Update, and tonight\'s news

January 5 became my husband's sober anniversary.  He had disappeared for a day and a half, using crack cocaine on January 3 and 4.  His parents knew about the incident, but I didn't tell mine, so that we could spend a few days quietly and privately making plans for his treatment.  On January 11, I escorted him on a flight halfway across the US.  He signed himself into rehab.  The social worker who greeted me asked me if I could estimate how much money my husband spent on drugs during his last relapse.  I told him that I had no idea about the January 3-4 relapse, but that he may have spent somewhere between twenty and forty thousand dollars on drug-related activities in 2007.  That testimony helped score him about 30 insured days in the facility. I spent the weekend with my sister and brother-in-law, and then went home.  The peace and quiet was blissful.  I read books and magazines when I came home from work.  I checked my email.  He wasn't there to guilt-trip or harass me or threaten me with a meltdown.  I realized how much I had missed being allowed to read, and, with a guilty twinge, I allowed myself to wonder--could I have more than 30 days?  Could I have six months?  Could my entire life be like this, reading books in peace, not being irrationally yelled at, not worrying that my paycheck was going to be stolen, not expecting criminals to walk into my house? Well, it has been six months now.  My husband returned only once, briefly, to recover some of his possessions.  I saw him for about an hour on February 14.  He wanted me to be present in our condo when he packed his things; he didn't want to be there alone. After completing a month of in-patient rehab, he made a six-month commitment to a sober house.  It worked well for two months until he had a "personality conflict" with one of the other residents and agreed to move out.  His new sober house worked well for another two months.  He was involved in church.  When he was three months sober, his best friend flew out to visit him; when he was five months sober, his parents flew out for Mother's Day.  He got a good job and completed the training period.  He was optimistic about his future.  He contacted me and gave me permission to take him off my health insurance because he wanted to take responsibility for insuring himself through his new employer.  I said I would look into it.  For one week, I kept forgetting to contact my HR representative.  I felt guilty, but I worked nights when HR wasn't there, and I was busy, so it was honestly just an oversight.  Finally, I obtained information and emailed it to him with an apology for taking a whole week.  He emailed back, saying he was "struggling" and had changed his mind about insuring himself.  Then he didn't answer any further communication from me.  He had relapsed. The relapse started with some financial mistakes.  As best as I can surmise, he was excited about his new paycheck.  Shortly after contacting me to say that he wanted to buy his own health insurance, he bought some new clothes, followed by a laptop that he didn't need and probably wasn't even allowed to have in the sober house.  He was able to return the laptop.  But he had been triggered.  Something was off-kilter in his head.   His next step was deliberately seeking out some people to "hurt him."  They beat him up, raped him, and injected him with their leftover drugs (heroin, as best as I can reconstruct from the details).  He couldn't return to the sober house, so he lived in his car for six days without eating or sleeping and lost 15 pounds.  The drugs in his arm hardened into an abscess.  Finally he confessed his transgression to the sober house and was formally kicked out.  He went to an AA meeting, and while he was there, the abscess began to melt, releasing the drugs, and he experienced a "seizure-like high".  Some members of the meeting took him to the emergency room where the abscess was surgically removed.  He was discharged onto the street because he had nowhere to go.  He found a social worker who helped steer him back to the rehab facility I had originally brought him to in January.  They quickly revived an old diagnosis from his early 20s--bipolar disorder, responsible for erratic and self-destructive behavior especially with money, sex, and drugs--and insurance gave him another month in residential care.  They give him appropriate psychiatric medication, which has been helping him, although he is embarrassed about the mild stuttering it causes.  Luckiest of all, his new job, knowing he had returned to rehab for mental illness and drug addiction, was anxiously awaiting his return.  He was discharged a couple weeks ago; today he is living with a friend, working full-time at his new job, and anticipating moving into his own apartment next month.  His new sober anniversary is June 10. Today I received the first postal-mail letter he has sent me in the six months he has been away.  It was a short letter of apology, dated July 13, including an alternative-spiritual DVD flick that I had failed to convince him to watch with me during the last few weeks that we were living together, when he was struggling with his secret Dec. 10 relapse and I didn't realize it.  He called me an hour ago and asked me some vague questions about our relationship.  He wanted to know "who you are to me," "who I'm talking to"; he doesn't want me to relate to him out of "pity or a sense of obligation"; etc.  He asked several times if it was OK for him to tell me something about his life.  I had a gut feeling that he was going to tell me he had started a new relationship with someone else.  I prepared to tell him I was happy for him.  We talked--well, mostly he was talking--for a half-hour in general terms about the future of our friendship and trust level with each other.  At the last minute, I sensed he wasn't going to tell me he was in love with someone new, after all.  He was going to tell me he was HIV-positive.  And, after a pause, he did.  "I'm HIV-positive."  He said it happened when he had asked those men to "hurt" him.  He said he didn't ask, intend, or want them to infect him, but he knew it wasn't surprising, given the circumstances.  In his new city, he has access to free medical care because of his mental illness and the HIV diagnosis.  He wants his friends to sell the furniture they have in storage.  He mentions that most of his family doesn't bother to contact him.  I think he is finally accepting that he needs to stay where he is, and not return to the place he came from. He asked me not to tell anyone.  Only his parents know.  His brother and other family members do not.  He gave me permission to tell "one trusted friend".  I might tell two or three trusted friends.  DailyStrength is one of them. Last month, I treated myself to a long-overdue vacation at a yoga retreat center and participated in a private session with a life coach who helped me develop a set of affirmations that I am supposed to say every day.  Two of the affirmations are "I am a human being and I experience the range of feelings that other people feel" and "I allow myself to be sad that my husband got himself into trouble".  So, even though I'm not depressed over tonight's news--I'm not even shocked, really--I am allowing myself to pick the big fat red anti-smiley.  If I'm not entitled to it tonight, when am I entitled to it?  Old Christian language refers to "adultery and abandonment" as "natural divorcements" (automatic grounds for divorce in the eyes of religious authorities).  For the 21st century, I think HIV infection might be a new ground for divorce--especially when it comes as a result of adultery, and when the spouse has historically not shown concern for protecting me from possible infection.  How can I be married to him when I will die as a result of sleeping with him?  In a way, the news helps me let go.  It releases me from some of my sense of responsibility for trying to tape us back together.  But I'm so sad for him.  I had hoped he would tell me he was in love with someone else.