Methadone saved my marriage. Or, did it just prolong it? I think back to that day when I felt I had finally reached, for real, for sure, my  breaking point, and he came home and announced he was going to try the methadone program.

Well, didn’t I owe it to us, the years, the kids… to give him one last shot? Who knew it would work? I can assure you that I had little faith.

As I look back over this past year and half, as things get more and more perfect, as I tell him my truth and he responds with…

On my mother’s side of the family, all the aunts and one uncle have been married only once (keeners).  They married young and stayed that way. They are well to do folks who have lived ’slow and steady’ humble lives. There is no overt alcoholism or drug addiction in their lives;  although, pu lease - there is alcoholism and healthy amount of denial.  But, they seem to be making the denial work for them, they’ll probably live out their days taking care of one another…

Ugh.

So, what does that make me?  Even my cousins are lifers in the institution of marriage. …

He had a dream that I told him I was leaving him, because I ‘was done.’

I laughed. We have a good relationship, we’re good friends, we respect and love each other. and I said, “that’s weird, why do you think you had that dream?”

“Pff, I don’t know” he said.

Really? I thought, Cause, I’m pretty sure I just said that to you the other day…? I let it go and watched him go about his morning.

At his point, it most sincerely is an endearing quality to watch him hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

Last night, I asked him again why…

I cried a lot yesterday. I cried at my minds sight of my husband, who I was letting slip between my fingers - letting go slowly.

It amazes me to know end that this could happen now; yet, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

In the last few weeks I have come to cross a line in myself that feels impossible to cross back on. I can’t go backwards. I have become witness to my own truth: that no matter how much and deeply I love this man (and I do…) my heart has been gone for a long time. I’m…

I cuffed myself. I’m gagged on my own blog… I think it might be killing me. I wrote this for my own blog and couldn’t hit publish:

God! god god god god, god! she says as she bangs the back of her head against the wall.

I want a tattoo. I want to feel the needle in my back.

I want a bath so hot it seers my skin.

I want to stop growing and changing for just one fucking second.

I want to stop feeling the obsession to speak; like a magician’s string of handkerchiefs, words keep coming out of mouth… making me gag…

A few weeks ago, I went to get a haircut from my sister. It was the first time I had talked to her since our last minor spat wherein I spanked the white elephant - that is, spoke of my concern, told her I was aware she was in some serious active addiction, blah blah blah.

So, as an easy make up - my hair cut allows us to forgive and forget. Our other sister, the youngest, is there with us; today she is playing the nurse maid. We both roll our eyes at each other at the status of our…

We went away this weekend. He usually picks up his weeks supply of methadone on a Sunday. This Sunday, however, we would be out of town. Remedy? Take 5ml less for the last three days of the week so that Sunday he as at least 15mls to do.

Are you following me?

He’s been on the program a year and half and we’ve gone away before; he’s never really had to get creative. Also, this is following his announcement that he’s pretty sure he wants off the program; so, now… he’s, like, the king of ’self management.’

He’s upstairs right now, practicing his…

I loved my husband when I first saw him. He seemed so serene. After all he had been through, you could see he had come to a place of humble acceptance of what was and what had been. I was so attracted to his quiet strength - like a magnet.

Twelve years later, I find that I don’t love him any less. In fact, I love him more. When I came to a place of quiet surrender around his addiction, my whole world opened up. I no longer owned him or was responsible for his using or not using. He was…

It’s been a few weeks since I saw my sister, since my last post. I went there this weekend for a haircut and to bury the hatchet that we wouldn’t speak of. I was welcomed at once by the nonsensical, all over the map, insanity that is my sisters idea of sharing. When people that we know in common see me and ask me “how’s your sister?” I say, “She’s crazy…” with a sweet maybe I’m joking, maybe I’m not, face.

I’m not joking.

I love her.

She has a neighbour that has become her new best friend. Her neighbour is a opiate…

I guess I’ve heard it enough, I should accept the validity that partners and families of addicts often have control issues. But, I don’t, right? I am the most easiest, care free, person there is - hand to god. Or so I would have me believe.

Sometimes, I get all up on myself and think that I’ve been through enough shit, and worked hard enough to have healthy boundaries, that nobody should up and challenge some of my dangling and sinewy defects of character. Rude!

But, there it is: sweet, illusive, control. I want it. I want it and it is simply…

My first famous last words were to my dad, about a month before he died, I said “why should anybody tell you anything? You’re not my dad, you’re nothing but a drunk!” and I laughed “Ha!” in my sweet fourteen year old, big chip on my shoulder, take that mother fucker, way.

Ahh, to be young.

I didn’t know my dad very well, he was always drunk, but I do have some great stories of his escapades that make me laugh and laugh  with and at the insanity of his/our life.

About five years after his death, when the veil of ignorant bliss…

Ahh, family - you sweet bitch.

It is happening, Christmas is stirring up a handful of things that I manage to avoid through out the year, such as… dinner with my sister. ‘Bite the bullet’ is a phrase that comes to mind when I think of a warm family dinner. It is the shrill sound of my sister’s victim stance that sends shivers down my spine, like a fork screeching across the dinner plate - such is the voice of my dearest older sister. She is a dry drunk, a wet drunk, a binge drug addict, and an all over toxic…

I feel like I am walking into an empty room full of strangers. Hello…? You’ll all come in on your own time and see me standing here, introducing myself.

Hi, I’m Mantra of Mantramine- The Art of Being. I was so very pleased to be invited here to share my experience, past and present, in my spiritual recovery. I am many things: a writer, an artist, a mother, a woman, a cussy mouthed Canadian, and a the wife of a heroin addict who has found recovery on the methadone maintenance program.

I have been heard to declare that I AM NOT A CODEPENDENT!…