An Addiction

The beginning of a traumatic event is the hardest when it's all actually happening, but it seems like the easiest once the dust settles. The photo above is one of the many photos taken at the beginning of our engagment when our journey began. We were offered a lot of advice on our wedding day and one of the pieces was, "Just make it through the first year of marriage, then the rest is easy." What a loaded statement, and so incredibly wrong it was. I mean, yes, our first year has been the hardest, but "the rest" is a gamble.

Flash forward to celebrating the birth of our first baby girl 10 months after our wedding day, and then our 1 year anniversary, and then at a little over 14 months post wedding day, our D-day occurred. The moments leading in to July 14, 2019 are so heavy they could keep me down if I let them. I was a brand new mom just learning and trying to get by, all while watching my husband suffer from a problem that not even he could control no longer. I was a wife, kept in the dark about the truth embedded in the pits of addiction, how it was killing my husband, our family, our marriage. I was naive and uneducated to the reality of how an addiction, of any sort, affects someone and their loved ones before I started down that path myself.

My husband was to the point where he could barely function properly as a literal human being. His decision making was horrendous. He isolated himself. His thought process was vacant. He was a monster. I was also to the point where I could barely function because of the many sleepless nights I endured. I felt alone, even when he was physically standing in front of me. I felt defeated, helpless, depressed, anxious, and scared. My fight or flight mode never silenced. I never had time to recover from one moment to the next one. There I was, trying to figure out motherhood, breast feeding, pumping, sleep routines and lack there of. I was trying to navigate my new body, my new way of thinking, my new emotions. I was doing all of this, while trying to figure what in the hell was wrong with my husband. Then, it happened, the truth spoke, and we started down a road that is too dark for me to write about right now. Someday, maybe.

Flash forward to now. Almost 3 years later, and here we are. We have our own home, another baby girl, careers, and a solid foundation of family and friends. We are stronger. We are humble. We are so thankful to have had the opportunity for second chances. I remember praying on my knees in a chapel in the midst of the hell, and saying this:

"God, if we are in your plans, if our marriage is in your plan, then I need you to bring him back to me. He needs to come back to me, because I cannot go after him."

God moved, and so did we.

Recovery is a blessing, it is forever, it is messy, and it is full entirely of trials and tribulations. The choice of recovery saved my husband, it saved me, and it saved everything in between.

I have learned and am still learning many things from this hand of cards that have been dealt to me, to us. One is that people will only change if they want to, and you will never be able to do it for them. You can judge someone all day long out loud, but when you are walking their road it will silence you immediately. There are obstacles that you will face in different moments of your process, and unless you recognize and own those moments, it is impossible to heal. Trust is built by brick and mortar and it crumbles faster than it rebuilds. It takes longer than you think to process trauma and betrayal, and you can sit as a victim in the pool of regret, sadness, anger, and resentment for far too long if you don't come out for air.

Sometimes, life can seem so unbearable. It can seem like you awaken in the morning to just try and barely get through your day, to only go to bed and do it all again tomorrow. It's easy to feel stuck and overwhelmed. Its easy to disconnect from the hard stuff, until it isn't. Being intentional about your peace is hard when your brain is not open to it. Being mindful about joy is hard when you aren't open to happiness. These moments will lay low for awhile, but then they will consume you like the waves do the ocean. When you are in a state of uneasiness, discomfort, overwhelm, you have to find an outlet. Keep it quiet, or share it with the world. The fact of the matter is, you have to feel and sit in all of the darkness in order to recognize and appreciate the light. You have to bear the bad in order to see the good, but you have to be open to the good. Don't let the misfortune of your circumstances define you, my friend. One persons hardship is another ones saving grace.

I think it's ok to help someone who is right there with you, you know? Like when a parent loses a child, the parent(s) carry the heaviness of that cross much harder then the sibiling(s) of that child. When someone suffers from an addiction of any sort, the loved ones will suffer much differently than the addict themself. It's not about every single person dealing with the same amount of heaviness, it's about helping one another carry it. We must rise above. We may not know where to go, but we just have to begin.