MOOM

Firstly , here is the craft that helped me through the days where I longed for him to believe in himself

Years worth of behaviours , not just including addiction! You’d think to yourself that the hardest part of supporting a heroin and crack cocaine user was when they are actively in it . Sure, being extra vigilant with your decisions , awareness of their health , trust etc are just to name a few things that boggle the mind when they are using. When to know they are lying to you and when they are not, denial and on and on I could go ? It’s a hard task . Its especially hard when you are trying to support them to trust the world again. By juggling the above issues you risk pushing them further away . If you get it even the tiniest part wrong, WOW the walls go up , I mean there aren’t many healthy habitual coping mechanisms to work with. It can be as simple as using the wrong word. Hyper vigilance I began to exhibit. Please excuse the ‘ them’ , I don’t mean to categorise – another thing to be wary of through the journey. From now on its back to ‘HIM’, me and ‘US’.

When you Judge another , you do not define them , you define yourself

The hardest part for me was managing the behaviours when he stopped using drugs. That was the whirlwind . Despite all this, I never really felt unsafe , though on one occasion my temper surprised me and him. I should have accessed support. I did feel unheard, lonely and helpless longing for him to love himself and to recognise what love could look like. There were many risks to write on paper as I would be doing at my workplace , but in my mind as long as I continued to try to understand HIS underlying reasons behind the behaviour, put boundaries in place and protect my family, it made it easier to communicate and navigate the behaviours with him. My fear was that many people would think I was justifying certain behaviours or enabling . I still don’t think I was . Dare I say it , I was a good at my job as a support worker for children and young people with complex behavioural needs, BUT , I did I feel like a case worker for the first year or so of our relationship. I was eagerly waiting to play girlfriend role but that was too much for HIM at that time.

For me , it has confirmed why it is so important to have non-judgmental attitude in and outside of work settings. . It is sad to see that many employees, people in general , for whatever reason , find this hard to implement . Maybe because they are unaware of the impact the smallest word, look or sentence could have on a person with so much trauma. Maybe the judgemental attitudes only come into play because people need to vent , maybe because they fear it is a secondary trauma to them. I am not sure that secondary trauma is spoken of enough. Whatever the reason it was not nice to be a part of .

There were many good times. Trips to Newquay with the children , making a scrapbook together, buying our first christmas tree together and many more . My aim is to use this blog as a journal and maybe give insight to people who have or haven’t been a family member , friend or partner of either a person in active substance misuse or the aftermath of substance misuse., or of course both.

LEARN, LEARN, LEARN

Why would someone love or compliment me ?

• A compliment was hard to give , he wouldn’t believe them. He saw it as a way for me to get what I wanted . He hated himself , he had been criticised for a lot in his life , whether he be guilty or not .

Why should ‘HE, ME, US have faith ?

• Nothing to ease the trauma , nothing to ease the boredom, finding replacements to ease the withdrawals, waiting lists . HIS rush , rush , rush to complete tasks , any task. It was like ADHD, ADD, Attachment and PTSD all rolled into one. Maybe if he was seen by an expert they would have agreed. There’s another post in the making ;getting him to engage with services and professionals. He had no faith in the ‘system’. I had no faith in people’s compassion. Was that a previous trauma I needed to explore or the lack of compassion I received from the few people I entrusted with the information? BE open , we can’t help waiting lists , but we can open our minds . Over time awareness of recovery has increased , it takes a longer time for the people in recovery to become aware of their behaviours . It is scary