Coming Undone

Please give this a listen.

It is so appropriate for this post.

I will not say that things between Blake and I went from bad to worse immediately. There were a lot of extenuating circumstances through the years that strained the marriage: A fall that hurt my back and began my pain pill addiction, several miscarriages and Blakes temper to name a few. Money was also a big issue. I worked but had still not found that PR job that I wanted and spent good money to learn how to do and we never had pre-marital marriage counseling which would have revealed what he expected of me financially. He wanted me to pay half of the $700.00 house note and buy the groceries. In addition to that I had to pay Robert's tuition at Hillcrest and my car note. It would have been much more beneficial to me to have stayed with mom and stayed single.

Blake was short with his answers and tended to anger easily. I learned to watch what I said to and around him. We lived in a cul-de-sac where all of our families were pretty close knit. He started talking me down in front of our friends. Especially the women. I had learned as a child that when Walter did that he was seeking to make himself look better in front of others. Regardless, it always hurt my feelings so badly and embarrassed me.

Blake was adopted. Please do not look at this as if I feel adoption is a bad thing.  I have very close friends who were adopted and they are wonderful, caring people. But for some reason when he was little his mother referred to him as “her sweet little adopted boy”. What was that about? I really believe Blake had abandonment issues and here's why: I was his 3^rd wife and the first two, by all accounts, he ran off before they had the opportunity to leave him. It must have been some deeply ingrained defense mechanism he instilled in himself as a child. I know you are asking why I tried so hard to figure these men out. It was because I loved them.

I also wanted to give him a child. I wanted him to know and understand the deep, abiding and unconditional love a baby could bring into your life. Again, I was trying to fix a bad marriage with a baby. But it was not to be. I got pregnant 6 times in 4 years. I never got past 5 months. Three of this miscarriages were 2^nd trimester and those were really hard. I ended up having my tubes tied. The fact that we couldn't have a baby only made him angrier.

In 2001 I fell in the parking lot of our local Target. There was a handicapped van-accessible parking spot next to where I parked. There was supposed to be a blue pole marking off the spot. They made the hole for the pole but it was never installed. My heel got caught in the hole, which I never saw, and I fell spread eagle style. I had bloody hands, bloody knees, torn hose, and my back was wrenched out of shape. I limped in and reported it, they gave me first aid and sent me on my way. I made an appointment with a back specialist for the next week all the while my back was getting worse and worse.

I had two bulging, nearly ruptured disks. Because of my Spina Bifida I was very, very scared of any kind of back surgery so he gave me Vicodin and sent me home from work for a week of bed rest. I surely did like those Vicodin. I forgot I even had a back when I took those. I kept taking them and he kept writing the prescriptions for them. Then he moved me up to what would become my drug of choice: Percocet! Oh, I thought I had found Jesus a second time in my life!

I loved the way they made me feel. Rather than having to leave Blake I could leave him without ever leaving the house. I'd just pop an extra couple of pills and there was very little he could do or say that would bother me or get past my lovely high. Then it got to the point that the doctor would not give me any more pills unless I agreed to surgery. I weighed that in my mind. No more pills or back surgery that I was afraid might leave me paralyzed. So my solution was to find another doctor who was happy to write me 90 Percocet every 30 days. I had just found the golden ticket.

The thing about pain pills is that you have to take more and more to get the same effect. In fact you have to take more and more just to feel normal. That is when you have slipped over into the dark side and you don't even know when it happens.

My doctor wised up to what I was doing and cut me off and in a town the size of Jackson there are only so many doctors that will write you that strong a medication without having first determined you're not doctor shopping which is exactly what I was doing. You can get in big trouble doing that. Luckily I did not. Trouble found me but not in that way. There are so many other ways trouble comes to visit. Sometimes it's wearing a sheep's costume.