"You're Going To Get Yourself Stabbed."

I got home last night from work at my normal hour. I arrived home in my normal car. I unlocked the door with my normal key, and then I unlocked the deadbolt with my other, normal key. I didn't enter through the window, or come down the chimney, or make any unusual noises. I went outside to coax the dog in, and I stood there and petted her for a while. When I came back in from the backdoor, my husband burst out of the bedroom holding a large hunting knife in the air.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!?" he screamed at me. "I was screaming your name! Why the fuck didn't you answer me?"

Perhaps he was screaming my name. Perhaps he'd been making sure it was me who had come home in my car, entered the house with my house key, and arrived at precisely the same time I always arrive home. Perhaps he'd genuinely been surprised that his wife was coming home from work...and so maybe he had been shouting my name and gotten afraid when I didn't answer because I was outside with the dog. Maybe that happened...but I'm not sure why.

I stood before him, the knife still held in the air, a wild, angry look in his eye. I felt strangely calm, but rather confused.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?! You are going to get yourself stabbed acting like that! Jesus fucking Christ!" he ranted.

I realized as he stood there, still threatening me with a knife, that I was in a moment that felt pretty unmanageable, and I said a little prayer. I didn't respond to him for a few moments. I also, slowly, realized that there's a real good chance that he wasn't concerned about who was coming in the house at all...there was just too much he could have done to confirm that it was me, like look out the window at my car in the driveway. There was no need, also, for him to continue to hold the knife like that, so menacingly. There was no need for the yelling.

"Do you think this shit is funny, you acting like that? Are you playing some kind of fucking game?" he asked.

Finally, I responded, "No. I've been at work for a long time. I'm not coming home to pick a fight with you. I didn't hear you calling me because I was outside with the dog."

He finally lowered the knife and walked away, slamming the bedroom door, and shouting at me over his shoulder. I collected my purse and books from the kitchen counter, and I went and took a long bath.

Honestly, I think he wanted me to know that he is very angry about how I wouldn't let him bamboozle me out of money. I think the whole display was a pretense to scare me, to take power over me. He wanted to threaten me with a knife because he doesn't like it that I'm growing, setting boundaries, and standing up to his manipulation. He's scared, and he wants me to be scared, too.

I am not sure what to do with this incident. I have promised myself that I won't live with him if he's scary...that I won't be afraid to come home anymore. I wasn't quite afraid of him, knife-wielding maniac that he was...but I'm not sure that my calmness wasn't just the way I respond to crises now. Crisis after crisis after crisis has made me rather indifferent, rather still on the inside and out. Maybe I should have been afraid.

Today, I'm wary and distant. He is presenting lots of interesting shaming behaviors, and he seems to need desperately for me to feel like I've done something wrong or like I'm at risk of losing him. I'm not afraid of losing him. In fact, I'm more afraid of not being able to let him go.

Eureka!

My husband had the best idea today! He had to call me to share it!

"I just need to find a doctor who'll prescribe me whatever I want. I'm not going to be able to find a medical detox that will take me, so I need to find a doctor that'll prescribe me some benzos and Valium and Lunesta so I can sleep and something for my stomach. I'll just detox at home and sleep for like five or six weeks. We've got to find a doctor who doesn't care, one who'll prescribe me everything I want."

He said it as if it were a brilliant plan. He doesn't even know how crazy he sounds. I said, "Mmmhmm," and "Ahhh," and "Hmmmm," a lot. I didn't bother doing that thing that I often do, where I burst his bubble with that dastardly reality. If nothing else, how does he think he'll be able to afford all of this medication? Regardless of the rest of the addicty, dangerous madness of the plan, where is he going to find the money even to get in the door of a doctor's office? He is completely delusional. He is unemployed and he has no health insurance. There is no money.

Maybe he can build us a castle from scratch, too. Maybe we can get a jet or a helicopter to take him back and forth to all of his doctors' appointments.

I wonder if he has broken his mind? If he will ever be able to reason through a problem in anything like a sane way ever again?

Art by Luc2Day

Let Me Sleep.

I am going to kill my husband if he doesn't let me sleep. He gets up at 5 to go to the methadone clinic. There is no reason for him to get up at 5. The place is open most days until noon, it's right around the corner from our house, and he is unemployed. He has nothing to do with his day except go to the methadone clinic.

But that's not the problem. That's just a prelude. If he got up, got dressed, and left, it wouldn't be a big deal. He'd wake me up, but I'd just go back to sleep. In fact, that's what I do. He gets up, he turns on all the lights in the bedroom, and so I wake up. He leaves after about 15 minutes, and then I go back to sleep. No big deal. I'm flexible and forgiving, right?

But then he comes back about 15 minutes later, usually outraged about something. He will tell me all the things that are wrong. I tell him I don't care because I'm sleeping, and he usually yells at me. Then he gets back in the bed. By this time, the dogs are up, so he gets back up to let them out. I fall asleep. 15 minutes later, he gets up to let the dogs back in. They come in, excited from their morning peeing, and get back in the bed. It takes them about 10 minutes to settle down. I fall back asleep. 15 minutes later, he gets up to go to the bathroom, turning on lights and cursing about how he can't get back to sleep. He opens and closes doors, talks, turns lights on and off, yells at the dogs, talks some more, opens and closes a few more doors...for the entire 2 and a half hours that I'm trying to sleep after his initial rising to go to the clinic. He has been doing this for months.

Months.

I keep asking for him to do something different...maybe get his clothes together the night before so he won't have to turn on so many lights. Maybe sleep upstairs. Maybe I'll sleep upstairs. Maybe he could just not talk to me. Maybe he could go to the clinic a little later.

The most frustrating thing in the world to me is that I can't get heard. I can't make him understand how it feels to have your sleep interrupted every 15 minutes for the last two and a half hours of rest, every day, for months and months. Nothing I can do to adapt will work. I've tried sleeping upstairs, but he just comes up there to talk to me. I've tried asking him nicely and asking him meanly. I've tried going to bed earlier, and he will just open and close the doors on both ends of the night. This weekend, I purchased one of those sleep masks that make you not care if the lights are being turned on and off, and I bought some ear plugs. I showed these things to him last night and told him that I really, really needed to get more sleep, that I can't work 70 hours a week on only 5 hours of sleep each night, and that I had plans to use these tools to get more sleep, and that I hoped he'd respect my need for rest. He said he understood, and he would be quieter in the morning.

What did he do this morning? He did his normal thing, turning on lights, opening and closing doors...and it was ok. I heard him, but not enough fully to wake up. He stomped around for a bit looking for his keys, and I heard him a bit more, but I still didn't wake up. My tools were working. Yay.

But finally, when he couldn't find his keys after a few minutes of looking, he came and yelled at me and shook me so that I'd get up and help him. I guess I have magical-fucking-eyes that can see keys where he can't. I told him "No." I'm not getting up. I told him I need to fucking sleep. He insisted that he couldn't find the keys and that I had to help, and proceeded to make it impossible for me to sleep. So I got the fuck up and found the fucking keys that had fucking fallen behind the fucking table where the keys go.

I have no idea how to resolve this situation. I have an idea that might work...there's an extra room in the house that has a door that locks. I think I might move a bed into that room tonight and sleep in there with the door locked. I just really, really have to get some more sleep, and I don't know what else to do short of kicking him out.

Fuck!



Photo Credit: MsPsychosThoughts

A Side Of Pain With That Pain Sandwich.

I just had the most amazing meltdown. It was worthy of my college years, those coked-out whoring years of drunken depressive madness. I haven't thrown such a huge fit in a long, long time.

It's just that it's Christmas, and everyone is either dead or going to die. I am spending all my time working and hurting and being pissed off and having to force myself, to remind myself, to take care of myself...all while everyone and everything I love is either already dead or dying.

I wish I could spend every moment surrounded by everyone and everything I love or have loved in the past. Maybe this room full of approximately 50 beings could do yoga together or pray or eat Christmas dinner, but at least we could be together, and time wouldn't be passing by with everyone always in different rooms, dying. Maybe I could move the bodies of all my dead relatives and friends and pets and find all the things I've lost and missed and put them in the room, too.

I had forgotten that wild, panic-stricken feeling...that long, long corridor of life ahead and behind me with pain and pain and pain all along the way. There's pain behind. There's pain ahead. There's pain right now. There's pain everywhere, and I don't want to do anymore pain. I want to retire from pain. I want everyone to agree that I've met my pain quotient, and I don't have to do anymore hurting ever again.

All I ask is that if I love you, you stay close to me, forgive me for whatever wrongs I've done to you, and never die. Is that too much?

My death-filled mind quickly became consumed with the pain ahead and behind and present, and I went to a place I don't go much anymore...but it used to be my default mechanism for calming down when my emotions got the best of me: I wanted to hurt myself. I wanted to find a straight razor and slice my arms or my thighs or my feet or my stomach or anywhere that would hurt just enough and look just red and bloody enough to give me something to look at, some outward manifestation of the inward hurting, like a marker. Like a bookmark for my emotional page. Like a gravestone for a dying experience. Like a souvenir.

I also got increasingly upset that it's Christmas, and there's no one to talk to and nowhere to go, and then, slowly and surely, I realized that there was, technically, someone...there was that man who sleeps next to me. That man who lives in my house. I do, technically, pay for him to live in my house, so maybe it's not too much to ask for a little comfort while I've got a brainful of razor blades and death.

"I can't calm down," I tell him.

"What do you want me to do? Why are you mad at me?"

"It's not you. Or it is you. Everyone is going to die."

"No! Things are getting better! If you love me, you will see that things are getting better."

"I don't mean anything about you, or I do, but I mean I can't calm down and I need you to hold me."

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to hold me."

"You need to take an anxiety pill."

Handy addicts with their medicinal cure-alls...I avoid taking mood-altering substances as if, well, as if the need to take mood-altering substances had ruined my life. But this time, my sweet addict was right. Those razor-blade obsessing hissy fits are exactly what the anxiety pills are made for, so I took the pill he brought me, and I let him hold me and talk to me. He asked me if we could pray together, reminded me to focus, to breathe ("Don't they tell you that in yoga?"), to pray.

It was nice, and I feel better now. Perhaps it's the medication, and perhaps it's the comfort of my partner, and perhaps it's both...but either way, I feel more myself, less lost in that past and future nexus of despair, and ready to go to bed.

Always A Crossroads.

So many things are changing in our lives right now, and I'm finding myself, at least today, feeling very anxious about being at another crossroads. Things are, again, on the verge of being much better, possibly. Again, I am powerless over the changes that must occur. My husband the handsome madman is the one who will make our break our lives.

He asked someone to be his sponsor after his Tuesday meeting. I was really proud of him. It was his move, his business, and he hadn't talked about it with me at all. He had decided that he wanted to get a sponsor before the holidays and to begin working the steps because he says he is ready to make real changes in his life, to find solutions to problems that he has realized he can't fix on his own. That's a huge step, and it took a lot of courage.

He has also been working a lot this week to make sure that he can get me his fair share of bill money. While he's been working for the last few weeks, his first priority has been to pay for his methadone...not to support himself and contribute to the costs of our household. Over the last few weeks, he has worked just enough to pay for his methadone, buy himself a cup of coffee every morning, and then given me a few bucks for bill money. He's realized that he's not doing enough, and he's been trying really hard this week to do his fair share.

Again, I'm proud of him. It's a big deal, and it is evidence that he's doing a lot better, that he's on an upswing.

However, no money has touched my hands yet. He has said a lot of words about the changes that sound so wonderful, but so much bad experience over the last year has taught me that his words aren't always meaningful. They are at best more like expressions of intent than signposts that will mark actual behavior. So often in the past, when he has said, "I'm going to get you your bill money this week, " he has really been saying, "I really wish I had it together enough to be the kind of man who would get you your bill money on time this week. One day, I hope I will be."

One change that seems significant this time is that he is acknowledging that he's not been doing enough to contribute and that he wants to. He's not making excuses. He's talking about reality, and what he says makes sense. In the past, I'd always question myself: Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe he has a point.

Addicts have an uncanny ability to believe so very sincerely that they are SO RIGHT about whatever it is they are expressing. Addiction can be so powerfully deluding...the addict him or herself becomes quite convinced, and often quite convincing, that the world isn't fair, that family members aren't sane, that money is disappearing for good reason or that the money never existed in the first place. I've lived for a good year of my life with my husband in and out of active addiction, constantly doubting my own understanding of what is going on in the world, constantly wondering if I might be treating him unfairly, that I might not understand the situation fully, that it's normal for things not to make sense.

I am refreshed by his latest tendency to seem so sensible...but at the same time skeptical of my ability to interpret anything he says, skeptical of him meaning anything he says, and scared. Scared to trust that he might come through with some of his big plans for himself...scared to feel the anger and disappointment that will be there if he doesn't.

Schooling Me.

Mr. Junky has developed a new habit in his wonderfully smug state of methadone goodness. Suddenly, he has all these things to teach me about recovery, the steps, growth, gratitude. He's not used in something like a week, and I think he's been to two meetings in that time, and so now he is, like, totally Program Joe.

I've been feeling pretty lousy for the last few days. I'm stuck in a really nasty situation, and I've been doing a lot of work on myself over the last few months. I'm damn glad I've done it, too, and I've grown, and I'm doing well. But it's still hard, hard, hard to know that he is just at the beginning of his recovery, again...that all the times that it's seemed like we were just around the corner from being better, it's just not been true. I've let myself, however, be as miserable as I've needed to be. I've given myself permission to feel bad, to be angry, to be glum for a few days. I've got the tools to get out of it, and already today, some of the weight has been lifted. His confession when I got back into town now has begun to look like a great development...he's trying to be honest. He worked yesterday, and he brought me home the money he made. We went and bought groceries with that money. That's a beautiful thing. At the time, it didn't seem so, but today, it does.

I know how to handle my business. I've got friends, a sponsor, and a program. It pisses me off to no end when he starts telling me how I should be behaving, what I should be grateful for, and how I should feel.

It's important for me to remember how angry it makes me, though...as he has his own journey, and I like to think that I know better what he should be doing (I mean, 'cause I really, totally DO know better what he should be doing). It bothers me when he's telling me how I should think and feel, and I bet it bothers him as well (even though he, like, really needs it, because he can't do anything right without me).

Amy Winehouse.

I keep forgetting to follow celebrity gossip lately as my own life keeps me busy, but Honorary Cuntface Amy Winehouse has been busy lately, even though I forgot to pay attention. I hope she gets it together. I love her and her big hair.

To Be Continued...

I got folks visiting, so I'm kind of on blog vacation. Stay tuned...Mr. Junky will surely act up soon, and I'll have plenty to say. He likes to do that when there's company.

My Beautiful, Bad Babies.

My man and my doggy are curled up together in the bed. I fed them both too much tonight, and they both have stomach aches, and they've gone to sleep now.

They are remarkably similar, these dearest brunettes to my heart. They both are very, very bright and yet very slow learners. They both look at me with these eyes full of utter affection and devotion, and yet they'll both act out in ways that destroy my spirit. They both want very much to please and also to do exactly what they want. They both want very much for me to be pleased with them when they do exactly what they want. They both please me, endlessly.

They both infuriate me, daily. They both have lovely eyes and lips and swoon-worthy noses. I like filling my hands up with both of them. They both smell perfect all over except when they fart. I like when they lick me. I like them best in bed.

I don't like it when they destroy my stuff, in their respective ways. I do like it when I get home and they're happy to see me, in their respective ways.

I like them both, as awfully bred things, and I like fixing them up with my excessive loving.

In conclusion, addicts and dogs are very similar things to love.