The Struggle

Sometimes I think my husband and I have some form of PTSD. I’m not trying to make light of that either. Sometimes when something goes wrong with Al my husband and I go into “war” mode and we snap. It could be anything that set off those emotions of anger, sadness… FEAR! No one tells you once you son is in recovery all the yucky emotional scars start to surface. When those the emotional layers start to peel off instead of it being freeing and feeling good it’s painful and binding. It’s not easy trusting him anymore… how can we trust him? Just three months ago our son was on the path to his grave. So trusting his words, his intentions and even more so his judgment is proving to be a lot harder than we thought. Although for the most part I have learned the ART of letting go. Truly I have… and it’s so nice! That doesn’t mean I don’t feel scared for him and sad about his struggle, I do but then I am able to look up to the sky take a deep breath and say “I’ve giving it to you GOD”. HA… then I take another deep breath, send Al my love (spiritually) and move on with my day.

Thinking about it for a moment… we went from our son using $80 worth in heroin every day, sick, thin, frail and wasting away to literality going into detox overnight getting clean looking healthy, happy and focused on a future. PLEASE don’t get me wrong… every signal day that goes by with my son on the path of recovery we are HAPPY and relieved. Our level of stress has almost diminished. But it’s probity going to take some TIME for us to recover too.

I keep a picture of both my boys on my desk at work. It sits right in front of me. This picture was one of the happiest moments I've had with my son in a long time. On this day he was 3 weeks clean and he was genuinely happy and so full of joy on this day I've never seen his eyes sparkle so much, I've never seen his smile so bright. It reminds me every time I get discouraged that he's going to make it... We just need to getting through all this yucky stuff.