Steve II

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When in love with an active alcoholic and your trying to recover yourself chances of success are almost zero. In our case we fallowed the masses before us and I relapse soon after and left the Villa Serena where I was making great progress in my recovery and in self healing. I wish I could say that we had a great whorl wind drunken love affair, but it was not. I was filled with a lot of pain, sadness, regret and worst of all violence. Steve had been homeless before arriving into the 28 day program and after his relapse he ended up in the exact same place as before. While I ended up falling further down and Steve was an anchor I did not want to let go of. 

When I made the decision to stay with him I knew it was going to be a very difficult journey I just did not realize how emotionally painful it would eventually become and how far my addiction would end up taking me. It gets worse you just never know how much worse it would be until you look up and see Armageddon has hit and it’s a life ender.

We really do love each other, but with alcohol involved it turns into a painful love courtship that lured me to the brink of ending our relationship. Steve started flying agin (using a sign at a corner street for money) and I wanted no part of it. But it did not take long for me to become an enabler and started to pick him up and drop him off at the next location. The most difficult part of his flying and becoming a part of it was watching him have to go through a routine that changed him into a hard emotionally closed off person and it always started with a beer. I guess you have to when you have to stand in the middle of the street begging for money and everyone watching you, judging you, even looking at you with pity or hate. Just seeing it tore at me and the powerlessness I felt in not being able to help him out of it. That caused me to to drink and use drugs even more because I couldn’t handle my own feelings over this.

All this occurred with in two and half months of leaving our safe haven, but it felt like a life time of suffering. We were both changing so much and quickly that we were not the same people when we fell in love with each other just a while ago. Why we stayed together I believe is that at the core of us we knew we belonged together, but for how much longer I did not know. We needed help and I didn’t know how to do it without leaving him to die out under a bridge somewhere.

The first time I really thought of ending our relationship was when Steve physically restrained me in bed and would not let me go. He was showing me that he was in control and that I could not do anything about it. It was the first time anyone was physically violet with me and it was frightening to say the least. Then came the time when  I no longer wanted to talk to him because he was so drunk and not making sense. I walked out of the bedroom to get away and he came after me and threw me up against the wall and pinned me there. I was so scared he was going to punch me I yelled out for my sister. To make matters worse my sister was having a party at the time.  We got into my car and I was going to go drop him off with his homeless friends when he looked over at me in a rage and said, “You are so lucky I’m not going to kill you tonight.” That scared me enough that I immediately pulled over and jumped out and ran for it. There I was barefoot and running from dark bush to the next afraid he would find me. I made it to my sisters and I called the police for a domestic problem for the first time in my life. I was humiliated and ashamed that things had gotten this bad for both of us. I had told myself that would not happen to me after growing up and seeing what my mother had to endure.

Things would continue to get worse, but I must say that the love for him never wavered and I just did not know how to leave him. I was so confused and afraid to stay and leave that I felt stuck. Then the inevitable happened and I ended up in the hospital on July 18th on life support due to an overdose, my third. I would be unaware of the worlds going on much less my own and the ones I loved most to include Steve for the next 5 weeks until I came to.