Dear Husband,

First, I'd like to say to you what I said the night I first found your needles. Do you remember what I said? I bet you don't. You don't remember things like I do.

I asked you to sit down, and I knelt down in front of you. I said, "I love you very, very much. No matter what, I love you."

And tonight, I hope you know that I love you very, very much. No matter what, I love you.

I saw that you've been reading my writing here on this website and that you've gone through quite a big chunk of my email. I also see that you seem to be pissed off right now, and you seemed to be pissed off this morning. I can imagine that reading my view of what's been going on in our lives could be pretty painful for you. I'm sorry if you're hurting because of the things I've said here.

I'm not sorry, though, for the things I've said. They are things I've needed to say, and they are true things. This is a safe place for me to say these things, and it has been incredibly healing for me to write the story of what has been happening to me through your addiction. It's helped me to process all my crazy, conflicted feelings, and it's even helped some other folks deal with similar situations. Writing this story has been one of the surprising gifts of going through this painful experience...the people I've met, the pleasure I've gotten from writing it all out...I've never done anything like this before, and I'm proud of what I've written here. I'm proud of the way I've grown.

I understand that you are going through a lot of hard stuff right now. I understand that getting clean is really, really hard. I know that you've tried some to find a job. I see the efforts that you have made. I also understand that I have played a role in creating the tension in our home, and I'm working really hard on myself to stop contributing to our problems.

I always knew that you might make your way here one day, and I've thought a lot about what it would be like. There's a part of me that wants you to be amazed by how beautifully I've written our ugly life story. I know that's not likely. There's also a part of me that hope you've been able to see through all the negative things I've said about you to the good things. There are good things here, and I still see them. I think I see them more than anybody on this earth, more than you even.

I wonder at your anger over the things you've seen here. I don't expect that any of it has been a surprise, since you've been living it. I've not kept my feelings from you. I've not disguised the fact that I've been afraid, hurt, tired, frustrated...Every situation that I've written about here, we've talked about. I also know that I should get out of your head. I don't like going through your head, and it doesn't serve me to try to understand you from the inside out. I've never been able to figure out your mind. I think that's part of what has been so attractive about you.

I'm honestly surprised, too, that you'd bother going through my email, which I must have left open carelessly. That is uncharacteristic of me, as I'm generally so guarded with my things after all the stealing that has happened in our house. I'm surprised because I never thought what I might be saying or thinking or feeling was really all that important to you.

I guess there's a little grace in this situation, isn't there? We're going to have to talk about it. You've heard me...you have to have heard me after seeing the stuff I've written here.

I'm going to go get in bed next to you right now. I'm going to put my arms around you, and I'm going to bury my face in your neck and breathe deeply. I guess it's possible you'll read this in the morning. I'm planning to talk to you about it after we're both home tomorrow, and probably after my meeting. I'll need the clarity I'll get from my meeting to talk to you right.

Good night.

Headaches.

One of my jobs is causing me some grief. I am excited to have something to obsess about that isn't my husband. Isn't that insane?

I find, however, that even when I'm obsessing about something that isn't my husband, I'm still inadvertently obsessing about my husband. I'm an expert at obsessing about him. The problem at my work involves a few issues that allow me to obsess about my husband vicariously. For instance, people expect me to think for them instead of finding information for themselves. I'm in situations where I'm expected to be more responsible than is my fair share. These situations remind me of home.

There are also moments when some of the folks I'm around at this job are irrational and angry. Irrational and angry is quite familiar to me. Irrational and angry people make me feel kind of like I have razor burn on the inside...like I have razor burn on the inside, and someone is drenching it with alcohol. My insides are rather irritated. If you could see my insides, the parts where I keep my emotions, it would be really red and festery.

I'm not doing a good job of using my tools presently. It's been a while since my step group met, and I'm not able to get to as many meetings as I used to make. I can't go to yoga as much as I like to go. I'm not sleeping enough. I'm not praying enough. I'm tired and hungry and angry all the time. I can feel all the effects of these slips, but there's not a damn thing I can do about it until one of these jobs lets up.

Angels.

I swear, sometimes in yoga class when it's that part where we say OM, I can hear angels. They usually start singing in the middle of the second Om.

Is that weird?

Want To Be In My Club?

View my page on The Junky's Wives Club


I'm an internet freak. I know it. Soon, I'll be doing 12 steps so that I can put the laptop down. But I just discovered Ning, and I thought it might be fun to build a little community. My favorite people in the world are the people I've met through recovery, and my secret Cuntface society, although it is in a serious summertime slump, has been a lot of fun...so I've made a new one, a Junky's Wives Club.

(Please don't challenge me on that apostrophe's placement. I know it's improper...but what was I supposed to do? The Junkies' Wives Club? The Junkys' Wives Club? They all look crazy.)

It's kind of like a Myspace for codependents. If you're married to an addict, mother to an addict, sister to an addict, BFF to an addict...whatever...come over and make friends! Ning has a lot of neat features, too...so if you've been thinking about blogging, you can start a blog there, or post questions. Eventually, I'll get us our own domain name...but for now, you can see it at JWClub.ning.com.

Please Leave Me Alone. I'm Tired.

"I'm really tired."

"But what's wrong?"

"It's a long day, and I'm tired, and I don't want to talk."

"Why?"

"I worked 3 different places today. I'm tired. Please don't keep pushing me."

"I don't understand why you always act like that."

"I'm just fucking tired, and I don't want to fucking talk."

"See? You act like I'm the one who's crazy, but then when you get to the middle of the week, you get all pissed off that you're working so much, and you take it out on me."

"I'm just asking you to let me be. I want to take a bath and go to bed. It's been a long day."

"See? You have to blame me for everything! Everything is my fucking fault!"

By the time we'd finished with this exchange, I was so overwrought, and he was yelling, and I was yelling. I locked myself in the bathroom to get away from him. I really, really was just so tired, and I just wanted to be left alone. I didn't want to fight with him about how I have to over-work to compensate for his unemployment. I was too tired for that...but he wanted to fight about it.

Everything is his fucking fault. He's right. I do a great job of ignoring it and trudging along through my life, but really, truly, seriously...it is his fucking fault. I don't want to split my time between three jobs and four jobs and a thousand freelance gigs. I don't want to be tired all the time. I don't want to take up his slack...but the bills have to be paid.

For a long time, I'd think that his unwillingness or inability to get and keep a job wasn't a very satisfying reason to leave him...it frustrates me that he won't work, and it frustrates me to have to work more than my share even though he's an able-bodied, intelligent young man...but asking him to leave won't make a difference. I won't be able to stop working a jot if he leaves, as all the same bills still have to be paid.

Things have changed, though...it's not pleasant just to have him around. It is becoming more and more unbearable to come home to him, as he's more and more likely to be pissed off at me. I feel like my house is his lair, his filthy, shitty lair. At this point, if I decide to ask him to leave, I'll at least have some peace when I get home. I could clean my house and keep it clean. It would be quiet, and I could be alone.

I hang on for the few, sweet moments that pass between us...but they are very fucking few these days, and I am very fucking tired. This life has gone on for too long.

"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.

His Present Obsession.

My husband's most recent obsession is with a weight bench. I'm pleased with him obsessing and compulsing over things that aren't heroin, and working out is certainly a good alternative. We had a falling out this morning, however, about his desperate, life-or-death need for weights.

He's found a weight bench on the side of the road, and he dragged it home. Next, he finagled his sister into purchasing a bar to accompany his bench. The only thing he needs to complete his set is the actual weight, so he's done a pretty good job of scavenging it together.

He called me today and told me that he was going to get his aunt to take him to buy weights for the bar today, but he needed me to tell his aunt that it's ok. He thought he'd found a remarkable shortcut to avoiding paying bills. His aunt deposits the money that she owes him directly into my account because she doesn't like handing him cash, and I've told him that I won't take any money out of my account for "toys" for him until he has deposited enough money to pay his bills for the week. His loophole was to ask his aunt to take him directly to the store and purchase the item for him, and he seemed dreadfully confused at first why I would say that his idea wasn't good. Then, he became angry when I refused to tell his aunt that it was ok with me for her to spend money that he should be giving me to pay bills on weights. And then he yelled a lot.

I've been at work all day, so I didn't think much about it. Now, I'm between my day job and my night job, and I'm furious. I thought it might do me some good to write about it, to kind of quell the rising obsession. I don't want to go home to an unpleasant husband, so I'm starting to dread the time of night when I head that way.

I hate that feeling.

Ups, Downs.

I got home late tonight, but we had such a nice night together...mostly. We have such fun together when things are good. Underneath it all, though, no matter what, there's always this tension...this darkness stirring underneath the surface. I wonder if it goes away. From what I've heard from folks who remain in relationships with people who are well into recovery, it disperses, but it never goes away. I wonder if I want to live with that cloud always.

It has its advantages, really. Life is sweet, or life is sad...but it's never passive or happening to me without making me think and feel. Sometimes I think I'd like to stop having so many feelings, or such big feelings...but that's not true. I like feeling life, feeling alive. I like knowing that things are happening, that precipices are ahead to be surmounted or plunged off. It's exhausting and exhilarating, this life.

I found out today that Krishna Das is going to be having a chanting and singing concert in my town pretty soon. I'm so excited I might die. It's probably silly, but his music came to me at a time when I was trying to figure out what god was for me, and it helped me understand. The first time I heard "God Is Real," it made me cry on my yoga mat and be a big mess of sweaty, stinky tears. I think I'm going to take that evening off from work and go, all by myself, and chant with him and cry in front of him and see if it brings me closer to something.

Fight.

I'll wonder what I'm fighting for, and I'll get so bedraggled and beaten up by this relationship, and then, suddenly, I see so many wonderful things in my husband. He says something so insightful, or so funny, or so wise, or so loving.

I spoke with a friend recently who I only talk with occasionally, and she's just gotten out of a long, tumultuous relationship. She said that she was sitting with her boyfriend one afternoon, and she realized she had no idea who he was anymore...and not only did she feel like he was a stranger, but she didn't care, either.

I know from my own past relationships that you're not done until you're done...and I know that feeling of indifference. It's an indifference that's beyond indifference...you care about the person, and you wish him well, but you don't want to fight for it anymore. I remember when it came over me with my most recent ex...it was like all the wind had been knocked out of me. I had nothing left in me for that relationship. I still loved him, but it was a new kind of love...kind of a detached spirit of goodwill.

I am nowhere near that kind of indifference in this relationship. Every second of my life, I'm still fighting, still hanging on, still grasping at this man, my dreams for us and our life together. I don't want it to be over.

Responsible.

I'm tired of being so goddamned responsible. I want to tell everything to fuck off, and I want to go on vacation. I can't afford to tell anything to fuck off and go on vacation. I at least would like a vacation from my husband.

He was "joking" with me last night about how I can't make him leave...he said he'd been thinking about how even if I decided to split up with him, he'd tell me that the house was his, too...that even though he doesn't pay the bills, I can't make him leave his house. I'm not sure where he got that idea from. I can think of several ways that I could make him leave this house, my house. I've looked into the laws for spousal support, and I know what the worst things he could do to me would be. I also doubt very much that a judge would have much sympathy for the able-bodied heroin addict who has been leaching off of his wife for 2 years...

And really, what is he thinking about to make him want to talk to me like that? Why push me towards thinking about the bad things that he could do to me if I decide to leave him? Is it really such fun to force yourself on a person who doesn't want you? I remember him so differently from this...the man I fell in love with had some self-respect. The man I fell in love with wouldn't have said that he'd make me keep supporting him even if I decided I didn't love him anymore. It doesn't make sense.

He has about 10 days before he is officially without money for methadone. He only seems concerned sometimes. I'm not sure why he is so comfortable with his present situation. The relative he's been working for is done with the project they've been doing, and he's only got about 10 days' worth of money left. I have to stop thinking about it. It's not mine. It's not happening to me. I can't stop thinking about it.

What is scary is that I've decided I'm not doing detox with him again. If he doesn't find a job and get himself squared away, I'm asking him to leave for the detox part. It's not good for me, and I can't do it, especially not right now when I have too many jobs and not enough time.

So many things in my life are going so well right now. I wish things at home would ride the coattails of my professional upswing. An unhappy marriage sucks the sweetness right out of life. It's hard to celebrate anything, and it's hard to have perspective on the things that are going well when the things that are closest to me make me feel like a rat running in a treadmill.


Art by James Christensen

Real Post Attempt 1.

I might never write again if I wait for a time when I'm rested and feel like I have something to say. I'm going to do what I tell folks who tell me that they have writer's block: I'm going just to start writing. So here I am, just writing.

I'm behind on reading. I don't like being behind on reading because it's how I communicate with so many of my imaginary internet friends. One day, I'll be back...one of my jobs ends in 4 weeks, so then I'll be back to working something closer to 40 hours a week. I am powerless over all my jobs, and my life has become unmanageable. I fear that at the present moment, I'm doing a haphazard, halfass job at everything. I'm a bad wife, a bad friend, a bad writer, a bad teacher, a bad lover...I'm exhausted, but I'm trying.

One of my favorite things in the world is to find a perfect piece of art to go with my posts, and I can't tonight. I tried, but nothing looks perfect enough. Nothing looks like anything.

He's in the other room, on the couch. One day, his ass is going to atrophy and attach itself to the fucking couch. I want him to get a fucking job. Did anyone know that I want him to get a fucking job? Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The junky's wife wants Mr. Junky to get a fucking job!

It's not news. It's old, old, old shit, and yet it feels raw and fresh. His unwillingness and inability to find and keep a job is going to make our marriage end. It's the thing that will break me finally, I think. Especially right now, when I'm working so, so hard to try to get a little ahead on the bills, and when I get home after being gone for 15 hours and he gives me shit about how I'm not fulfilling some asshole need he has...it makes me want to put his dick on the grill. Not his dick by itself, mind you...his dick still attached to the rest of him. I want to put his dick on the grill, balls down. Or maybe put his dick in a sandwich press.

It feels good to stick to my boundaries, even when it makes him into a fussy bitchmade baby of shit. Apparently I cuss too much when I'm tired and angry and overworked. That's interesting. I'd thought I was cussing less in my life, being more aware of my words and more aware of my thoughts. I wonder what other of my self-improvements are slipping away?

OK, I've done a blog post! Writing is how I make sure I still exist, so it's important that I keep it up even if I do an embarrassing job of it. One day, I'll be a clever writer again. Probably that day will be this weekend after I get a full night's sleep and a day of doing not much of anything. Until then...

White Light Snooze Button.

We didn't get to explode into a giant rainbow of beautiful white light. One of our members had a family emergency, so we're on hold until we can all be together. Stay tuned...

Blinding white light.

My step group is finishing the 12th Step tomorrow. I'm expecting to explode into a blinding corona of bright white light of healing, health, and harmony.

I'll let you guys know how that works out for me.

Upswing.

Rollerfuckingcoaster...

I got home from work last night, and the house was spotless. My husband had cleaned the house, cooked a wonderful dinner, and had $80 deposited into my bank account. It was like a fog had lifted off of him, the fog that had been keeping me from coming home over the last few weeks.

I'm confused about this up and down behavior, as it's not typical of him. If he's using, usually, it gets bad, and then it gets worse, and then it's a crisis, and then he's in bed detoxing for 2 weeks, and then he's really sorry, and then it gradually builds up to a better place. This new kind of rapid spiraling and upswing is different.

One thing that I thought might explain what's happening at my house is that he is gradually lowering his methadone dose. Every time he goes down a notch, he's shitty for a few days, and then he levels out. He's not gone down for a week or so, and maybe...just maybe...that's all that is going on.

Yuck. I'm not going to think about what's going on. All I know is that I'm looking forward to going home this evening to an orderly house with no allegorical turds, a loving, lovely husband (who even asked if I'd pick him up for the meeting tonight), and hope. Hope is nice, and the prospect of a nice evening is nice, and spending time with my husband while he's on an upswing is my favorite thing in the world.

My Life Story.

If anyone should ever write my life story
For whatever reason there might be,
You'd be there, between each line of pain and glory...

I met an old man this weekend who has spent more than two decades caring for his wife. She's been sick with Parkinson's since they were in their forties. We had breakfast together a few days in a row, and each day, he talked about caring for his wife. He talked about the surgeries she's had to find some relief for the muscle spasms and pain she experienced. He talked about her daily medication regimen. He talked about taking her to doctors and the ways that the various doctors' weren't caring for her properly. He was a thoroughly pleasant old man, and his love for his wife was apparent even though she hasn't been herself for decades. Her memory was affected by one of her surgeries, and she is often confused. She is completely incapable of caring for herself and requires his 24-hour care.

There was an undercurrent of sadness in everything he said, although he seemed content with his role as his wife's caretaker. He said he can rarely leave home without her because she is prone to seizures and he worries that something will happen if he isn't with her at all times. He gets a bit of reprieve when he takes her to daycare, but it's only enough time to run errands, so he doesn't get much time to himself...

This old man's life story, now, is the story of his wife's illness, and hearing him talk made me think a lot about my own life and my role as my husband's caretaker. I thought about whether or not I wanted my life story, which I'm recording, diligently, here for you, to be the story of my husband's addiction and my response to it. I don't think that I want that to be what I've done with my life.

I don't think that when I'm very old, I want to have that hint of sadness in my throat when I'm telling someone about my life. I don't want to explode, to foam at the mouth, with the story of my husband's disease, its transference to my own life. I don't think I want it. I don't know.

It also made me think a lot about marriage, connection. I know that my own husband would not care for me if I suddenly became unable to care for myself. He's too self-absorbed, too unpredictable, and too sick to be able to be responsible for another person.

And it confuses me, too...I want a partner who could, who would care for me if I were to be unable to care for myself. The agreement to provide care to your spouse if he or she is sick is one of the fundamental marriage vows...in sickness and in health. My husband, now, is in sickness, and I am growing increasingly tired of standing by that vow. I would want him to do it for me, and I don't want to do it for him. I'm conflicted about what that means for me...

I've heard many people describe addiction as a disease like cancer, suggesting that while yes, you'd care for your spouse if he or she were sick with a cancer, you might become frustrated if your spouse wouldn't seek help...wouldn't take medicines properly or visit doctors. (Blog BFF and recent real-life BFF MPJ described it beautifully as a nasty bowel disease.) You might not leave your spouse under those conditions...but you might, and you might do it with a cleaner conscience than if you just abandoned a sick spouse because you didn't have time, energy, or inclination to deal with the disease and its ramifications for your own life. One thing that confuses me, though, is that one of the symptoms of my husband's disease is that he doesn't want to seek help. Addiction masks itself so inkily from the addict...when he is spiraling, he can't see that he's spiraling. When he is saying that he doesn't need to go to meetings because he isn't like the other addicts, it's a side effect of the sickness...

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Sometimes I think I'll never leave because I find the disease itself to be so fascinating. Other times, I think I will never leave because I find my husband to be so beautiful. All the time, I think of all the reasons why I will never leave.

I'm making my life, every day, and every moment of every day. I'm thinking clearly about who and where I am...but I'm not sure what to do with this clarity. Nothing changes in what I want: a healthy, happy partner who can take care of himself and be fully engaged in his own life as well as the life we're sharing. Nothing changes in his inability to be that person...there are brief, beautiful steps forward and then long slides back. I wish I could step back and get a bigger perspective, see really how I'm growing, if he's growing, and what we look like as a married couple...

I don't know.

Art by Mark Tansey

Home.

I don't want to go home, ever, anymore. I think back to how much I used to love to come home to him, how much I wanted to be with him, in my house, our house...I am not sure what has changed, because I didn't used to feel this way about him even when he was using. I hate it when he's using, but I always love him. And I still love him...I'm just so fucking tired. I'm tired down in my bones of him, of this life, of the same problems, the same attitudes, the same stagnant bullshit again and again and again. I'm tired of how fucking self-absorbed he is. It's like my only function in his life is to be his ATM machine/personal assistant, and I'm just not so interested in being in service to him anymore. I want him to be my partner or go away.

We had a long time that things really were much better...where we really seemed to be a married couple, doing things with each other, for each other. I thought he'd made so much progress, but it seems like he's coming unglued now, and I hate the same addicty bullshit behavior.

It's sad, though, because it's so good when it's good. He's so full of hope for himself, and I get so hopeful for us together. He told me one day when we were coming home from a yoga class, his fingers twisting in my sweaty hair, that he was going to make sure that I never again regret marrying him, that he was going to do everything he had to do to make sure that every moment that we spent together from that point forward would let me know that everything he'd put me through was worth it. It lasted for a while, this feeling in him...it lasted through that afternoon, through the rest of the week, but it's gone now, and I miss him.

Tired.

I'm tired this week. I've forgotten to write. I'd like to go home now. I'm not sure where that is. The house that I make mortgage payment for doesn't feel like home. It feels like a dirty, uncomfortable hotel where I show up at the end of the night to bathe and sleep. I'm avoiding my house as much as possible, which is stupid and exhausting and not sustainable as a way of life. But it's what I'm doing right now to get through the days and nights, to get up and get to work, and to keep moving forward. I don't know.

And More Boundaries.

"I want an MP3 player. I'm going to work really, really hard the next couple of days, and I want to spend some of the money on an MP3 player. I just really want something fun for myself," he has been reiterating for the last several days. I don't know what put a MP3 player bug up his ass, but it's a mighty annoying bug.

Our present financial arrangement includes a set amount of money that he needs to give me each week in order to be paying half of our household bills. He has never, not one single time, given me that amount of money. The most he's ever given me has been a little over half. After his last relapse, however, he asked that I handle all of his money from now on. The relative for whom he works transfers his daily money directly into my account. For weeks now, he's been paying off a debt to this relative that he accrued with a series of astonishing lies during the February relapse and making only enough money to pay for his methadone. I was patient and kind and forgiving through that part. It seemed like the right thing to do for him to pay his debts off and get back square.

He's square now, and he's making money again...enough to pay for his methadone and some surplus. So far this week, he's given me about a third of what he owes me for bills, and he has been growing increasingly adamant about this MP3 player business. I have been obsessing about it because it's the first time we've been in this situation. The money is in my bank account. I can choose to pull it out or not pull it out. I've chosen that I won't give him any money until he has paid me the full amount. I don't trust him to go to work and earn the rest of the money if he is able to get his new toy before the end of the week.

And that's good, right? I'm standing up for myself, setting boundaries, and making sure I get my needs met. Still, however, I'm feeling conflicted about my decisions. It feels like I'm being controlling. I don't know how I feel about this level of entanglement with our finances. I want to make sure that I get the amount of money that it costs for him to live in my house (finally), but I don't want to feel like I'm attempting to control, to change, to manipulate him into acting the way I want him to act. I'm not sure about what's right.

Triggers.

Lots of things are triggering for me. I came home tonight, for instance, after having worked 15 hours divided up amongst 3 jobs, and my husband couldn't take the time to stop staring at the movie he was watching to say, "Hi." Or later, for instance, when he came to tell me that he was going to need some money to buy an MP3 player. But those are specifics, and I'd had a long day...whatever it is, I sure want to tear through the house in search of syringes or yell at him about money or do all the things that I can do to disrupt my own peace of mind. I haven't done it yet. I just want to.

I thought it would be fun to write about all the many and various things my husband can do to trigger my inner codependent freakout mechanism. It triggers me, for instance, when he's too needy, but also when he's too detached. It triggers me when he doesn't sleep enough and when he nods off. It triggers me when he wakes me up early in the morning, but also when he doesn't go to bed with me at night. It triggers me when he won't go to meetings. It triggers me when he goes and talks to other addicts...what if he makes friends? I don't want more people like him around. It triggers me when he lies...oh, it triggers me like nothing else. He's lying a lot lately, too. That one doesn't have an opposite. I feel safe when he tells the truth, even when the truth is ugly. I prefer it. I'm proud of him when he tells the truth.

My husband's mother's car triggers me, and cars that look like my husband's mother's car. Cars, in general, that are parked in my driveway trigger me, unless it is my car. My car triggers me when my husband touches it, goes around it, talks about it, and most especially when he wants the keys. My husband stealing things triggers me, and so now, going into stores with him triggers me as well. Sometimes, going to a store alone triggers me because I think about how I don't like to go with him. New objects in my house trigger me. I think they're all stolen. Dirty dishes, especially dirty spoons, and especially any situation that highlights the dearth of spoons in my cupboards--that really triggers me.

Losing things triggers me, even when it has nothing to do with him, like if I lose a document at work. When I lose things, I think of the other things I've lost. Syringes trigger me, anywhere and anytime. Beat it, diabetics. Bags and clothing in unusual places trigger me. I can't resist going through the pockets. Tin foil triggers me. I'm not sure why...seems I think it has to do with drug paraphernalia or packaging. And oh, yes, it triggers me wildly when he goes to the bathroom. I HATE it when he goes to the bathroom. I wish we had a glass bathroom, or I wish I had a camera in there to spy on him.

When I think of all the things that make me think, "I should find a divorce lawyer and just see about my options," I wonder that we are still together...I wonder that there are ever moments when we are happy. But really, there are moments. We are happy a lot of the time. It's just such a roller coaster...it's great, and then it's awful, and there's never anything in between. I wish he'd just be great, or just be awful, so I could either get my divorce lawyer or open a joint checking account, stop living in this borderland.

Saner.

Sometimes, the back and forth scares me as much as the bad times. My husband was much saner this morning. He's going through a hard time, so I'm trying to be patient with the ups and downs. I understand. I hate to watch it, but I understand. He hasn't mentioned how ridiculous his plan from yesterday was yet, so maybe it's still percolating in that hurricane of a brain he's got. It just seems that sometimes he's so much better, clearer...as if a veil has been lifted.