As a new widow caused by addiction, I lived through things no human being should have to experience. I decided what urn the ashes from Daniel’s once beautiful 200 pound body would be placed in. I read paperwork that told of every aspect of his body down to the weight of each of his organs, written by a stranger who had methodically dissected a man who was once my best friend. I held my 7 year old daughter and 10 year old son as they wept inconsolably over the news that their hero was gone. I carefully crafted my words as I spoke to them of how their hero had died, as to do them as little harm as possible. I put my kids to bed that first night, completely unattached to the reality of our circumstance. Riddled with a shock so powerful, I didn’t even feel pain at the time.
I drove by the gravel pit that the porta potty he began to smoke that pill in and he was found in sat, the place where he took his last breath beside the highway and still drive by it often. I’ve spread pieces of him in the form of ashes onto some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I held his mother as she let out weeps for her baby boy. I was advised not to go see his body in order to say a final goodbye because the smell alone would haunt me for life. I stared for hours at the envelope that held his autopsy report inside and vomited until I had nothing left to give up after reading it. I laid in bed for ten months never truly sleeping, feeling an empty ache in an unearthly way.
I am raising our children, being mom and dad while also trying to give them enough love to make up for the immediate and forever lasting impact the death of a parent has on a child. I’ve been judged harshly by those I loved and abandoned by many. I no longer fit into social circles Daniel and I had once enjoyed. And I’m doing all this while navigating my own sobriety. I can go on and on with things I lived through. But all that matters today is, I am more me then I’ve ever been. Yes, i’ve traveled through mass darkness to find me, and yes, it took an extreme amount of violence to finally allow this gentle calmness that resides inside me. But I am more me than I have ever been. Sometimes there is beauty even in destruction if we can just hold on and wait for the storm to pass. No, this is not the life I had planned for myself. This is not what I wanted and it’s not what Daniel wanted, it just “is”. Sometimes there is no black-and-white, sometimes there just “is”… But even still, it IS a beautiful life.
Rock-bottom can only be measured by the person digging the hole. When others think we arrived, we find a way to go deeper. And when we think we’ve arrived, there’s a shovel waiting for us. So, we go a little further. Not realizing that we decide where our rock-bottom ends and not remembering that rock bottom, demands we pay a price, for the ride back up. But when you make it back to the top, the view is beautiful. THIS I have come to KNOW. Today, I stand 22 months sober.
So grateful that you are finding you in this sobriety journey and overcoming all the hurt and pain that you have had to endure. Big hugs to you and wishing you nothing but happiness on your road ahead! 