Loving someone with an addiction....

I was not going to write anything for a while but as always something got me thinking and the wonderfulness that I feel right now is a feeling I am not used to. If you follow me or like my FB page or are even a friend of mine on FB you pretty much know my deepest darkest secrets. You know that the man I love is an addict, and that we have been on this roller coaster ride for 20, man, 20 years this year. There are those out there that like to classify me as codependent and they would be right to an extent, and they are entitled to their opinion. There are those that know how much I love my Love, and they understand it twisted as it may seem to the outside world. When people see us together when we are at our best they get it and when we are at our worst, they secretly make comments about how they knew my Love was going to mess up anyway and how dumb I must be to keep putting up with it. I did not know that the person that I was going to love would become a meth addict. I didn't fantasize when I was a little girl that I would be on welfare while he went in and out of jail and prison, or that I would raise our daughters mostly solo. I did not plan on all of the things that happened in our life to happen, but they did. I met my love and I fell for him, he was handsome and tormented, and dangerous, the proverbial bad boy. Underneath it all he was lost, he had a lot of issues, issues that he had not ever dealt with. They manifested in his addiction.

His addiction, to me, was like another woman. Oh and believe me he had those too, I could take that, for some strange reason, but his mistress meth I could not stand at all. I could not stand that she kept him coming back for more at times when he should have been focused on I and his children. The days he would stay away, the anger that would build. I left him numerous times and he would find me and beg my forgiveness or my help. When we were apart for four years after our domestic violence incident I still saw him and he found ways to call me or see me. I hesitated to let him in because I knew he was still in his addiction. This last time was different and I was different. He was tired of living the life that he was living, if I did not hear from him over a few days I worried that I might hear he was dead.

So to visit him in his program Sunday and to see the man I fell in love with was to feel such a profound wonderfulness that I cannot fully explain. He was genuinely interested in his children and his grandson. His humour and his caring and loving attitude, attributes that drew me to him in the first place were there. He was there, present in the moment.  Even my Lovelie that swore hatred for him softened under his attention. It was a beautiful reawakening of our family.

Its not without fear that I go into the future. I have no blinders on my eyes, and it is not as though I feel he has been miraculously cured of his addiction. Look at all the celebrities in the news it amazes me that these folks are kidding themselves into an early grave. My Love learned some things about himself this time around. Things he kept in a little safe place and did not want to let out because he would feel what it was like to have emotions instead of being numb to it all. He still has much work to do, and with hope and a renewed faith we work on things individually and together to make our family strong. It will be one step at a time, one day at a time. With the grace of God we will go into our future. Thank you for your love and support it means so very much to us all.