Fucked

I am in a foul mood today. Really foul.

I just met with my husband and the bankruptcy attorney. I realize that this is the only logical step at this point, but I am just pissed off that I am in this position.

I have always been responsible with money. I have been a good wife and a good mother, while my husband was off cheating on me, blowing money and snorting cocaine and God knows what else. He risked our lives. He fucked our finances.

And I feel like his family should have stepped in and helped us. They raised him to be this way. They created this mess that I now live in. But do they do anything? No. They play golf and tennis. They sit there on their butts and make judgements about me.

They have no problem enabling his lifestyle. They have no problem paying for endless rehabs. But when it comes to the education they promised my children, or anything else, nothing.

I feel like their priorities are fucked. They are fucked.

Most of my days now are good. I have felt so happy and so free. I try not to dwell on any of this. But today, I am angry.

I know I can't (or shouldn't) expect a damned thing from my husband's parents. But I do. I would never leave my daughter-in-law in this position. I would never treat someone the way that I have been treated. All I can do now is try to erase them from my life and move on.

Someday, my children will know exactly who they are - and they will not be able to buy themselves out of that.

I am going to fix some lunch and do my Kundalini Yoga. I don't want to feel like this all day.

Children and Drugs

I talked to an old friend at a business lunch today about finding cocaine in my home and my father-in-law's response. His partner responded with a story about his cousin, who became a meth addict. She overdosed in her home while alone with her 2-year-old daughter. It was 2 days before someone finally realized something was wrong. They found her in pretty bad condition, with her dead mother on the bathroom floor.

The partner told me that he was really glad I had called the police and that he believed I had made the right decision. He was also the father of a 3 and 6-year-old and he said he would do the same thing, even if it were his wife.

Here is the poem I wrote for my father-in-law. He responded by telling me I was stupid.


If my daughter-in-law called me to tell me my son was using cocaine
I would listen to her
Embrace her
Ask how I could help
Empathize
Be there
Immediately
Fly out on the next flight if I had to
(Even in the middle of the night.)
I would hug my son until he started sobbing-
He would know that I love him-
He would know it, damn it.
I would just hold him-
Until he felt it-
Until he told the truth.
Even if it took all night
Even if it took all week
Even if it took the rest of my life
To make up for what I hadn't done.

If my daughter-in-law called me, sobbing, shaking, desperate;
I wouldn't make her feel like a nobody.
I would tell her
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I am sorry.

ADHD and Addiction

My mom sent me this article and I decided to post it because I found it very interesting. It seems like many alcoholics and cocaine-addicts also have ADHD. I have been reading about this connection for a while now and urging my husband to take meds (even though I am anti-meds in general). From what I can tell, addicts who take these meds have a lesser chance of relapsing. Some of this information is addressed below and the article itself had a lot of interesting comments if you want to google it. I would be very interested to read about what effects these drugs have on children in the future - ie, are they more apt to be addicts? Seems like there are lots of questions to be answered here - but this is a start. I welcome your comments!

Now we know why Ritalin works
By Dana Blankenhorn | Sep 9, 2009

Why do stimulants like Ritalin turn ADHD kids normal but turn normal kids into hopped-up screaming meamies?

Turns out it’s all about the dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It passes signals between cells in your brain. Good signals.

Think of it as a chemical “attaboy.” It is well known as a precursor to adrenaline, and Arvid Carlsson won the 2000 Nobel Prize in medicine for finding this other role.

Recently scientists at the Brookhaven National Lab gave 53 ADHD people and 44 controls a radioactive tracer that would “light up” dopamine receptors and transporters under a PET scanner.

What they found was the ADHD people had fewer of these cells, meaning our brains are less capable of processing dopamine, the chemical “attaboy,” than other people. It’s all gone into the Journal of the American Medical Association.

If you don’t have many cells that process dopamine, the best way to get a healthy dose in your brain is to flood it with chemicals that produce dopamine. Stimulants. That’s why Ritalin and Adderall help ADHD kids. These same chemicals overstimulate a brain with a normal load of dopamine receptors, which is why your kid just gets high on them.

But the study also explains a lot more. Eating stimulates dopamine, so fat ADHDers are self-medicating in the same way as their cousins who try benzedrine or other drugs. So does exercise, which may be why Michael Phelps stays in the pool all day.

This may also be why ADHD “poster boy” Robin Williams reported that, when he used cocaine, he felt quiet, normal, and sane. Cocaine also stimulates dopamine. This may also be why he later became an alchoholic. Alcohol helps stimulate the natural release of dopamine.

This may also be part of what drove Williams to be a comic and actor. Loud applause stimulates dopamine. It may explain why so many other ADHDers are so ambitious, so driven to succeed at their passions. We need more real attaboys to stimulate our limited dopamine receptors.

As an ADHD kid myself, and father to two more, this may also explain something I have found troubling my whole life. I don’t react well to praise. Tell me you like this article and I may just shrug it off. Tell me you hate it and we can have a good argument — well an argument at any rate. Praise doesn’t give me the hit it gives you — I need a lot of it to feel it.

So while some are going to take this study as offering a simple chemical solution to ADHD (more dopamine) I believe therapy is still highly recommended. The real answer lies in self-awareness, using ADHD’s gifts to concentrate and create, while being aware of its downsides and treating yourself more gently as a result.

Word to my fellow ADHDers, of any age, wherever you are. You may not hear the applause, and you may not feel it, but it’s there if you work hard and listen closely.

Time

It seems I am spiraling downward this week. I've not been sleeping well. On one hand, the sex my husband had means very little to me. What else should I have expected from him?

But then I think of all the times I was left here to do everything and where was he? How he never woke up with the kids. How I am the one who picked them up from school, drove them there, drove them to everything. Cooked all the food. Changed all the diapers. Did all the laundry. I did everything at my personal expense. And what for? So he could go out and fuck 3 coke-head women without even a condom on his dick?

I suppose acceptance comes in waves. But yesterday was a very, very hard day for me. And today I woke up unrested with a sore body. I think I'm just tensing up. I resent that my husband spent so lavishly on cocaine, booze and women - and now there is no money left for the basics. I have worked so hard. And what for? What for?

Perhaps there was just too much space in the day. Too much time to think. The days prior were so busy, there was no time to ponder. But perhaps I also need the time to heal and to digest everything. And that may just take time.

Fuck Family Week

I am unable to sleep. I am angry at my husband and worried about what I am going to do with my life.

If it were just me, that would be one thing. But I have two young children and I need to minimize their pain as much as possible.

This isn't the life I had planned for either one of them.

In thinking about it, I have to also say that I am very disappointed in the Betty Ford Center.

My husband blamed not telling me on the 9th Step, which says something about not telling someone if it would do more harm than good to tell them.

But I told him he was manipulating that into his own BS to make it work for him.

I specifically asked him for his full medical records from there for months to check for this very thing. He evaded me, and gave excuses and everything else and this is why. That was on there.

Everything was written in a Betty Ford workbook that they went over with him. His counselor and the other counselors had to have known. I spent a week with them there.

Unprotected sex with 3 women who were also likely coke-addicts put my life at risk. And they should have told me if he didn't.

I'm thinking back to the culmination of the week, when the addicts are supposed to "come clean" and tell everything to their partner. Their assigned counselor actually sat in, along with 2 other counselors to make sure they say EVERYTHING.

There was nothing said about the UNPROTECTED SEX he dictated in this book.

And there I sat with him and all his buddies in group and at various dinners and no one said ANYTHING to me.

I seriously hate addicts and their little cover-up clubs. I suppose since they are all in the same boat, they have no problem with covering up anything for anyone else. Can't be worse than anything else they did themselves.

So there I was at the Betty Ford Center, wasting a full week on "Family week", which should really be called "FUCK-Family week" and flew down for another marriage counseling workshop. And they all just encouraged me to "look at my part". Which is great, but I have already done that. Maybe addicts should look at THEIR part for once and say "I Fucked up." Maybe they should look at their lives and say, yeah, my parents screwed me over big time, but I don't have to screw everyone else over. Maybe Rehab clinics should protect some of these family members instead of the ADDICTS WHO PAY THEM - so that we all don't end up dying from HIV or HepC, or in cars our addicts are driving when we don't know they are completely out of their minds....

I left there was such gratitude for that center, but now I hate it. I wish they would have told me the truth, even if my husband didn't have the balls to - because I could have moved on with my life at that point instead of wasting more time.

Felony Conviction

The stress of trying to rebuild our lives has been overwhelming. My husband was sentenced to a Felony for the cocaine possession.

He’s still so angry at me for turning him in, and wants me to apologize. I’m still angry at him for not getting it.

He has to do 24 hours of community service in 3 day stints. Digging ditches or something in our community. He’s pissed about that too. And being a felon. Having his DNA tested. All the stigma. Not being able to travel. Having to report to his parole officer.

I just keep thinking that he’s lucky.

He could have gone to prison for 5 years. Our daughter could be dead. I could have left him. He could still be an alcoholic and drug addict – or I guess he is, and will be forever, but he could be active in his addiction.

He sees the bad, and I see the good. And some days I feel like we will never be able to reconnect. It seems like we only see the bad in each other anymore. Some days I hate him. Sometimes I wonder how I got here and how I can live this way for the rest of my life.

But it seems that what’s good for me is bad for the kids, and vice versa. They need their dad. And I need him too in some ways.

Our finances are a mess. And I blame him as much as I rely on him to fix it. I can not dig us out of this hole. It seems it is his responsibility, but still my problem that I have to endure every day. I don’t sleep. I am stressed. I am having headaches nearly every day. I had a hot flash this morning. I think about all the stress of these last 7 years and I hope I just don’t keel over and die someday.

Some days it seems impossible that we will ever get out of this mess, especially in this economy. But I think about all the money his dad is sitting on and it literally makes me sick. The kids suffer while he sits there like a stingy SOB. His wife plays golf and tennis all day and talks about my husband’s lack of work ethic, while she has never worked.

It makes me sick.

But it is his money and he can do what ever he wants. I shouldn’t expect him to care. He has helped in some ways. Someone told my sister that he probably won’t ever help a lot because he’s worried I will divorce my husband and he wants to make sure I don’t get anything.

It makes me mad that my husband and his family seem to think I have no other options. That they think that I should take the brunt of all of this again and again.

The Poem

This is the poem that I sent to my father-in-law, after I found my husband's cocaine in our home.

If my daughter-in-law called me to tell me my son was using cocaine
I would listen to her
Embrace her
Ask how I could help
Empathize
Be there
Immediately
Fly out on the next flight if I had to
(In the middle of the night.)
I would hug my son until he started sobbing
He would know that I love him
He would know it, damn it.
I would just hold him
Until he felt it
Until he told the truth
Even if it took all night
Even if it took all week
Even if it took the rest of my life
To make up for what I hadn't done.

If my daughter in law called me, sobbing, shaking, desperate;
I wouldn't make her feel like a nobody.
I would tell her
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I am sorry.