So Much More than Just a Wife of an Addict

The name of this blog is not a title that defines me. I would be lying to say that being the wife of an addict hasnt shaped me though. “Addict” was a term that i was discouraged to use in the beginning. “That’s a disrespectful thing to call your husband,” I was told. It would belittle him and give people the wrong idea, they whispered in vain attempts to hush me. We wouldn’t want people to think he was doing meth or something. Oh wait, he was.

There is so much power in a name. In my bible study we just read about Daniel and how King Nebuchadnezzar changed the name of Daniel and his friends in an effort to acclimate them to their new lives under the evil king’s rule. He wanted to strip them of their old identity and break any connections they had to their past as young leaders im their Jewish community.

With *Duke* though (the husband-ish that you will soon hear more about), it wasnt until he embraced the title of addict that i saw true strength and true  understanding of his identity as a man and as a son of Christ. The same goes for me- the wife of an addict. When i wore this name as a part of me, reflected on my journey, and looked back to see what i had trudged through- i began to heal. I see it as a badge of honor.

Dealing With the Pressure

Let’s start at the very beginning (we have been watching a lot of Sound of Music)…      I am a 30 year old mother of 3 girls and the legally-separated wife of an addict. I have 3 healthy, bright girls, a job I love, and gobs of love and support from family and friends. My husband (there is no title between husband and ex-husband) lives at his parent’s home, about 5 minutes from where my girls and I live. He has not lived with us since December 2012, with the exception of a couple of months in 2014. His love for oxy began in June of 2010 when our oldest daughter was 2 months old. A simple hernia surgery led to his insatiable quest for that terrible stuff. *Duke* we will call him had used drugs recreationally in our early 20’s, but had always seemed to have it in his control. My mom, using her intuition, warned me, “keep an eye on how many of those pain killers he’s taking.” I told her he would be fine. Little did I know that my husband of 11 months was about to lead us down a crazy, terrible, heart-breaking path.

It’s hard to recount the whole story. Parts of it are so insane. Parts of it so sad. Parts of it so stupid that I feel my heart start to pound with anger. So now that I have started at the beginning, I will go back to today. He (Duke) stopped by to kiss the girls goodnight. This has become a nightly routine- him playing with them for a little before they go to bed. He’s not currently welcome in our home because he has been very dis-honest and I don’t want to take on the burden of paranoia. When he used to come in, I had to have him in sight as well as my most expensive belongings. “Would this be something a pawn shop would like?” is a question that I would regularly ask myself before he came over. When he came by tonight he dropped a mini-landmine on me- his mom had packed up his stuff because one of her necklaces went missing when his family was out of town. My body has developed this emotional suit that rivals Ironman’s, so news like this doesn’t affect me personally. We are not “we.” I was reminded of this as I minimized windows of Word documents filled with fancy legal jargon that will help me make our un-we’ing official. BUT, like every super hero, I have my weakness. My baby girls. It kills me when I think of how Duke’s actions will effect the girls. If he is really kicked out and starts to live in his car, he will probably get back on meth, or worse, heroin and lead a miserable, less than dead existence or he will die. So tonight, I told him to think about his choices. To think about how they will affect his daughters and to get into a rehab. He whined a little about how he is a terrible person and about how crappy his life is- all things that are due to his choices. I try not to be too sarcastic when I recall how he got to where he is today.

So, here I sit. Trying my best to not be concerned about what will happen next to him. I don’t want to have to tell my girls that they can’t talk to Daddy for a month because he is in rehab. I don’t want them to not be able to see him because he is high out of his mind on a dangerous drug. You can remove yourself from the situation, put all of the proper boundaries in place, but that doesn’t mean that your brain won’t start wondering what will happen in the next couple of weeks. Will he lose his job and I lose child support? Will he die? Will he step up and better himself so he can be a dad?

With all of these instable uncertainties, it seems so fitting that the verse my girls and I have been working on memorizing is, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” from Hebrews. Many things in our lives right now may be uncertain, but Christ and his promises never change. His promise that he will never leave us brings me great comfort. Though the father of my children my dance in and out of my life, Christ stands strong, leading me and my girls into uncharted territory.