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      nomore 56
      Participant

      I just joined the board and noticed that the word “hope” shows up many posts. It is a key term in every addicts life, I understand that very well. It should be in mine but is not. So I decided to just vent here. In the past I started to write a journal many times but never really stuck to it. I will give this a try here.
      I am not a very emotional person, as in positive emotions that is. I know anger, sadness, frustration and the likes but concepts like hope, faith, belief, dreams etc. are somewhat strange concepts for me, always have been. Depression and anxiety run rampant in my family and I got a good chunk of these personality traits in my make-up. My husband has not gambled in almost 3 years and is finally in true recovery. That is good for him and I am glad. I am also relieved to not have to be constantly on guard to make sure he is not adding to the devastation he already caused. As an addict, he has different goals and outlooks on life now than I do. I understand that. His number one priority is staying in recovery and he cherishes every day without this terrible urge to keep destroying himself. Where does that leave me?
      My parents raised me with certain values. You don’t lie, you don’t steal, you live within your means and you never spend money you don’t have, you work hard and always own the consequences of what you do, good or bad. If my husband would be an alcoholic or drug user, I would have removed him from my life immediately. I didn’t know anything about gambling and because it is something you DO I thought it would be possible to stop DOING it. Behaviors can be changed, or so I thought. In the beginning I supported him as good as I could. I helped him pay off his debts, no problem. He went to treatment, didn’t gamble for over 11 yrs, great. His personality didn’t change however and I didn’t get it. We were forced to move to the US, none of us wanted to come here. But we tried to make the best of it. Bought a house, wanted to grow roots and feel grounded. When I found out, that he had not only gambled away every penny we had and then some and had committed a crime to finance his addiction, my life shattered for good. He hid all this to very end from me and before I knew what was happening he was in prison for a year. The public defender, the social worker form pretrial services, the judge, nobody asked what he had done with the money. The assumed him to be a greedy thief and said as much. The have forgotten his name and the whole ugly thing by now. We are destroyed. My husband is a convicted felon for the rest of his life and I wear the scarlet letter on my forehead. Nobody believed that I had no part in his scheme and didn’t even know about it. His family dropped my daughter and me like a hot potato. As a foreigner I had no idea about the laws in this country and couldn’t afford any legal help. We became invisible. I kept going by developing tunnel vision and believing that one day, it would get better and I could move forward. So I had hope. And a dream. Through all the relapses and the terrible things that kept on happening I always told myself that if I endured a little more, worked a little harder, some day I would get to where I wanted to go.
      Last year we tried to buy a little house. THAT was my dream, my goal, everything I lived for. After it looked really good, I was told the day before christmas that it will never happen. As a felon who is ordered to pay a huge restitution, my husband is denied to have a real home. And so am I. We don’t want an investment, no equity, no profit, just a modest home where I can feel safe. He is making payments for the restitution and we don’t care if the court takes the equity should the place be sold or whatever. I am scared and live in fear 24/7 because of my financial situation. My own place would have been my only way of creating some stability and security because we could have gotten an insurance so it would have been paid off should something happen to my husband. He is physically ill, the disease is potentially fatal and when I am alone, I will not have enough to survive on, let alone pay rent. I can’t work and neither can he. I live in a country I detest and can’t go home because the financial protection arrangement we have will dissolve, should I leave the US. I am stuck. My family and friends live on another continent and I rarely see them. My daughter and I never mattered to the justice system here, it is all about punishment for the rest of you life and revenge. No matter what you did and why. I have been humiliated and laughed at and the nightmare never seems to end.
      My marriage ended the day my husband was sentenced. My love hat vanished long before that I guess. Everything I worked for all my life is gone. I believe only in facts and numbers, things I can see and touch. Everything else is like a cloud, you can’t touch it or hold it. People keep telling me to have hope, that one day it will get better or whatever. But they cannot tell me exactly HOW that is supposed to happen. There is no joy in my life anymore and I often wish to wake up anymore. Am I suicidal? yes, but I will never do it to my daughter or my pets. I am trying to disengage, to detach, no meaning, no hurt. The pain is sometimes so bad it becomes physical.
      Sometimes I wonder how an addict is able to really want to stay in recovery when it looks like it doesn’t really make a difference. My husband is devastated but can’t feel what I feel. He feels remorse but that doesn’t really help.
      Justice for all is a f….g joke, for all I care. My daughter and I are just collateral damage in all this. Nobody cares.
      I don’t know if anyone will read this or respond, most people can’t understand my way of thinking and I don’t expect them to. Just needed to get this out. One of my many therapists told me that I was traumatized and I reminded him of people with PTSD. Maybe I am.
      NoMore, hope, dreams, goals, joy, fun, no more of anything..
      890

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