Magical Patterns

It is late. I'm a wee bit tipsy lying here on the couch wondering where I should begin from where I left off. An hour ago I texted Kyd, a playful nudge to make contact. It's been nearly a week since I've heard from him. 

Roi kicked him out of the house, twice. That's a complicated story, and I'm still sorting through the notes to piece together how I feel about all of it, so I'll get to that later. The uncomplicated parts are that it turned out Kyd wasn't sober - hadn't been the whole time he was living with us - and he wasn't working nor looking hard enough for work. 

I was convinced it would be disastrous to throw him out into the world like this, and it was disastrous for a brief time, and then he found a job and an apartment. 

Let me pause here and notice something with you. I live in two states when it comes to Kyd. I'm either in crisis/panic/everything-is-a-complete-disaster-and-it-will-never-be-better mode, or I'm in oh-my-god-don't-anybody-move-don't-anybody-breathe-lest-this-good-thing-get-screwed-up mode. In my defense, this is clearly a response to a pattern of crisis followed by brief hope-filled reprieves that do not last. 

When I didn't hear from Kyd for a couple of days that then turned into a week - well, look, I knew, I knew that something in his new utopia had gone wrong. Mother's intuition, or whatever you call that sixth sense that partners/family members of addicts develop. But really, if a pattern repeats and repeats, is it really all that magical when one can predict what comes next? 

I don't want to be right about such things. Not these things. I want the pattern to stop existing. I really really want to be proven wrong. 

Safe Sex

Various conversations and readings in the last few days have me thinking about sexual trauma. It's a given (depending on who you talk to) that being a partner to a sex addict causes relational trauma, but I feel sexually traumatized too.

Before SA I was comfortable with my sexuality, I think as comfortable as anyone can feel in such a confused culture. I was comfortable with what I liked and what I didn't, and didn't think about or particularly care about what others were up to.

After SA, I see sickness and confusion everywhere.

If Roi Had a Blog

I found this in drafts from about a year ago.

I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety over this work situation. I've got to do more sales and bring in more work, yet I'm depleted of the necessary energy after having to manage my recovery AND Briar's complete dysfunction around work. She's screwing up royally but I can't talk to her about it. She is unable to take direction or criticism. 

We went to lunch today where I hoped to extract from her her intentions around work, and come up with a plan that might work for everyone involved. She couldn't look me in the eye and stubbornly refused to share her thoughts on the matter. Next thing I know she's bawling right there in the restaurant and I don't know what I've said. 

admin-style purging

It is officially summer. Officially the most triggering time of year since my life with Roi. I had somehow convinced myself that it's been forever since any indiscretions but then I just went back through this blog and realized that it's been about a year since any acting out with sex addiction and a mere 4 months since another breach of trust with prescription drugs. 

This is what happens when I spend too much time with Roi and not enough time in my own reality. All the crazy gets normalized and I end up feeling like I'm the problem. I'm the crazy. Like, what is my problem already, everything is fine. I forget that 5 years of nearly continuous addiction leaves its mark and there must be proper time to heal. 

What I don't forget is that despite sobriety, there's still a lot of crazy and the events of the last several months seem impossible, insurmountable to write about. Too many interwoven complexities that I can't possibly unravel in one blog post to catch you up on all things. Let's just say that I'm coming to terms with how ill Roi is and how ill I got and how far I still have to go and how Roi is probably done growing since he's been in denial for pretty much the whole show.

Sorry that this isn't all more poetic. I always need to do a bit of admin-style purging before getting to the writing. 

pray you never

I'm sitting at a cafe waiting to pick up Roi. He spent the weekend in New York and then extended his stay by two nights. Without asking. Certainly without respect to my schedule, or my triggers. He was decidedly unapologetic about it. Heck, he went so far as to guilt me. 

But then, I know this. This is Roi, and this is how he does life. It's good to no longer be surprised by his absurd behaviors. Better still to be focusing on what I want to do, where I want to go next, and how I'm going to get there. Sometimes I wonder if Roi was sensing my movement away from him and felt compelled to buy a house, not JUST because the market was right, but because unconsciously he may have thought I would never leave if there was a house.

I'll admit. I had a brief few weeks of worry about this - that I wouldn't want to leave for love of a house. 

As my last post indicates, I no longer worry about that. 

Right now the only thing I'm worried about is Kyd. Those worries could fill three volumes, but in the best summary I can give. Kyd is facing 90 days if he doesn't come up with a pretty large sum of money between now and next Thursday. This is for the DUI and accident he was in 3 and a half years ago. He's not been able to find work, nor be stable enough to look properly or present himself as a desirable employee. 

I don't talk about Kyd much. I'm not sure why this is. It seems to be wrapped in fierce motherly protection, denial wrapped in clutching hope, bottomless feelings of helplessness that don't like to be poked, the brain-crunching juxtaposition of feeling no empathy for Roi and wanting desperately for Kyd to not hurt others the way Roi has, and god knows what else.

In fact, I find I can't really talk much more about him even now when I set out to do that. 

Neurofeedback is saving my life, keeping me sane amidst what would bring the best of us to our knees. I'll just say that. And ask that whatever form of prayer or good energy you practice, if you could send some toward this corner of the world it would be much appreciated. 

Dear Blog

It's me again. 

Here we are at the new house. And it's lovely. More than lovely. It's solid, and grounded, and peaceful, and grand. It holds a gentle energy within its walls. It sits on a hill on a quiet street, meeting squarely the mountains across the way. 

Kitten has found all the best nooks for naps, including nestled in beside me in my office chair as I work. 

All of my friends and family are agog and gushing with congratulations and wishes for long happiness in our new house. 

I take it in stride. This house, for me, represents the place where I will transition to whatever comes next. No matter how we try, Roi and I cannot seem to fall into any kind of harmony with one another. Verbally he pronounces it is all he wants, and yet strife follows nonetheless. It is now clear how exhausting of any good energy this relationship has for me, and if Roi weren't in a perpetual state of denial (is denial a personality trait?) he would probably feel the same. 

And despite how much I love this house, because I really do, I feel no pain at the thought of leaving it. Only that it seems wrong that Roi should live in it, that he may in the future have someone else live in it with him. 

I've explored this feeling thoroughly, rooting around in its soil, looking for any trace of jealousy or resentment. I do still have resentment, but it's not there regarding him living in the house. It just feels...wrong. As though the house wouldn't want him, would never belong to him no matter how much money he laid down. 

I only want to know that where I go next will be me, will be mine wholly, and that what this house gifts me will come with me. 

a room of her own

Kitten 2 is still alive so far. An hour ago we found her quivering under the bed again, breathing in short raspy breaths. The landlord had come over and frightened her into hiding with his deep baritones. 

Now she sits up against me cleaning herself, her fear forgotten. 

I am thinking about the new house and the extra bedroom. It's tiny and yellow and full of sun and I've claimed it for myself as my "writing room".  Which sounds heavenly under most any circumstances, but more so because I haven't had even a bedroom in over a year, never mind another room all to myself. Roi and I simply can't sleep in the same bed because he's such a light sleeper that even a small snore from me will set his teeth on edge the whole night, and while I'm a heavy sleeper he has such severe restless leg syndrome that he rattles the windows with his kicking. Only a corpse could sleep through that.

Now I will have a separate bedroom and the writing room. 

For however long I'm there. 

It was not my decision to buy this house. Despite what Roi thinks are good intentions it doesn't seem within his realm of abilities to think of us as an us. He thinks he thinks this way, but in reality he operates as though I'm along for the ride. He wants my approval on things, but that approval always has limited options created by him. 

Roi decided the market was right to buy a house and suddenly "we" were house-hunting. And what a roller-coaster that was for me, the ups and downs of which Roi seemed oblivious to. I had say in what I wanted, and the house we finally chose makes us both happy. And because he's buying it with his money and credit I'm not taking on any financial risk (I couldn't anyway even if I wanted to) but this makes it feel like it's "his" house and not ours. And given the ever present relationship problems, particularly around trust, it's created an emotional landscape of fluctuating hope and despair. I'm trying to ride the waves of these emotions with some amount of grace - trying to let a cool head prevail and look at only the logic of it. 

(to be continued...I have a neurofeedback appointment to run off to - let's see what funhouse of emotions this session leaves me with.)