It has been 18 days since I have blogged. So I decided this morning at 8:30am that I was going to write for an hour; get my blog posted by 10:00 am and then finish getting my clothes ready to take to AVALON to sell in Squirrel Hill so I can get enough money to get my gas turned on in my house. It’s been off for 5 days. The question right now in the Sugarmann house is “should we pay the gas at $1,066.00 so we can have hot water and a hot dryer or should we just pay the water bill at $740.00 which is going to be shut off on Friday so we make sure we at least have water regardless of whether it is cold or hot !!!” So, it is now 9:45 pm which means I have literally taken 13.5 hours to write this post. WTF is wrong with me. I have resisted writing a little more each day. All of my kids are home. They have been home since Sean had surgery. Every night my son says, “C’mon mum, kick the recliner up so you can lay back and go to sleep since you won’t go to bed……” I told him that I don’t want to go to sleep because I don’t want to wake up. Not that I want to die or anything of the sort……..just that I literally don’t want to “wake up” and be bombarded with all of those feelings of fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, emptiness, having to realize that there is no need to hurry and get dressed because I have to get to Uniontown. Not wanting to wake up to the fact that it’s yet another day that I don’t get to see my staff or my patients who I have literally been seeing EVERYDAY for the past 20 years. I haven’t seen Sammy in almost 2 months. Yes, it’s horrible. Yes, I’m whining. Yes I’m feeling sorry for myself.
Watching my kids is what keeps me moving. They truly have a story to tell. These kids went from having anything and everything they ever wanted to having absolutely nothing.
Ands they have done it with grace and dignity and a smile on their face. They have not shown one sign of resentment or anger to us at all. They have remained very humble and concerned about me and their father through this entire nightmare of us being shut down and raided by the Feds to Sean being diagnosed with Lung Cancer. They have gone from being on top of the world to almost being under the bridge. They are my greatest motivator and greatest support. They don’t even know it. I’m so very proud of them and so very honored to say they are my kids. I am blessed, regardless of how angry I get at God sometimes. This is not God’s fault. I am unsure “WHY” this happened. It baffles me. And NO I cannot NOT think about it. I cannot just “LET IT GO”. I hear from my patients EVERY DAY. I hear of a death/overdose EVERY DAY in Uniontown. It is unfair.
600 patients put out on the street???? And they make it sound like it’s a normal. Oh well, they are just drug addicts. Not useful for much of anything………..right? Is that not the message that is sent??
I have been writing all day….and deleting everything write. I’m so stuck because I feel my life is stuck. I’m on hold. I’m moving quickly and I’m stuck at the same time. I was married in my active addiction to a man I met while I was in college at West Virginia University. His name was Dante. We used together and we got married in 1979 on St. Patrick’s Day. He moved to Pittsburgh with me when we graduated from College. Our addiction took off once we moved to Pittsburgh. It got very bad. We went to rehab together in December 1983. We kicked heroin cold turkey in the rehab and finally on the 4th night they came in the middle of the night and put Dante in another rehab in the mountains. I was hysterical. You would have thought it was the end of my world. I learned about codependency after getting clean. My relationship with Dante suffered from SEVERE codependency. I acted desperate with him. He was a drug. I was pathetic. I bought him clothes. I bought him shoes. I gave him money. I followed him everywhere. I was pathetic. I convinced myself that I would MAKE him marry me. And I did. If someone asked him a question, I answered for him. If he wanted to be with another girl (before we got married) I wouldn’t say anything. I would do anything to keep him around. The thought of not being with him made me want to kill myself. I was pathetic. Hence, when they took him away from me and separated us in rehab I was crying hysterically. I screamed, “You took my dope now you took my husband”……..they responded, “Same thing…….” I remember those words like it was yesterday. They played over and over in my head and I did not know what it meant. We were separated for 45 days. The first week I was detoxing from him and I was out of my mind. At the end of the 45 days my therapist came to me and said “We are bringing Dante back here for five days so we can do some couples work before you go home.” I said, “Don’t bring him here, I want a divorce.”
Dante and I lived together for our first year in recovery. I knew instantly that we would not stay married. We were better friends than husband and wife. So I codependently went about my way and found him a job, an apartment and a new wife ! All because I felt so guilty. I soon learned that codependency was a part of the disease of addiction and that family members suffer from it. “Codependent No More” by Melanie Beatty is a great book for family members of addicts. If you have a loved one who is suffering from this disease you should read this book and I am sure you will relate and find it MORE than helpful to you.
Dante & I remained great friends. I married his sponsor. They were great friends. Dante was also one of our partners at ASI. We talked on a daily basis and we were great support for each other. Dante died last week. I got word of his death on the day AFTER his funeral. I am so hurt that nobody told me in enough time to go to the funeral. I can guarantee anyone that he is highly upset that nobody contacted me. He had very few people in his life. I am not surprised I was not contacted by most of them. There were a few, two in particular, who truly made me angry for not telling me. People are odd. They are jealous creatures. They have no self awareness.
We are on into a new day. It is 12:04 am. I have been trying to get this out an entire day. I will write more maybe even tomorrow !!! haha ! I am excited about the future. I believe things will get better and I believe that we will be open again soon and we will be able to go back to helping addicts just like we left off doing. For most of us, it is what we are supposed to be doing. And we are supposed to be doing it as a team because we made a great team !!!!! ASI / MES was a great upstanding ethical facility that had a true passion for helping addicts find a new way of life. Anyone who has had any reason to come to ASI/MES knows what we are about. All in favor of ASI/MES being put back in business
say “I”.
The “I’s” have it.
A Heroine Story 