Relationships and Addiction

Now that she had healed from the accident and trying to move on with her life Kristi wanted to find a friend to go out with occasionally. The only problem is that she wasn’t one to go out to bars alone and her old friends had moved away. Kristi wasn’t looking for a serious relationship when she joined the dating site; someone to have fun with.

She had been on the on the site for a while when she came across Shane’s profile. He seemed like a nice guy with similar ideas and interests. Kristi decided to take the first step and initiated a chat with him which led to numerous telephone conversations before they met in person. They decided to meet near his home for the first time so she could leave her car at his home while they went out. Shane took her to a very nice restaurant and then to a club for some dancing; which she did alone but didn’t care because she was having a great time. They continued to see each other several times after that night and he asked her to go on a short vacation with his daughter and him. She and her daughter went and it was a good time but he seemed different, unhappy even, just not the happy go lucky guy he had been previously.

After the trip they were spending every moment they could together and she enjoyed every minute of it. It was fun to watch the girls play together and to hear them laughing about silly stuff they would do and say. They would spend time out by the pool, cook, and watch movies together. His family accepted her and her daughter quickly and welcomed them as if they were their own. They were very down to earth and friendly. His family had a farm that they visited frequently where the girls could play.

A couple of months had passed and Shane had a business trip so he asked Kristi to come stay at his home and watch his daughter. She and her daughter went over and stayed; it was becoming more and more like a second home. When Shane returned he asked her to move in and they made it permanent. The girls were just as happy as two little people could be; they were already like sisters. Now they would be going to the same school, making friends and Kristi would be working with Shane.

Kristi noticed that Shane wasn’t himself and was losing weight. When she asked him he played it off as something he ate or stress. While cleaning one day she found a business card for a gastric surgeon and finally it all made since. Kristi approached him with the card and told him that she knew what he had done but wanted to know why he would hide something so serious. He said, “I needed to lose the weight and couldn’t on my own but I didn’t want you to know.”

Her response was you, “You’re sick and something has to be done to help you.” They decided that he should see the doctor just to be on the safe side because he was in constant pain and wasn’t keeping food down. The doctor ran a test and did a procedure to help him and gave him something for the pain. By now he was addicted to the pain meds and needed help.

They found him an out patient clinic were he could get help and that worked for a few months, then the doctor there recommended a new treatment. Kristi took him to the new doctor for treatment which was much better and he was finally starting to gain weight. Unfortunately, as with most addicts he didn’t stay with the treatment and went back to the pain meds. He stopped going out for any reason he lost more weight, became more irritable, slept all the time, and personal hygiene wasn’t even a part of his world anymore. It was awful. Bills started to pile up, they were barely making it when before they were living like royalty. Kristi was trying to work to keep some money coming in and to keep his business afloat, but every time she left the house he would call her back home. The house finally went into default and Kristi had enough. She needed to get out; she was planning to leave before the eviction took place. The only thing that was holding her back was his daughter, she didn’t want to leave her but didn’t have a choice because she had no legal way to take her.

It was about three years after their divorce when she got a call from his sister saying he’d been found dead. Kristi never received the full story about his death but assumed it must have been drug related. The really sad part was that he had been laying there for two weeks before someone found him. She thinks, like his sisters, that he had alienated everyone and there wasn’t anyone to check one him until his landlord came home from vacation. One good thing did come from his death. Kristi was able to reconnect with his daughter and now they are very close again.