A letter to Glenn in rehab. March 25, 2008

This is the first letter that I wrote to Glenn in rehab. 

Dear Glenn,

Hi baby!  I have been thinking for a couple of days about what I’m going to write… and I am still unsure.  First of all, I miss you… madly.  I wish that you would have written a little more about the program, but I guess there are future letters for that.  I’m so glad you eventually decided to go down there.  I want you to recover so badly.  You have so much to offer the world, and the people around you, when you are clean and healthy.

 I guess the next topic is the important one.  I couldn’t for a second tell you that I don’t love you… because I do still adore you.  I don’t think that is enough right now.  I know that you are making an effort to realize the huge effects this has had on my life, and the other people around you, but I don’t know if you can fully grasp what the last year has been like for me.  Simply finding out that you were a heroin addict caused such a huge amount of turmoil for me, but it goes so far beyond that.  I don’t think you understand the emotional implications of thinking, for months, that every time I talked to you very well could be the last or what it feels like to stay up almost every night for 2 weeks talking to you on the phone so that you don’t commit suicide or how terrible it is to be 2000 miles away making panicked phone calls to try and get you to a hospital before you bled to death.  These things, and many others, have left horrible scars on me.  I’m a broken person.  At this point, I have nothing to give.  Not to you.  Not to anyone else. 

I spent so much of the last few years being your caretaker that I neglected myself.  I let myself get to a spot that I don’t ever want to be again and right now I am trying to recover from that.  I need to spend this time to heal because I have years worth of healing to do.

Glenn, I love you so much.  No matter what happens I want to be involved in your recovery and helping you get well the best I can.  I’m sorry, since I know this is bound to make you upset just like it has for me, but you asked me to be as honest as possible.  So here it is.

I love you so much.

Meg

I want my life to belong to me. March 1, 2008

I just recieved a packet of information from the rehab that Glenn is at.  I got so much angrier than is reasonable while I was reading through it.  I know that he is trying to get better and all but at this point I am so tired of dealing with this whole situation that I just don’t want to have to read 15 pages about Glenn’s treatment plan.  I don’t want to answer 5 pages of questions about Glenn’s addiction and how it has affected every area of his life and another 5 pages of questions about how Glenn’s addiction has affected every area of my life.  My whole fucking life is about Glenn.  I don’t even know if I exist outside of him.  He is everything that I have become.  We started dating when we were kids.  As we grew up, we became the people we are today with the other.  He is part of who I am.  But I just don’t want to do it any more.  I don’t want every breath I take to be about him.  I want my life to be mine, and no one elses. 

He is doing great! February 21, 2008

I didn’t write about my experience when I went to visit Glenn last weekend because I was unsure what to write.  I was there to do a family education program and only got to see Glenn for about 45 minutes in a family session with his counselor.  The instant he walked in I knew he was looking for a fight.  He was anticipating us bringing up the 3 month continuing care program in Florida.  As soon as it came up he went in to argument mode.  It was ridiculous.  He was saying that he had a bad experience so far with the facility he is at and he didn’t want to go to another place that was affiliated with it.  He swore he would go to another inpatient program that he chose.  Yeah right!  The three of us argued for a little while until, in true angry addict fashion, he stormed off.  I stayed and was speaking to his counselor on my own.  I had decided that was the last straw.  After about 15 minutes, he knocked on the door and came back in.  It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen.  He walked in and said “I’m sorry for my behavior just now and I apologize for storming off like a 6 year old.  I got outside and I had a moment of clarity.  It was the first time since I have been in recovery that I was able to see myself and the situation through everyone elses eyes.  I will go to the aftercare program.”

 I was amazed.  It’s not like he had a couple of days to think about the things that were said and reconsider.  It was 15 minutes!  So we talked for a while and it was great.  The reason I was apprehensive about writing an entry about it is because it seemed to good to be true.  I expected him to change his mind about going and go back to the way he was.  Today I spoke to his counselor for the first time since Saturday and she said he has been doing amazing.  He is a model resident.  Apparently his moment of clarity was legitimate and long lasting.  He is even the community leader now, which means that he has to keep all the guys on schedule and moderate conflicts between them, etc.

It’s kind of amazing.  I have a difficult time getting to excited about it because I have been let down by him so many times but I am at least optimistic for the first time in a long while.

What your addiction has cost me, a letter to Glenn. January 28, 2008

I spoke to Glenn’s addictions counselor tonight.  After she told me to “keep the conversation light” she also asked me to write something called a “cost letter”.  It’s a letter to Glenn about all of the things his addiction has cost me.  I figured I would share this here.  I haven’t sent it yet and would like any feedback about it.  If anyone has had experience with letters like this please feel free to comment. I have no idea what I should or shouldn’t include.

Dear Glenn,

            I’m supposed to be writing you a letter about how your drug abuse has affected me.  I’m sitting here and I don’t even know where to start.  For almost a decade it has been an ever present looming monster.  Sometimes it’s sleepy and groggy but most of the time it is ravenous.  Over the last eight years, you have become my life.  There is no aspect of our relationship that hasn’t been negatively affected by drugs, which means that my life is up ended every time you start to use again. 

            Your drug use has made me someone I don’t want to be.  I have always trusted you one hundred percent and I liked it that way.  When you started using heroine I was willing to do anything to help you stop, including snooping through your personal things.  It is a horrible feeling to be constantly trying to get a peek at your phone to see if you were contacting your dealer.  I don’t like being that person.  I want to trust you again.  I want to go back to being the person I enjoy being.

Your drug use made me feel foolish and humiliated.  When you were taking Methadone you convinced me that when you would nod off it was because of your Seroquel.  I believed you.  I didn’t know any better.  I watched a show about heroine addicts with you and jokingly said “hey look, that’s how your meds make you look.”  In retrospect it’s still embarrassing.

Over the past eight years I have spent so many sleepless nights wondering if tomorrow would be the day that I would get the call, the call saying that you were dead.  Dead from suicide, overdose, a bar fight, etc.  I can never sleep a whole night with out thinking about what you are doing.  Are you drinking or doing drugs.  Is tonight going to be one of the nights that I stay up all night talking to you on the phone so I can make sure you are ok?  Or is it going to be one of those times where I don’t hear from you and can’t get a hold of you.  Then I sit there and wonder if I should get in my car and drive two hours to make sure you are ok.  Or maybe it will be one of those nights where you call me, filled with anger and hate and tell me “I’m worthless, just like all your friends” and call me a “whore”.  I never know what the night time hours will bring.  The uncertainty and worry is unbearable.

Because I love you so much, the intensity of the worrying is all consuming.  I can’t focus on my life, school, family, or job.  Every time I sit down to do school work all I can think about is you; what are you doing, are you ok, where are you? 

Whether it is reasonable or not it makes me feel inadequate.  It makes me feel like I wasn’t enough for you.  You couldn’t be happy just being with me.  You needed drugs to make you feel like your life was ok.  No matter what I give I felt like it wasn’t enough because you always needed more.  I felt like our relationship wasn’t reason enough for you to get and stay clean.

We lost birthdays and Christmas’s to your addictions.  Times when people would ask me what you gave me for my birthday or Christmas and my response would have to be “oh, we decided not to give gifts this year” or “oh, he got me something really awesome. He said it’s on the way” only for it not show up, when really what it came down to is you didn’t have any money because you spent it all on drugs.

Your drug use has made me turn from a person who expects the best to someone completely lacking hope.  For eight years it has been promises of new beginnings, only for nothing to change.