An Ugly, Ugly Night

I came home from a meeting last night and it was about 9:00 when I got home. As I came in the door, my 16 year old daughter, purse on her shoulder and keys in her hand, was heading out the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I've got to go to the other house. Dad's still there. Everytime I talk to him he says he's coming home, but then he never does. I went over there earlier to get some money and I think he was on drugs. I think he's using again. Now he turned his phone off and won't answer. We have to go see if he's okay!"

Her dad moved back in with me this past November. He stopped using six months ago and we decided to make a go of it again, eight years after the divorce. Nine years ago, I moved out. I had one year clean and sober and he continued to use drugs. I was determined not to relapse back into active addiction this time around. I had been through treatment three times (over a 7 year period) and every time I ended up using again. It wasn't his fault, but living with someone in active addiction while trying to stay clean is very difficult. I obviously found it more than difficult; I found it impossible. I walked away from a 16 year marriage nine years ago.

Yesterday he said he was going to spend the day working on the house we're trying to sell. It is the first house we ever bought together. It is the house I walked away from when I walked away from the marriage. It is the house he has been living in since the divorce. It is the house we've been working on, getting it ready to sell, so that we can buy a new house together, start fresh. It is the house my daughter and I found him in last night when he didn't come home.

He bought and used an 8 ball of cocaine yesterday. That is a lot of cocaine to use in one day, especially after not using for 8 months. We found him wild-eyed, in the woods behind the house, geeked to the gills, jaw twitching, paranoid as hell. My daughter had never actually seen him like this. She had heard about it. Me being in recovery since she was 6 years old, and being in recovery off and on during the first 6 years of her life, I have never hidden the ugliness of addiction from her. But hearing about it and seeing it are two different things, as she discovered last night.

She went off on him. She's 16 and I am not naive, so therefore I know she probably talks very differently around her friends than she does around me, but when I heard her go off on her father last night, I was at first shocked... then sad... and then proud of her for saying what she needed to say.

"Dad, what is your fucking problem? What the hell do you think you're doing? You are a fucking idiot! Look at you! You're pathetic! Oh my god, you fucking did this to mom, you fucking did this to your son, and now you're fucking doing it to me! How could you do this? What the fuck is wrong with you? Don't you love me, don't you love us? Haven't you been happy to be a family again? Oh my god, you are ruining everything! Mom can't live with you like this! Oh my god, I can't live with you like this! What the hell are you doing? Why are you doing this again? No wonder my brother, your own son, can't stand you sometimes... he had to see this, he had to live with this after mom left? No wonder he ended up leaving, too! My god, I couldn't live with this, either! What is wrong with you? Why would you do this to me, to us, to yourself?"

That was just a very small bit of the rant. I thought about stopping her. This was her father she was speaking to like this. She should respect her father. She is a child.

No, she's not a child. Not really. Not anymore. She's a young woman and she saw a side of life I have been able to keep from her, a side of her father that, while known, never seen close up and face to face. It is an ugly thing to see.

She turned to me. "Thank you for never letting me see this part of you, Mom! Thank you for that. I don't know if I could have stood it." She turned back to her father. "How am I ever going to look at you the same again? You're pathetic. I can't believe this is my life, this is my family. What are we going to do now?"

Then she broke. She cried for a long time. I hugged her, she sat on my lap. Her father sat in a chair, getting his things together, getting ready to go home, and he kept watching the door, watching the road, wild-eyed, crazy, sure someone would pull in the driveway or come to the door. Paranoia up close and personal.

It was all so ugly. What a horrible, ugly night last night.

My daughter drove my car home. I drove his truck home, with him geeking in the passenger seat, apologizing, begging for forgiveness. I remained silent. I couldn't speak. What am I going to do, that's the only thought I could form, what the fuck am I going to do?

I woke up this morning with the same thought. It was getting redundant. I decided to pass it on to him.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know, I just don't know."

"You need to figure it out."

"Please don't throw me out."

"I can't live like this. You have to do something. You need help."

"You can help me. You've been helping me."

"No, I told you before, I am not your savior. I cannot save you. I'm doing good to save my own ass. I can't save yours, too. You must do it. I had to do it. No one did it for me. No one made me go to treatment. No one made me go to meetings. No one makes me go to meetings now. No one can save me but me. No one can save you but you. It's really that simple. Stop complicating it. Just get help."

"I hate those meetings. I will lose my job if I go into treatment. I can do this. I can stop. I've been clean for 6 months. I've been doing it. I can do this."

"Not here you can't. If you're going to continue doing this on your own, like you've tried over and over again for all these years, only to end up right where you are at this moment, you can't do it here. You can stay here if you do something different, if you decide to seek some help somewhere, if you go to meetings and get into recovery. You've been abstinent, but you haven't been in recovery. You could probably stay clean and abstinent for another several months... but then what? Then what? I'll tell you what. It's easy to predict the what. What will happen is what is happening right now. You'll use again because you can't help it. You'll use again because you have nothing to put in its place. You'll use again because it's the only thing you know to do. You'll use again because you're an addict. You'll use again because you'll need it again. I know. I know. "

"So what do I do?"

"Go to a meeting at 12:00 today. Go again at 7:00 tonight. Talk. Find someone after the meeting to talk to. Ask for some help. Get a sponsor. Or go to treatment. Call a treatment center. I called one last night, you refused to go. I can't make you. This is on you, now. I can't do it for you, I'm sorry. "

Then I got in my car and came to work. It was the hardest thing to do, to leave him standing there, to leave him in his pain, to leave him to decide.

But it is all I know to do.