Glimpses, Love, and Forgiveness

Why? Why would you stay with him. That is a question I have been asked many times, though not always with words. People ask with their actions, with their looks, and with their minds. I don't know if they think it is impolite to ask and that is why they don't say the words out loud.

I want to tell them sometimes that it's none of their damn business. That this is my life and I make my own decisions. I want to just ignore their looks and thoughts of how I must be co-dependant and cannot walk away. I want to tell them that marriage is forever and that I believe in the vows that I took. But I won't. Because I have nothing to be defensive about. And so I will tell you all, my sisters here and around the world, exactly WHY it is that I stay.

The first night we met, we danced to Garth Brooks' "Unanswered Prayer". I remember asking him if he believed in unanswered prayer. He told me that he didn't believe in praying. Handsome and sexy as he was, I remember thinking that he had the saddest eyes I had ever seen, full of conflict and distrust, anger and rebellion.

You may think I set out to save him. And maybe there is a little truth to that. As rocky as our relationship started, we both fell hard and fast for eachother.

We had joys and sorrows, strengths and weaknesses. And just a few months shy of a year being married, we seperated for two weeks. We both sat on the couch, held eachother and cried together, not knowing how to make things work.

Shortly after we had gotten back together because we just could not stay apart, he started doing drugs. Therein we entered a hurricane of pain, disappointment, and near-defeat.

Growing up, he was never held accountable for anything he did wrong. Not that his mom didn't care, she was just working all the time, a single mom trying to raise 3 kids alone. As an adult, after being a Ranger in the Gulf War and a rodeo bullrider, he thought he was invincible. Superman.

Even Superman has his Kryptonite. My husbands was drugs. As a child, I always thought drugs were stupid. I didn't see the point in "losing yourself" in something that could kill you. Watching my husband smoke crack cocaine, made me hate them.

If you have never seen someone you love on drugs, it's like this...

Imagine a flower, bold and vibrant, full of color, strong in it's own right. One day, you forget to water it and it droops a little. The next day, it is again forgotten and the next and the next...

It doesn't take long till that flower is  a shriveled up shell of it's former self. What once was strong and beautiful is now drawn, wilted, and dying...if it is not already dead on the inside.

To watch the one you love die on the inside is like taking your own life.

At first, in my innocence, I thought I could fix him. If I yelled at him enough maybe he would see my anger and stop. It didn't. So then, I was sad and upset and hurt that he would do these things. So  icried and begged him not to do these things. He didn't stop.

I was dying inside. This man that I loved was no longer him. He was paranoid and angry, and pathetic. It made me sick to see the things he was doing to himself. I searched the house when he was gone or sleeping and found his drugs and pipes and I threw them away. I began to hide my money in my bra when I did eventually sleep. I learned everything i could about these evils and locked them into my memory bank. In and out of prison, him trying to make a change and me, trying to raise both a child and a husband.

And in between the drug induced hazes, in his moments of lucidity, I saw him. The man that I loved.

Being locked up and our only form of comminication being visits, which I could rarely afford or letters, which I scarcely had time or energy to write. But I tried. And we wrote and I asked him the questions he could not answer on the outside while he was using. And he answered. I sought counsel from pastors and psychologists. I learned to be stronger than I ever was before.

In these missives, back and forth, we maintained our marriage as best we could. We became friends. We learned to talk about everything and to keep no secrets.

My family and friends, didn't have a chance to know him well before he started using. His family has seen him fall too many times. And so it is I, the one who loves him unconditionally, the one who forgives his faults, and remembers who he really is, even when he cannot who will stay by his side. It is I who will pick him up and encourage his strengths. And it is I, who will not enable him to do drugs. Just ask him. He'll tell you how mean I am. I will stand up for him, but I will also stand up TO him.

My husband is bi-polar. In people that are bi-polar uppers such as cocaine and methamphetamine actually have a calming effect instead of a "high". Over 50% of undiagnosed bi-polar sufferers self medicate with drugs just to feel normal.

People rarely get things right the first time. The average person will go through rehab at least three times before they "get it right". We as a race (human) give up on people too easily.

So if there is someone in your life, who cannot seems to get things right, whether it is drugs or alcohol, anger, bi-polar or anything else...please do not just walk away. Do not give up on them because then they give up on themselves. Do not enable them, but love them. Give them hope, but not money. Praise their efforts, but not their downfalls. And remember, they will not change until they want to do it for themselves and most times they have to hit rock bottom and you have to let them.

Always keep in your heart though, that this sickness is not what defines them, it is not who they are.

Glimpses of the past and dreams of the future keep me sane, love keeps me strong, and forgiveness guides my heart.