Denial

I know others who have faced these challenges. Especially nowadays, which is crazy because I never had before. I never hung with anyone who used drugs and if I found out they had, I cut them off. It was that simple, that easy… I was against it. “That thought process right there taught me never to judge! You truly never know how you will react”..

The truth is my husband and I were soul mates. We had overcame all odds to be together. I could never live without him. We broke up one time.. and for the entire time I felt like I couldn’t breathe without him. So, when he said it was a one time thing.. that he could stop any time. I believed him, not because I truly believed him, but because I wanted to. Not to mention, if I believed him I didn’t have to go against me.

The first time I was faced with this news, he was in a car accident and wasn’t responsive at the scene. A police officer came to my door and said he had a seizure and was being airlifted to the city hospital. I remember my heart dropping and racing to be by his side and I stayed there the four days he was recovering. Before he was discharged from ICU he told me he had used. He came clean.. I didn’t even know he ever did drugs, “except for the one time he said he took a Percocet, oh and the other time I found out he had used cocaine. But he wasn’t doing anything, they were just one time instances”. Then for him to admit he had used heroin. I remember staring at the wall in shock and not knowing how to react or what to say. But I told him we would get through it and together. And then he said he saw the pain in my eyes and never wanted to do that to me again. We all want that, right? To be enough.. enough that they won’t need to use. We can love them enough, support them enough that they won’t need to think about that. We put the blame for them using on ourselves.. because if it is our fault we can’t be mad at them.

The day we got home from the hospital we had a house full of people. I walked into the bathroom to find him zoned out and clenching his fists. It looked like it could be a seizure but I knew better. I knew he hadn’t had one before, so I knew what this was. But he said I was crazy and that’s not what i saw. I didn’t want to argue with him, I just got him back. So I let it go again. And over and over.

We could go for months, even a year where he seemed to be doing well. He was clean…. I did it. I was enough, I saved him. But I didn’t. He had another OD a year after that.

One day we were driving with our newborn and he drove right through a red light completely zoned out and we were in an accident. His anger started getting worse. And I kept ignoring it. Well, if I was wrong and I was accusing he would use from me accusing of using. Yeah, I know how it sounds, but it seemed logical at the time..

Then he OD’s again. Only this time he isn’t so lucky. It was bad and there was no coming back. I was left with our four year old baby boy, who adored his father, other grieving children and myself not being able to breathe again. A half of me was gone and this time I couldn’t save him. My life was never going to be the same. Why?

I should have fault with him then, maybe I would have been able to fight with him now. Maybe I could have pushed harder, maybe I could of simply asked him not to go out. But we were doing so well. He wasn’t going to do that. So now, all the what if’s. How could I have saved him? The questions, the realization.

See, that is the problem with denial. At the end of denial, lies the truth.