really in that body, or ever even really existed in the first place...I know that place. It's a bad place.

I couldn't help but wonder, though, at how much I seem to be getting the same message pounded into my head, again and again:

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. Be patient and LOVE.

Who Knows.

After realizing that he'd acted like a jackass last night, he went to bed very early and was quiet in that extra-sulky, addicty, head-buried-beneath the covers way. It was fine with me. I didn't like him anymore, and I didn't want to hang out.

It gets all under my skin, though...sometimes, I wonder if I haven't remained married to this man, or even if I might have fallen in love with this man, because I can't figure him out. I stand before him like an enigma...like he's a riddling bridge troll I've got to get past before I can move on with my life, and the riddles he keeps coming up with stump me again and again.

I hate the weird attitude, too, of needing to go hide after acting crazy. He gets upset with me for seeing him act like an asshole, or he's upset with me for noticing that his behavior was ridiculous...as if the problem is in my noticing.

It does help me, though, when I read your comments. It helps me to know that this shitty, pissy, foot-stomping addict mess is normal addict mess. It helps me to keep perspective. It helps me to read my own writing, my own thinking from the night before when I was so pleased with him.

I do tire, however, of this constant evaluation...the perpetual re-positioning of myself against my life. I am always looking at me, looking at him, looking at us and our lives and trying to figure out if where we are is where we need to be, if where I am is where I want to be...if this life is tolerable. There's a lot of measuring, weighing, checking and balancing. I am hoping that my vigilance now will pay off in simplicity in the future, that a day will come when every moment won't require an analysis to see if it's worth it. I'm hoping that one day it will all be worth it.

I'm so wise. I'm investing. I'm taking a risk with the hope of a future return. We'll see what happens.

Now, with all that said, I think you should all go read the Cunt Face Social Club. We've taken the underground society public, and we need some lovin. I'm not sure what's going to happen with us over there, but we will be a force to be reckoned with one day. Our mission is not yet clearly defined (except, of course, for the procurement of man-slaves and eventual world-domination), and so much of our fate will depend on you, dear readers, and your responses to our fledgling posts. So check us out!

I want my husband.

I want him to come home, now. I don't know when he'll be back.

I'm trying to apply for a loan for him online to get his license. These are ghetto-loans. Little ghetto mini-loans. They are kind of scary. Being a homeowner helps.

I miss him. I'm going to sleep tonight in a pile of his dirty laundry. There's certainly plenty of it lying around.

I'm going to go hang out with a friend and her sister tonight. The sister's husband is in Iraq, and their first wedding anniversary is this weekend. It will be interesting to be around someone whose husband is a pain in the ass for a different reason from being an addict. Maybe I can make her feel better.

I want my husband home. It's two weekends in a row of being apart, and it makes me melancholy. It makes me want to go stand next to a large body of water and sigh. I'm a tragic poetess like that. Distance from my husband's body makes me want to sigh, largely, and fling myself onto a divan.

I wish I could have gone with him. The last time we went to Florida together, there were alligators. We fed the alligators fried chicken. He was excited to show off his childhood home. He liked showing me alligators and talking about snakes and flowers and other such Floridian fecundity.

Hah. We fed the alligator fried chicken. There was also this turtle, and the turtle kept coming up and stealing the chicken.

We weren't supposed to feed the alligator. He likes to do things he isn't supposed to do. One time, we were in Beaufort on that island with the wild horses. He kept trying to feed the wild horses, too, but they would take his lettuce from his sandwiches. The male horse flared his nostrils at him and took a huge, aggressive dump. We had sex in the woods on that island. His knees got all dirty.

I think of these times. He wasn't doing heroin then. I wonder when it started, really, and when it got bad. I wonder when it became every day. I guess I know when it got bad, because I figured out what was going wrong soon after it got bad, but I wish I could know the whole story. I hate his secrets.

The dogs are being strange. All night, the little baby pit bull barked and barked every time she heard any kind of noise at all. I think she might have been protecting me, or maybe she was uneasy without her daddy.

I want her daddy.

Do You Want To Be Cremated?

We were talking today about death at work. A coworker's dad died not too long ago, and his brother recently got the ashes. It started an office conversation about how we want our bodies treated when we die.

Most of us, it seems, would like to be cremated. I can't decide if I like the idea of cremation or not. I like the idea of rotting and turning into dirt with plants growing out of me, but it seems like when you die now, you just turn to dirt in a sealed box and never get to be part of the earth around you.

So maybe cremation is the right thing to do if you want to be a flower one day.

If I really got to pick, though, I'd like to have a death like the husband in A Rose For Emily. I'd like my husband to sleep next to my rottening corpse every night.

He tried to talk me out of going to work this morning. If we weren't so broke, he could have convinced me. From being out of town and coming back to find him tattooing his head off, we haven't spent much time together. Compound our mutual business with the strays that have taken to living at our house, it's hard to have alone time. The puppy won't let us sleep on top of each other...she demands a spot between our heads. I wake up each morning with her upside down, curled around my head, nuzzling me. It's wonderful in its own way, but I like to be nuzzled by my husband more.

Science Explains Why Codependents Act Like Asses

I stumbled upon an article from the Washington Post called "If It Feels Good To Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural." The article explains that researchers at the National Institutes of Health have been conducting tests in an effort to determine whether or not altruistic behavior has a positive response hard-wired into the brain. The article states that when volunteers were asked to think of scenarios involving either donating or keeping a large sum of money, those who thought of acting out of compassion showed increased activity in the primitive part of the brain that lights up in response to food or sex (or drugs, in the brain of an addict). The study suggsests that the suppression of base and selfish urges is hard-wired into the brain to give us a feeling of pleasure.

So, my fellow codependents, we're not really saints. We're altruism junkies.

The Ex.

I talked to the ex on the phone today.

Why, oh why, did I talk on the phone to the ex today?

I found out that I'm a one in a million psycho, a real piece of work, a bitch, a liar, a cunt, a manipulator, chronically miserable. He wasted years of his life with me.

I talked with him because he'd told me the dog we had while we were together was sick. He was a very beautiful pit bull, white with blue eyes, and he had a blockage. This doggy is a notorious sock-eater, so I figured he'd eaten a sock. I called back today to check on the dog, my long lost son who I miss terribly, and the dog is ok. But I talked to the ex for hours and hours about blame, shame, loss, sadness.

It's sad, more than anything. It's sad to think about the paths we could have taken. I spent 10 years of my life with this man. They were good years, sometimes, and we shared a lot. I wasn't in love with him for a very long time, but I still care about him, deeply. He was a part of my family, and it's hard not to think of him like family. He hurt me a lot with his drinking and cheating.

It was strange how he kept trying to make the divorce my "fault." It seems like after a year and a half, we'd be done with fault. I'm done with fault. I was in love with another man, and he treated me badly. He's a good man in many ways, but we were bad for each other. It's best that we're not together.

I'm sure it's unrealistic, but I wish that he and I could talk sometimes and be friendly. I wish there were ways to communicate that weren't so tinged by hurt and anger. I wish we could talk a few times a year like I do with other people I grew up with...with my girlfriend Kathryn, we talk three or four times a year usually, and it's always great to hear her voice, great to hear how she's doing, and really healthy feeling.

There's no way to have a healthy relationship with someone you used to be in love with, I guess. It's sad, though. I miss him in a lot of ways. I sometimes want to call him when I'm sick or hurt. I wanted to talk to him when my finger was hurt. I wanted to talk to him when I found the needles. I know I can't call him every time I'm hurting and expect him to care, and I don't anymore. I just wish we could talk, sometimes, and have it not be all overwrought.

I wish lots of things.

We're Sick.

It started last night with him, vomiting. Vomiting and vomiting and vomiting. I brought him water and Immodium, wondering if he had a stomach bug or if he was detoxing from something horrible.

And then, today, it got me, too. It comes in waves of cramps and sudden sweat and nausea. Maybe it's the strict diet of dumpster donuts and Ramen. It is going to make me really not want to go to the beach with the family. I don't want to be in the car for hours and hours.

He woke me up this morning, very early, with his arms around me, as if he'd just discovered me, telling me how beautiful I am, telling me that God made me perfect for him, kissing me so softly. And then we went back to sleep, so close, like in a dream.

Things I've Learned.

I'm leading the meeting at Nar-Anon tonight, and in trying to think up a topic, I thought it might be good to talk about the things we've learned from ourselves through the program and through living with an addict.

There are so many things that have surprised me about myself. Before having to deal with my husband's addiction, I had a firm belief in my ability to get anything I wanted, or most anything. If I was willing to work hard enough, I thought that I could make anything happen that I wanted badly enough. For the first time in my life, I am not able to will something that I want to happen. And I want it badly; I want to be with this man, forever. I want to have his children and hold his hand when he's an old man. I want him to want these things, and he does want these things...but when he's using, he wants the heroin more.

I've learned that I can be really controlling, which is kind of an extension of my belief that I can will things to happen. I think that I know what my husband should be doing, and I think he should do things my way. It has been really good for me to learn through Nar-Anon that it is ok to let go of him and that his recovery is his thing. Without the program, I wouldn't have been able to let go. I would have demanded that he go to meetings or go to rehab or do all the things that it would make me really happy for him to do.

I've also learned the difference between what is controlling behavior and what is setting boundaries to protect myself. This skill is important in my relationship because my husband, especially when he is using, is one of the most masterful manipulators in the world, and his superpower skills at manipulation are particularly effective against me. He can look at me with those beautiful blue eyes and tell me that up is down, and that if I don't believe him, I am hurting him, and that his childhood was difficult, and I will agree, happily, that up is down, and give him $20 on top of it all. That shit has stopped, almost entirely. It has stopped entirely with money. His hands are never getting into my pockets again, drugs or no drugs. The endless flowing nipple of money has gone dry. (Hah--MPJ--I'm thinking of your superpower post that I read this morning. Manipulation Man! and his sidekick, Enabler Woman! or, more poetically, the Enabling Enigma! The Enigmatic Enabler!)

I've also learned to question some of my own assumptions about people, like what I wrote about with my post about the lesbian couple. I've learned that when I'm being judgmental, there is usually something in their story that I need to learn about myself or my relationship.

I've learned that I need some spirituality in my life. In order to be able to let go of my urge to handle everything myself, to carry the weight of the world alone, I have to have some kind of belief in a hokey hippy god-like lifeforce. There has to be something more going on here than me taking on the world. There has to be someone besides myself in this world who knows how to do anything right. Accepting my need for a certain kind of spirituality and accepting the helpt that's available to me with an open mind has been a real growing experience, and I'm glad I've had it.

I've heard at least two people say that they are glad that they are married to addicts because they have grown from the experiences they've had with the program and with the pain that their addicts have caused them. While I'm not yet ready to be glad that my husband is an addict, I'm glad that he's mine, and I'm glad I've grown in the last few months. Learning things about yourself can never be a bad thing.

The Great Donut Caper: Part 2

Score!

For those of you eagerly awaiting the resolution to The Great Donut Caper: Part 1, it totally worked out. Here is a crappy cell phone image of our booty. It's a giant bag of frickin' donuts!

We got lots of donut holes, several jelly-filled, several plain, a few apple-filled, and chocolate cake. It's enough donuts for forever. For lunch tomorrow, I'm taking 5 chocolate cake donuts plus an assortment of donut holes.

He had the biggest smile when he got them. We giggled like little girls.

I wish there had been bagels, though. But now we have something to give when he invites a million people over. We can set out a plate of donuts. Donuts and water. MMMMMMMM.

Sociopath?

Here's a quiz to determine whether or not your husband is a sociopath.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Good Days Are Coming.

We have had several good days in a row. We're able to communicate well. We're working together to get the bills paid. He's been helping around the house, helping me. Yesterday, he changed the kitty box. It was amazing.

He's been so sane lately (with the exception of the Bojangles caper), and so have I. I feel less terror, less fear, less frustration. It's like he finally Gets It...perhaps because of my own behavior...I think letting him do the whole odyssey of Greensboro tattooing on his own was a good idea, for both of us.

We are going to be ok. I love him. He loves me. We're happy, or happier now. Honesty and happiness are such gifts, and it's all anyone can ask for.

Sex, Sex, Sex.

It has been so good lately, so intimate and warm and real again. For the last few days, everything has been good. We've both seem to have come to some place of peace. We are able to talk about things without getting enraged. He's helping around the house, concerned about money, scrounging around to contribute to our finances as much as he can without a job, and trying to get a job in the mean time. He's learned to back down when I do things that might provoke him (I've been instructing on the skill of detachment and all it's magic and wonder).

This has resulted in me being more content...which has resulted in all this wonderful sex. And lots of wonderful sex is important, as semen has been found to contain powerful anti-depressants.

I love the golden glow of intimacy that can exist in marriage, the comfort and ease of communication, and the warmth. We have a home, and it's really beautiful, and we have a rich history of intense feelings between the two of us. I want it to work, so very badly. I don't want to lose the good parts that are so good in getting rid of the bad. I want us to make it.

Not yet.

I used to always think of him when I was by water. It had nothing to do with him needing me.

I am questioning what I'm doing in this relationship. I don't think that I'm particularly attracted to men who need things. I don't like this part of him. I don't like the power dynamics that we're acting out. I don't like taking care of everything...

There certainly are gratifying parts of it--that way I get to be a saint to all his friends and family...but I'm not so attached to it.

I've never thought of myself as an unusually nurturing person...perhaps I'm a little excessively compassionate or empathetic...maybe it's the same thing. I've always liked to be able to find the people who were crazy and see what was beautiful about them...see the intelligence or creativity that was beneath the surface.

With him, though, it's different, and it always was different. I don't want to take care of him. I mean, I do...but it's a side effect of a greater feeling. I LOVE him. I love his smell, his skin...I want to be with the man who I fell in love with...the man who is so talented at making things beautiful. The beautiful man with skin like silk and wonderful hair all over his body and who touches me in ways that are so beautiful I can't explain.

Water, though, has broken my heart for years, for all the years I've been battering myself against this love for him. Something about the smell of water, moving water, reminded me of him when we weren't together. And something in the smell of seasons changing, like the first breath of fall or spring...the smells came with associations, and the associations always lead me to him. Any depth or height of feeling took me to him...this love I've carried for him has been at the root of every move I've made for years. I'd think of him in Manhattan where Broadway met the river, or in Jersey at the park with the Statue of Liberty, at the beach near my mother's house, near the graveyard by the river where I grew up.

That's why I don't leave. I'll just leave to want him. I don't want him in this incarnation, but I want him. I love him like the greatest lovers of all time have loved each other. I love him like the love in poems, like "I know a woman, lovely in her bones"...like "in my arms till break of day, let the living creature lie, mortal, guilty, and to me, the entirely beautiful." I love him like Auden could love, and Rilke...I love him like those cups, raised to lovers lips, drinking one past another, like grapes rottening on the vine, like yes I said and yes I will and yes...he is my Maude, my model, my muse...

NOW is when I'm young, and miserable, and pretty, and poor, and my wish is for him. I won't give it up. Not yet.

"Do You Mind?"

He says to me, "Do you mind?"

I was on the phone with Savannah. It was a short conversation. I wanted to scream at him. He said it nicely, but it still isn't a nice thing to say. I do mind. I mind being asked, "Do you mind?"

It's a patronizing question. I wanted to scream, to strangle. I did not. I went in the other room. I realized I was angry beyond reason...not just about a snippy comment, but about months of struggling, his stealing and lying...lots of things that didn't have to do with the comment. So I decided to leave for a few minutes to cool off. I got my phone, my keys, and said, "I'll be back in a little while." I thought I'd go to the grocery store, talk to Meagan on the phone, unwind a bit.

But no, he couldn't let me go. He had to make a giant-ass scene, scream, say, "SEE HOW I CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT?"

I don't know why his inability to do anything right is my fault in his mind. I agree, he can't do anything right. That's his bucket of shit.

He had a hissy fit because he wanted my car today, and he had compelling enough reasons for keeping it (job hunting). I let him use it, but asked him to please be careful with my gas, as it's like a million dollars a gallon. He always says that I'm crazy when I say that he burns up all my has like a madman, so I flipped the odometer today to be able to have concrete proof of whether or not I'm nuts. He drove 98 miles today, using up most of my gas. I don't understand why, why, why he always does this shit. Why does he say he'll be careful with the gas and then proceed to drive it all out of the car? Why can't he keep his promises?

It's right there in the Nar-Anon book...addicts won't keep their promises. I have to start respecting my stuff, more, again. The car is one of my 3 boundaries (no money, ever, for any reason, no lying, and no car). I've been flexible with the car, though, when I thought it would help him get his life together. But I have to stop...

He's just so goddamned compelling sometimes, with his beautiful eyes and his hair and smelling that way that makes me completely helpless to him...and he has such an ability to convince me that what he's about to do makes sense, or that it's really what I want. I don't know when I'll stop believing. Maybe it's never.

Not Waving But Drowning.

I just had a painful memory. They keep coming back to me, all these moments from the tender first year of my marriage.

I was in the bathroom, crying quietly. That was in what I like to think of as the "before time." I'd still try to cry quietly, like a good wife. I didn't want him to know I was upset. I didn't want him to know I was unhappy. I knew he was unhappy, and I didn't want to make it worse with my bothersome crying. (Now, though, I'll wail like a child, like a toddler in the grocery store, with the same persistence: HEAR ME! I'M HURTING! LISTEN! LOOK! EVERYONE!)

But it was the before time, and he was very tired. He was so often Very Tired. He'd been nodding on the bed for hours, and it was the only day we had together. I'd finagled my work schedule so that I could have Wednesday afternoons off, and those few hours of daylight that we had to spend together were precious to me. At this point, other than the Wednesday afternoons and evenings that I guarded with the jealousy of a mother bear, we rarely saw one another before midnight.

So I was sad that he was sleeping through our precious Wednesday. I was crying, in the bathroom, with the door closed. Suddenly he crashed through the door, with the hazy eyes and slurred speech that I now recognize as being deeply opiated, and asked me if I'd been calling for help. He said he'd heard me calling him, asking for help. And then he noticed I'd been crying.

And I felt this wash of affection: he'd thought I needed help. He was coming to help me because he thought I needed help. What a wonderful husband, to give help when it's needed! What a fabulous man I had, to rise from the bed when he was Very Tired, and to come to me!

I told him that no, I did not need help, and that he should go back to bed and sleep more if he was tired. And I went and lay next to him, in my own opiate-like love stupor, thinking of how lucky I was.

It takes so little to please us codependents. Look! My husband goes to work! He'll come and help me if I'm saying, "Help!" Wow! I'm so lucky to be in a relationship with a human!

I was thinking tonight of leaving, and I know I'm not ready. The physical withdrawal of his presence from me is unbearable, still. It's not done. The place inside me that is where my love resides is still pouring itself out at him. I don't know when it will be done. I don't know if it ever will be done...but I think it will, eventually. I can tell by the way I cry now. It's hollow. The sound is different. The tears feel hotter, less profuse.

It's funny, though, because I'm sure that a part of me was crying, loudly, for help from him.

Broken Hearts.