Recovering from Recovery

Today's Guest post is Shannon from CharmingBitch. I've already reached my quota of nice things to say about someone in my perfect post award post, so just read her amazingly honest and insightful post.

So. My sister is addicted to crack. She has been to rehab three times in the last year and each time it has taken a bigger piece of my soul, my heart and my serenity. I have continued without hesitation to give freely all of the above in addition to relinquishing my time, energy, money and the sanctity of my home and marriage. I say none of that for kudos or back-pats; I say it because it's true. And truly draining. But nonetheless, I thought like so many others who have a loved one mired in addiction, I well and honestly believed that if I just kept giving, kept wanting, kept encouraging and kept supporting that I could somehow influence her decision to use.

Newsflash: You can't make someone smoke crack and conversely you can't make someone not smoke crack. Or drink. Or gamble. Or over-spend or any number of other compulsive life-altering behaviors. It's their decision to use, their decision to quit.

Over the course of the last year I have found myself in family counseling, at separate times, with my sister, my husband and my brother in law. The issues that led my husband and I to counseling were obviously somewhat organic to our relationship and the loss of our son but my sister was a recurring substantive issue, as well. D firmly believed that after the first go-round in rehab that our dues were paid and we needed to retreat to allow the situation to either resolve or implode. We took some measures of self preservation such as moving across the bridge from Vancouver to Portland, just to get some physical distance (previously we were 1 mile apart). But I couldn't walk away, not from my sister. Not even from her douche-bag husband. I mean, we were essentially in couples counseling, my brother in law and I, in a concerted effort to figure out how to run a family and raise their kids in the best environment. I could barely stand counseling with my husband who I love like butter and to open myself up in that way with my brother in law was really pushing the limit of my patience and his too because well, fuck. Who wants to be as vulnerable as a therapeutic setting forces with someone you can only just barely tolerate?

But we did it, we all did it and endured the second inpatient treatment with a minimum of bloodshed. My sister again came home and again in short order relapsed again. This was after our shot at counseling together wherein she blamed me for every single thing that ever went wrong in her life. She would listen to not word about her treatment of me or how her actions effected me, no. It was all about how I was horrible as a sister, as a human being. Soon after, no surprise, brother in law agreed and I was cut off from them and the kids. No surprise this corresponded exactly with the time my parents moved here. Typical addict behavior - cut out the one who calls you on your bullshit as soon as a fresh mark is available.

So fast forward to more and worsening relapses. And please keep in mind that when I say relapse I don't mean she would sneak out for an hour and go use. No, she preferred to take off instead for days at a time. It was horrifying enough conveying these absences when my parents were still safely 3000 miles away; it was devastating to watch their hearts break up close and in person. I can't even think about those achingly long days for the kids when mommy was missing in action.

Going forward, my brother in law had to go to California to bury his father. The day he came home, my dad broke both of his ankles (and subsequently had heart failure during surgery and was in a coma for almost five weeks). The first week of our dad being hospitalized, my sister again took off.

Weeks later, she did the same again. This time from the hospital where our dad was leaving her three kids behind, again.

Deep breath. That day will go down in my heart, forever, as one of the very worst in all of our lives.

And so it goes, third verse same as the first. Detox followed by inpatient rehab but this time brother in law insists on a ninety day stay and speaks of restraining orders, custody orders, her doing time in a sober living facility before having access to the kids again. We don't argue, don't pressure, we just listen and assure him we support whatever decision he makes for his family regardless if the final outcome meant my sister wasn't necessarily part of his family day to day. Detaching with love is what they call it recovery, let him make up his own mind and determine his future.

Meantime, I had already quit my job so of course the next logical step was to give up my apartment (my husband and I were or actually are living separately due to other issues) to be available to take care of the kids while brother in law worked. And so I did. Because once he gave the green-light that he wasn't going to abscond with the kids to get away from the insanity, we began planning The Summer of Awesome for the kids. I say ''we'' because I made no plans without consulting him and keeping us on the same page. Because even to a douche-bag, I was willing to give that much courtesy (and mistakenly believed it would be returned).

Except how he spent the entire time my sister was in rehab telling her that I didn't want her to get better, didn't want her to come home and I wanted her to go away forever. Words that never, ever no matter how fucked the situation was would ever cross my lips; I was in this to win this from the first day she admitted there was a problem. And when the 30 days were up, he not only brought her back home, he took her out overnight for a mini-vacation the first night rather than bringing her straight home to their kids. Apparently, three stays in rehab earns you a free night on the coast (Seaside OR). Who knew? None of the plans for the kids mattered (impossible to follow through with because her last go-round ended with her van being wrecked and impounded so with a one-car family multiple camps and play-dates aren't feasible), none of the plans for anyone mattered because they had each other and that's is all that mattered. Again.

But see above, you can't make someone use, you can't make someone get sober and you absolutely can't make someone understand your investment and sacrifice if it's not of any meaning to them so I have nobody but myself to blame for getting so involved.

Which leads me to again detaching with love but this time for my own sake and serenity, not someone, anyone else's. It burns me in a visceral way to allow my sister and especially her kids to become just some people I used to know (and will always love) but at the same time, it's a relief to know I can honestly say I did everything I could do and the outcome was both unfortunate and out of my hands.

Recovery is hard but recovering from recovery, again, has proven to be the hardest habit to break.