Dear Who Ever You May Be

Dear Who Ever You May Be,

I hope this letter finds you well. No, you don’t know me… then again you kind of do. See I am you. Not in the literal since of the word but I am going through what you are right now.You are probably rolling your eyes, saying to yourself how can I know what you are going through. I’m a stranger to you. A name on a screen you probably have never seen and never will again. You may even be offended. I know. Because I was too.

You see, I love an addict. I am an addicts wife. I choose to be, I chose to stay.

You may not have had the same kind of say. The addict you love may not be a spouse. He or she may be a brother or sister, a cousin, a mother. After all, you can’t choose your family, right? While I hope you can take some comfort in these words this letter, well, this is for those that choose to love an addict.Like me you’ve heard it all. Both sides of the judgmental spectrum that leaves you feeling broken and confused.

If you stay you hear:

• He/she will never change.

• Why do you stay

• You deserve better

• If my _ had of done that I would have left.

And so many more. I could probably write a book with all the crap I heard from friends, family, and of course the random strangers on the internet that think they can dictate the world.

If you leave you here:

• You abandoned him/her

• What happened to “for better or worse”

• He/she is sick, they need help, what if it was cancer instead

If you are reading this out of curiosity let me say that YES that last one has been said and its cruel and incomparable.

If you leave you spend every single day treading water through a sea of emotion. You regret your choice because you love your person, you want to be with him/her. You worry because you love them and don’t want to think about the things they are doing and how its effecting them. Every time your phone rings or you log on to social media an over whelming sense of dread fills your heart.

Will you see their mugshot? Their obituary? 

At the same time you feel relief because you are no longer directly involved but are plagued by guilt over your relief. You shouldn’t be relieved, should you? That’s enough to make even the most stoic person depressed. You want to shut down, shut in and shut everyone else out. That only makes things worse so you try to be happy and move on but then you feel guilty for that too because you know they are still stuck in the dark.

If you stay you spend everyday worrying. Is today the day you wake up to them over dosed on the couch? You manic clean your vehicle every time you leave the house because you’re afraid that if you get pulled over the officer might see something or smell something you’ve grown so you used to you over looked and you’ll be arrested for something you don’t even do. Every time he or she leaves you stare at your phone, full of anxiety, wondering if today is the day they get arrested, cause an accident, O.D at their “friends” house, and you know what “friend” really means.

No matter what your decision, the pain will be there, the wounds, the betrayal and the feeling of loss.

I met my husband twelve years ago. We were both in high school. When we met he didn’t smoke, didn’t drink. He was respectful and kind, my dad, who I never thought would allow me to date, not only approved of him, he offered him a job when he graduated. Then my dad passed and high school got in the way of our relationship.

Seven years later I left an abusive marriage with two children and the full intent to be a single mom. But by Fate’s design we met again with the realization that neither of us ever stopped caring for the other. He was there for me. He stepped in to be the father that my kids hadn’t had in their glorified sperm donor. He was there for me through my healing and loved me through the tear-filled nights, court dates, and fear.

I was blind.

I let his comfort and love blind me to the red flags that were right in front of my face. Hidden in the deepest recesses of my mind I knew. You see, I was raised by an alcoholic. I watched the signs painted in front of my face and knew that there was something wrong but I was in denial.

Then, I found it. A glass pipe with a blackened end and filled with the powdery white residue of his DOC. I tried to talk to him, I tried to talk to his best friend and most importantly I took off my blindfold. There was no way in Hell I was going to let a damned substance take another person I loved away.

I lost my mother to alcoholism, I lost my childhood best friend to an over dose and I was not about to let it happen again.

So I talked.

I cried.

I prayed.

Then, August 17th 2018 I went to my grandparents house to go to a rodeo with my kids, their cousin and grandma. He stayed at home. When I got back from the rodeo we talked on the phone and he told me he was going to bed. The next morning I got a call from the county jail. He had been arrested with his dealer for felony possession.

After him spending almost a full week in jail and too much drama to describe with his family, he got out with the condition he complete a drug program designed, ineffectively but with good intent, to help addicts kick the habit, become respectable and contributing members of society and all without having a felony charge on their record.

The slate would, hopefully, be whipped clean. He did it. He stayed clean, paid his fine and a year and a half later he was free. No more court dates, no felony and no drugs.

But it wasn’t to last.

As I said the program was designed with great intentions but it was ineffective. People who fall victim to addiction don’t wake up one day and say “Hey, forget family and having a happy, healthy life, I’m going to be an addict.”

There is always an underlying reason for addiction and if that reason isn’t addressed and treated the individual will always relapse. Forcing an addict to get sober without addressing the root cause is like giving someone with gangrene an antibiotic but not cutting out the dead tissue. You have to cut out the rot and feed what is healthy or the decay is just going to grow back and spread.

I started to see the signs again. He hid his phone, deleted messages, stopped coming to bed. I knew without a doubt he had relapsed. I tried to talk to him but he denied it. So I went spy mode. I started checking his phone on the rare occasions he would sleep or I would “lose” my phone and borrow his to call and find mine. I took screenshots and photos of the conversations, figured out his facebook password so I could log in to his on my phone, and I kept everything.

We fought so much over that one thing. I feel into depression and almost left him. But I stayed. I cried, I argued, I prayed but I chose to love him and despite my love I found out you can not love someone enough to make them sober. They have to make that decision on their own and for the right reasons or it will never happen.

July 10th 2021 drowning in his lies and the aftermath of loving an addict I went into premature labor with pregnancy induced hypertension. At the hospital alone I delivered our still born daughter. I was alone for hours, in emotional and physical pain, hooked up to an IV muscle relaxer to prevent me from having a seizure because of the high blood pressure. He was home.

He wove me his tale of how he had to stay because XYZ but of course I had heard so many lies from him I had my doubts. I still have doubts, but lets face it, a hospital bed, unable to move isn’t exactly the best time to start a war. Over the next few weeks as we talked with family, friends and prepared for a funeral I kept hearing the same thing over and over “You are so lucky to have each other to lean on during this.”

Those words made me cringe. Here it is I was dying inside because I knew. We were not there for each other. He would slink away to the garage and find escape in a meth pipe and I was alone to shove my feelings in an over flowing vault. I had to think of my kids. I couldn’t let my self drown no matter how tired of treading water I was because the tiny humans that relied on me for everything wouldn’t stop relying on me just because I was miserable.

Finally I caught him, pipe in hand and told him point blank. I had all the evidence I needed and that after the funeral I would turn it all over to the police and if he went down with his dealers I wouldn’t be throwing him a life preserver again. I told him he needed to make a choice. That night I watched him throw a tantrum like I had never seen. He threw the pipe and broke it, tossed garbage cans, punched walls, and yelled so loud I am surprised our neighbors didn’t call the police. He blamed me. Said his addiction was my fault because I never helped him with anything, I didn’t keep the house clean enough, I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that, I was lazy, I was a terrible house wife, I Was a TERRIBLE Mother. He yelled that I picked a great time to “do this”. I couldn’t wait till after everything was done, till after the funeral till after…

But I had waited. I had known for months that he was using again. I had let him make a fool out of me, lie to me, let his friend treat me like I was a bad person for checking his phone. I internalized everything. I allowed it to eat away at me to the point where I felt like if you cut me open there would be nothing left but a sickly black mess like those gross experiments where they put a big mac in stomach acid.

I waited until I couldn’t wait anymore. I figured if I couldn’t love him out of it, talk him out of it, pray him out of it or guilt trip him out of it maybe I could bargain with him. (That doesn't work either by the way).

He wanted to blame it all on me and make it all my fault, fine. So I offered him a deal. I would strive to be the perfect house wife. I would keep the house as spotless as possible with young kids, three families under one roof and a farm. I would do everything he said I didn’t do that caused him to need to do drugs.

Of course that didn’t work either…He kept making excuses. It was just never the right time to go through withdrawals. He always had more to do. There was always a reason he needed it. Finally at the end of August 2021, though the day is questionable we will say the 26th for purpose, he quit. He went through the crash, he struggled, but he tried. He got a job, he worked, he spent time with us, he came to bed at night, he got a hobby. Then in December he quit his job, he had a good reason but I knew it wasn’t going to end well…

He kept coming to bed at night, or falling asleep on the couch so I knew he hadn’t fell back on his DoC but then I smelled something odd when he came in from “smoking a cigarette”. I knew it was weed so I asked. He denied it. He never looked for a job.

And now here we are… February of 2022 and he still hasn’t found a job, he has a password on his phone and the lies have started all over again. Before he added the pattern lock I saw where he was texting an unsaved number and that he was deleting those texts.

In comparison weed is not nearly as “bad” as meth. I don’t smoke for a variety of reasons and don’t agree that recreational use should be legal, but I also think we should have stricter punishments for drunk drivers so I’m not bias. I fully agree with the medicinal effects and support medical usage but what he is using isn’t the point.

The point is the lies.

The point is hiding it.

The point is that he still wants to be high.

He has asked if those convenient store energy pills may give him the same feeling. He has complained that he can drink a whole case of 5Hr Energy and not get the same effect.

The point is he is still an addict. He swears he isn’t. He complains about how NA meetings are stupid because one can be sober for X amount of years and are still calling themselves addict.

The point is… he doesn’t get that being an addict is not actively using its having the desire to use. Its craving the feeling. Its making excuses for your choices or insulting yourself because you can’t rebuild a transmission at 3am because you aren’t high. Being an addict is feeling incomplete or lacking because sober you isn’t as productive.

I had hoped that this year would be a fresh start. That we could begin the year on the same page and get things done that need to be done together. Addiction is still our Berlin wall and I’m still waiting on that “Bring Down That Wall,” moment but in the middle of my mess I want to offer this little piece of advice to all those that choose to love an addict.

Don’t let addiction isolate you. Don’t let yourself drown in a raging sea of emotional turmoil. There are dozens of support groups for people that fell in love with someone who belonged to something. Join a support group (even its one on facebook), keep a diary, take time for yourself or for you and your kids to unwind and if you need to, unravel. Holding everything together can get very tiring and it is okay to just let go. Don’t neglect yourself because you are trying to fix someone else. You will never be able to love someone to sobriety but you can love yourself to healing and acceptance.

Authors Note:

I did not write this piece to garner sympathy (though it is appreciated) or to get a criticizing mind in a tizzy. This is written for the sole purpose of letting anyone affected by addiction know that you are NOT alone. That no matter what your choice is when it comes to your relationship you have a supporter in me. I hope anyone reading this understands that there is no shame in who you love and choose to be with and that it is okay to ask for help when dealing with your trauma. My Heart goes out to you. <3