Have faith in you and the things you do...

There is much to be shared here today. I have been writing this post in my head for the last week and just haven't gotten around to put it down here.

First off, I have nothing new to add about the monster. I will update after the next court date which is May 15th. I am better about it every day. I still have anger, and still want him to pay for what he did to me and took from me, but every day I think about it less and less and have chalked it up to a life experience. I am better than him.

Ok, I haven't posted much of anything about the Prince since early this year after his overdose. What I do want to add about the monster, is that the Friday night before he beat me, was the night my Prince came back into my life. We had barely spoken in months, and he knew I had a boyfriend and he wasn't particularly happy about it. He had called that night and needed to come by to get his passport. When I told him that the BF was there, he said forget it and hung up on me. He then called back and said he would come over. I suggested they come over and hang out for a while. He agreed, reluctantly, and they did. I wont get into the details about that night as there is no real relevance, other than basically we had a pleasant evening and I was able to see that my son and I were begininng to be capable of developing a new, adult relationship, despite our opinions about his life choices.

The Prince had called me Sunday night, just a few hours prior to the beating, asking me if I could help him and his GF plan a trip to the Bahamas later this summer, and did the monster and I maybe want to join them, and then we got into a conversation where we had offered to help finance most of their trip if he would stay clean from that moment until the trip, random drug tests required. He wholeheartedly agreed.

A few days later, he stopped at the house for a visit, and the physical signs of the beating were still incredibly obvious and the monster was also obviously absent. I told him we had broken up and when he inquired about the bruises, etc. I told him I had taken a bad fall. He bought it. His girlfriend, on the other hand, did not. However, I digress and this is a story for another day.

His visits became more and more frequent. His clear eyes evidence that he was taking my challenge/offer seriously. It started with a short visit for a few hours on a weeknight, to him calling Friday afternoons asking what I was doing in the evening and could we all go out to dinner. This lead to us making plans to see an exhibit at a museum, or going together to visit my Dad in the nursing home, staying in the evenings to watch movies together, playing games, etc. The visits got longer and longer and the kids started wanting to go out for dinner less and less and we started cooking meals together, the Prince and his GF (I think I will have to give her a nickname soon) anxious to learn to cook, and slowly they were taking care of the entire meal. Mostly just BBQ, but now we have progressed to full dinners and they are anxious for me to teach them to make sauce. As the visits got longer and longer, he and the GF starting spending the night at my house, and sitting around on Sunday mornings drinking coffee and having breakfast.

We have also begun to actively look for employment together. He can now pass a drug test, so his options are less limited. With my help, he put together a nice resume, and we have been applying all over the place. He has also gotten his drivers learning permit, and has begun taking driving lessons (required for his license) and is contemplating computer trade school possibly next winter.

Since January, he has lost two friends to drug related deaths. He also has a friend looking at jail time for a pretty serious felony assault charge who was offered the option of rehab vs. jail, and went away for three days and came back Sunday evening cause he "couldn't deal". Another friend is well on his way to becoming a career criminal because he just refuses to follow the rules of society and prefers jail to conformity. It is very, very sad. However, I do believe this has given him a priceless reinforcement of the old saying, that an addict will end up in one of three places: Dead, Incarcerated, or in Recovery. I believe my beautiful Prince is seeing that recovery is just the best, if not the only option.

Basically, my son and his GF have been spending more time at my house than not. He looks for excuses to come over and wants to come "home". We are seriously considering converting my attached garage to a small apartment like space for them at the end of the summer, under the conditions of him maintaining his sobriety, they both must find and maintain steady employment (that does not break any laws), and they must contribute financially to the household. I am extremely apprehensive about this. But when he is there, I am as happy as I have ever been. When they are not there, the house feels a little empty. I didn't realize how much I missed him, especially when he is clean. Oh!! How beautiful his eyes are.

This situation has taught me something incredibly valuable, something that I should have realized a long, long time ago. One of the reasons I stayed married to the AH for so long is that I hated the idea of breaking up my family. One of the reasons I was so enamored with the monster is that it felt like a little family. What I didn't realize is that families come in all shapes and forms, and that my family was there all along, we did not need someone else to complete us. With the absence of their father, there is so much less anxiety, stress and sadness in our home. The monster just added a different level of anxiety and stress to our home. My kids and I, well, that's all we ever really needed, we just need each other.