Magnificent Carcass

He started using cocaine around this time last year, by October it had escalated to a point that I began noticing. Asked him to move out on Halloween after I cornered him in the bathroom and forced a home piss test out of him, confirming my suspicions. I was utterly heartbroken, as this is something I honestly never saw coming. The whole time I’ve been with him he’s barely drank and I’ve never even seen him smoke pot...I was floored. He left willingly, but quickly outstayed his welcome at his sisters. A few days later he was back at home, open about his previous drug abuse, and we were working on things. Over the next 14 days everything pretty seriously went to shit. Our heat got cut off because he wasn’t paying any bills, this is something that has literally never happened to me. He was away from home a lot and acting strangely. We had no money and I was trying so hard to believe he wasn’t using again. Nov 15th my landlord came to the door early in the morning. She was outside talking to Jt and I heard lots of yelling. She knocked for me to come out, I’ll never forget that moment. Jt was stark white, his whole face was twitching, his skin was grey, and he was stuttering. He looked horrible and was sitting on the edge of the deck with his hood up, smoking, trying to hide from us. My landlord gently grabbed me by the face and said “I’m sorry hunny, but your husband has a problem. He’s on something, he hasn’t been paying rent and as much as I don’t want to if I don’t have it by the 20th I have to give you guys a notice” a massive fight ensued, I phoned the cops. It was a mess. We had about 6 months of wash, rinse, and repeat. Always thinking he was getting better, just for the truth to come out and it was only getting worse.

I was afraid to leave the kids with him or even have him in the house, he got increasingly erratic and aggressive. I lost count of the amount of times I phoned the cops. In January he got severely intoxicated after I kicked him out of the house again, stole a car, drove here, broke in and threatened me with a gun. He got held that time, and charged with uttering threats. He was released the very next day. There was 3 overnight police stays in April for almost the exact same thing, but a few were him threatening to harm himself. He was always released the next day, there was nothing I could do cause the charges never stuck due to lack of evidence and he’s legally on the lease. We agreed he was to live in the fifth wheel on the property.

Easter weekend he got physical with me for the first time while heavily drunk. Ripping things out of my hands, preventing me from leaving forcibly, and taking and hiding my phone. He punched a coffee cup and it exploded, I got cut with the shards. I phoned the ministry that day and made a report. I told them I don’t feel safe and I fear for me and my children. Still nothing was done by this point. Out in the fifth wheel he was drinking and using almost constantly. He lost his second job due to his addiction issues and was burning through entire unemployment checks in 48 hours. I had enough of it so I cut off his accounts. This triggered a severe domino effect of events. That night he went into a full blown meltdown, kept trying to break into the house. I called the cops, nothing was done. My in laws came out and forced him to go stay with them. We had it set up for him to leave for a detox program, which he was trying very hard to get out of.

His usage got out of control over that following week, he kept changing the detox plans and harassing me. I got to a point where I got scared so I packed up the kids with literally the clothes on our back, and the dog. I had to leave in a mini motorcade of vehicles containing family and friends surrounding me cause he was tailing me. I took one highway while others lead him to believe I was going another direction. I drove 3 hours on the highway, by myself, for the first time in my life. I was terrified. I didn’t stop, got to the hotel and once checked in I hid my car in the back and shut off my phone. We didn’t leave for 2 whole days. No one knew where we were other than my sister in law. That Sunday night my phone in my hotel room rang, it was the RCMP. It was around 3 am and all they asked me is “is this Jordan? Are you safe? Are you somewhere he can’t find you” followed by “how many firearms are in your home?” Then the line went dead. I turned on my phone to ask family what was happening. He had broken into our home and had a complete meltdown when they wouldn’t tell him where I was. He trashed my house, smashed my tv, busted a dresser, all my lamps, all my make up. Threatened to go on a shooting spree if no one was going to tell him where I was. The cops came and seized all of our gun safes, he was leaving for treatment the following morning so the cops told him to either go or do jail time. My father in law wasn’t allowed to leave his side till he left. There’s a list of charges awaiting him when he is released.

It was a battle but he finally left for treatment. I’ve had no contact with him. The cops and my social worker told me if I had been home we would probably all be dead right now. He went into a drug induced psychosis with extreme paranoia and when he couldn’t find a source of money and knew he had no way out of going to treatment he lost it.

He’s been taken off my lease, lost rights to the kids until a year of proven sobriety, and I’ve had to apply for a protective order...but the legal system here is a joke and basically all they tell me to do is hide when he gets out and wait for him to cross a line and “the cops will get to the residence quickly cause he’s a dynamite red flag”. He’s left me and my children with 5 months of past due bills and no income on his end, and an entirely trashed home to come back to once he left.

I’m back in 2 separate kinds of therapy 3 times a week, and it’s literally the only thing keeping me from snapping entirely.

In 2010 I was an extremely lost, self destructive “fun girl” who masked any type of trauma by being the quirky party girl/hot mess express. In the midst of my downspiral I met someone who touched my life in every way someone can.

We started off the decade happy and in love, slowly mending the damage between eachother until we came up with the crazy idea to kick the new decade off by impulsively moving away from everything and everyone we knew. Those 6 years in that strange city we were forced to become the best versions of ourseveles. We got our shit together and rose above it all, and the best part is we did it together. I stopped being that sloppy party girl and actually became a version of myself I never thought possible. I opened my eyes to new experiences, and let love into parts of me I had shut off long ago that I thought were long gone.

Halfway through the decade we decided to take the plunge into something that scared me more than anything else, marriage. I am a result of a broken home that still managed to stay together for appearances, so how could it not scare me? But you were there and consistent, and you showed me it was safe to want those things with you because you wanted them with me.

Then kids were in the mix. Another thing I never thought I would ever be a responsible enough human to willingly venture into that journey, but here we were with not just one, but two kids. Times got hard, but I was still evolving as a person. I learned to control my emotions and not let them become bigger than me. I learned to wrestle my mental illness and keep it caged. Some self destructive coping mechanisms snuck out for both of us, and the downfall of us began.

Dishonesty, deceit, and hurt became bigger than us and we stopped being those two goofy lovesick kids somewhere along the way. I held onto us so hard we bled, I refused to let us crumble, even when I was hurting myself the most in the process. Towards the end of the decade I finally conquered the biggest demon of mine, and that was not having my license which opened a whole new world of freedom for me, which allowed me to spread my wings in ways I never thought possible. The freedom allowed me to let go of what I was clinging onto for so long. Now you refuse to let go, even in all the carnage.

At the end of this decade it feels like we are sitting in smouldering rubble trying to glue back together pieces that aren’t there. It’s a horrible place to be and a horrible thing to feel but it is what it is. In the last 20 minutes of this decade it feels like we are dying and it feels like I’m the only one who realizes it, but only the future will tell us what’s in store. I am ready to put away all this hurt for good, but sitting here playing the memories of the last 10 years there’s a lot of smiles along with the tears and I’m glad you were by my side even if it’s where it is. I hope one day to look back on this time in my life and see it was meant to happen for something greater, that all this pain isn’t for nothing. I hope in the new decade we can still come through it with some semblance of a connection, but if that’s not our path it’s not our path.

Memories are weird man. I look back at those two kids and wish more than anything I could go back to that day and feel what they feel, and know nothing of what’s happened to us over the last year...but that isn’t how life works, is it?

Here’s to hoping 2020 and the next decade has more to teach us, in kinder ways. Is this a beginning or an end?

Some personal drama happened between myself and Jt, and though I would like to say we handled it gracefully we didn’t. On the 26th of December I asked him to move out and he did. It was really heartbreaking but at the time in our lives it was best. We didn’t end on good terms and we were not speaking.

I came down with what I thought was food poisoning on the 25th and I was trucking through it since the kids had it too. By the 27th I was so emeciated I couldn’t get out of bed and had no choice but to call Jt and ask for help (I had managed to get literally everyone else sick with whatever I had so phoning my parents wasn’t an option). He came and took care of the kids, cleaned the house, saw the condition I was in and forced me to the hospital. Before I even got to triage they were already putting an IV in me because I was so severely dehydrated. My BP was so low they immediately gave me things to boost my blood sugars. It was the most intense medical situation I’ve ever been in. I had to be in a special room because I’m highly contagious and any health staff that dealt with me was masked. I also had to be masked. I wasn’t allowed to see my kids which was the hardest.

My bloods came back and I have confirmed Norovirus and Influenza. My white blood cell count was through the roof, and I also was severely dehydrated. I had to spend almost 2 days in the hospital until I was considered safe enough to go back home where Jt cared for me the entire time until he also became severely ill with this awful flu. Our kids are fine thank god, but I’m glad that even tho we might be on bad terms when an emergency like this comes up we are capable of putting the shit aside.

I wouldn’t wish this shit on anyone, there was points there I honestly thought I was going to die. I’ve lost nearly 17 pounds in 5 days and it’s a small victory I can keep bone broth and ice chips down without immediately vomiting and I finally got my IV line out.

Literally all I do is work my ass off to try and provide a decent life for myself and my kids, and if anything comes to me remotely easier than it did for my parents at similar times in their lives, they shit all over my accomplishments.

Also PSA: don’t agree to watch someone’s kids while they work, if every time when asked you have some BS excuse about why you can’t, only for me to find you dining out at the local Denny’s. Looks like very pressing commitments. Are my parents the only people that think attendance to ones job is optional? Because it honestly blows my mind.

This year she shocked us all by walking up all by herself and plopping herself down beside Santa. He asked her sister what she wanted for Christmas, and she named several things (mostly Elsa related things) and when he got to my little H, he asked her what she desired more than anything on this earth. She thought long and hard and said “I want it to snow” (we have no snow yet) and Santa was like “out of anything you could ever have you want snow?” And she nodded yes.

On our drive home, it started to snow heavily. Little H was dead asleep in the back seat and when she awoke and saw all the snow she screeched excitedly and started uncontrollably happy crying saying “SANTA DID IT! HE MADE IT SNOW JUST FOR ME!” And we literally had to pull over at the rest stop so she could walk around in wonder, so excited with her simple gift.