It's No Good

So now we're well into the fall. My Employment Insurance has been approved with no waiting period - so to speak - as I am on a Temporary Lay-Off which means that I've only lost my job for the time being and will be called back once the company can afford me. Pretty straightforward EI claim as they've got none of the normal verifying of the reason why an individual is applying. In Ontario, this means that if you are implicated and found even partially responsible for your job loss, EI can deny your application. This also prevents people from quitting their job just 'cause and then apply for EI. Both of these situations automatically disqualifies the individual. At that time, 2005, I was entitled to 60% of my salary but as next to no taxes or deductions were subtracted, it was almost the same amount as my normal salary with all of the required taxes etc were calculated. In my near addled junky mind, all I could think was "Sweet!" Business as usual.

And it was for the first couple of months...sweet, that is, but like anything else, this didn't last. One of my friends ended up becoming our dealer after we ended up having a falling out with our original one. My friend was, and as far as I know, still prescribed massive amounts of narcotic analgesics.  On the first Wednesday of each month he receives/ed 720 8mg brand name dilaudids prescribed by his family doctor.  I had filled this prescription many times in the past for him, and as he was/is not on any sort of drug plan, it cost him about $320CAD every month.

He received these due to some injuries he had sustained during a work accident. As far as I know, him and two other workers somehow ended up being literally buried alive for a large part of one of their work days. When they rescued them all, he had broken both of his legs, some ribs, his right hand and one of the fingers on his left hand. I know that he also sustained some nerve damage in one of his hands. As far as I remember, he ended up being in hospital close to six months. Anyway, initially he never actually used any of his pain meds as he quickly learned that they were much more valuable to him if he sold them outright. Before greed overshadowed everything, he sold his pills at 10 for $100,  though this didn't last very long, or 2 for $25 or $15 each. Do the math. He made a shocking amount of money from this endeavor and as he didn't even use the pills at that time himself, it was all gravy.

Kind of ironic, but as long as there were pills easily and readily available, life continued on, and with it, the feeling one didn't have so much as a care in the world. Not surprisingly, this illusion could disappear in an instant and with no warning. The first time you woke up only to discover that the well had gone dry wasn't so bad. You hadn't yet trained your junky mind and body to go into automatic and painful withdrawal at this mere suggestion. Not yet, but very soon. By the end of this first day without the ready availability of pills, you actually managed to finally hookup. The moment you fixed, you felt returned to normal. Two weeks later when the same situation presents itself, your mind and body are less forgiving and understanding. Start to feel anxious and nervous the longer the day stretches with no sight of relief. Well into the evening, you impatiently wait but you're really incapable of doing anything much else as the waiting taxes every fiber in your body, and now it had started to become more and more frequent and difficult to find opiates on a daily basis.

After a short time, our bodies started to go into withdrawal when no opiates could be located, and this wasn't pleasant. This had started to bother me as obviously having to endure ever increasing periods of withdrawal was by no stretch enjoyable and I started thinking more and more frequently that there had to be something more than this. Also, our main connect had started to lose track of the picture, and had begun treating us with disrespect, and had begun to take us for granted. For the most part, Jim and I tried to buy these pills in bulk. There rarely were no more than maybe a half a dozen smaller purchases throughout the month. Now, one would thing that if one of his customers was buying 260 units monthly that perhaps he would be able to cut them a bit of a break, but sadly no. He charged us groups of ten - sometimes on the very rare occasion groups of twelve - which translated into 26 groups of ten units each, charged at $100 per group, which adds up to $2600 each and every month!

When I say that we were regulars, I truly mean that we were indeed that. I am in no way attempting to inflate our use, and in fact, am extremely ashamed and embarrassed even sharing this info, as it paints a pretty distasteful picture of what we allowed our addiction to become before we were finally able to put the breaks on it. Now for just over 24 months dealing with him, we never deviated far from this number. We almost always paid in advance, and always paid cash - no bartering or asking for them up front, etc. If we did have to request a front, it was rarely for more than a few days. Now, I get why he didn't want to cut us too sweet a deal as he had begun to rely on our money each and every month. Who wouldn't want to receive this amount, especially considering there was no work needed at all whatsoever in getting it? No hustling, no nickel and dime sales, less traffic coming and going to his house because he didn't need a dozen or so more customers minimum to replace the two of us.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Barrel of a Gun

The summer that my Mom and I ended up having our falling out certainly turned out to be a quite a bit more than a mere convenience for me as it turned out. While there had never been any question that we both had been heading down this path ever since my Dad passed away, I most definitely made the most of the opportunity when it presented itself to me and did nothing much to prevent its derailment. Even though we'd been at odds in the past over issues more serious than the one that I finally used as my excuse to sever our current relationship, by this point it didn't matter. Definitely the proverbial straw for me, as there were a number of very legitimate reasons why we could not, nor should not, continue on with our current relationship as it stood.  

At the same time, I knew that I was also motivated by the fact that there would now be one less potential distraction interfering with my current usage. By this time, I was having a difficult time balancing my active addiction with my work and social responsibilities, my family obligations, as well as dealing with the general day to day mundane stuff one tends to encounter as we drift through our lives . So with that stress gone for the time being, I was able to refocus more of my energies on what was becoming increasingly more and more important, and I don't mean work.

Ironically, about a month or so after my blowup with my Mom, I ended up receiving a temporary layoff  notice from my employer stating that I would be required, immediately, to take a leave from work of between 12 and up to a maximum of 16 weeks. At that time, I had been working for my employer, a software company, for a number of years. By the time I received this notice, our office had been reduced to a staff of just over twenty from a high of near a hundred and fifty employees less than a year prior. Even though I knew I was still a valued employee, I also recognized the financial duress the company was currently experiencing.

Plus, talk about timing. Bloody pathetic on my part, but reality none the less. One less distraction yet again. The writing was so on my wall and yet...

TO BE CONTINUED... 

Mommy Dearest

Over the years, my Mother and I have had, at best, a somewhat strained relationship, although for the past few years, we somehow were both able to put this to rest and have enjoyed what has very much felt like a normal and healthy one. To say this has been like a breath of fresh air does not even begin to do it any sort of justice. As this was something I had dreamt my entire adult life of having, I was careful to ensure I did nothing to jeopardize it, although I wouldn't have just accepted it without question had I felt that there might be possible negative consequences. In fact, in order to reach the previously unattainable, I had had to completely severe absolutely all ties with my Mom for near two years. Drastic action begets dramatic results it would seem.

Growing up, there was just Dad, Mom, my slightly younger brother and myself. When I was five, my parents decided it was time to leave the land of our birth, Ireland, to try our luck in another country halfway around the world, Canada. While I have some very vivid memories of this time, I certainly was far too young to fully comprehend the drastic, not to mention dramatic, changes occurring within our little family. Immigrating to a new country is daunting enough when one is young, single with their whole life ahead of them, I can't even begin to imagine the stress involved for a couple just a few years away from forty with two small children in tow! Not only this, but they had to do it completely on their own as no one else from either one of their families had done this, nor would anyone ever do it. 

What this meant was that neither my brother or myself had the luxury of being part of an extended family while we grew up. Although we had a total of nineteen cousins, we rarely ever saw any of them as an ocean separated us and still does. While we were fortunate enough to spend many a summer vacation visiting and getting to know them all, it was never quite the same as if we had been able to share our daily life on a regular basis with them. On occasion, I sometimes found myself filled with envy if one of my friends had the opportunity of being able to get particularly close to one of their cousins simply because they could - location...location...location.

Yet, in reality, as I grew up, this was really nothing more than a minor handicap because all in all, I was darn fortunate enough to have a pretty idyllic childhood. My folks were amazing enough and neither myself nor my brother were ever victims of any sort of abusive treatment. We were treated more than fairly, and certainly didn't lack for much of anything growing up. I seemed to naturally gravitate towards my Dad, while my brother seemed to be my Mom's favorite. I most definitely was my Daddy's Little Girl, and I surely managed to stay this way until he passed away in 2003. We shared similar interests and I always found it much easier to confide in him than I had ever found in my Mother.

While she doted on my brother who could do no wrong in her eyes, I struggled to simply get along with her at times. She could be overly harsh and critical of me if allowed, but as long as my Father was alive, it rarely happened. From time to time over the years, I'd find myself worrying what would end up happening to our relationship once my Father was no longer around to temper our behavior and treatment of the other. 

Then in 2002, my father was diagnosed with cancer. After his first month of radiation and chemo, he found himself getting weaker and felt that he could no longer drive himself safely back and forth to the hospital. As my Mother had never learned to drive, he asked me if I would drive him back and forth to his hospital appointments. Of course I agreed without hesitation but this also meant that I would be responsible with having to take him five days a week, every week for approx five to six months. 

Although this obviously greatly impacted my life as well as my own immediate family’s, I didn't mind doing it in the least and would gladly have done it again without hesitation. As some days I was required at the hospital for near eight hours, plus had to be there Monday through Friday, I quickly found it was impossible for me to continue to work full time while I did this. Luckily, I had an amazingly empathetic boss and was able to take a six month leave of absence without pay remarkably easily. Tragically, she found herself in a near identical situation with her own father a mere two months after me so...

I began driving my Father on a regular basis about the second week of July and continued to do this every day until just before Christmas of the same year.  My father managed to finish all of his radiation and chemo treatments a scant six days before Christmas Eve. Christmas that year was nice, although we already knew that my father had ended up not responding well to either one of his treatments and wasn't going to be really getting any better. 

This was confirmed before the third week of January had even started. In the interim from Christmas til this time, I had returned to work and was trying my best to settle back into some sort of routine. I was barely back at work, when my father was admitted to the hospital for what ultimately turned out to be the rest of his life. From the moment he went in, I made sure that I visited each and every day though it became increasingly harder to see him suffering so much as it got closer and closer to the end.

For the first time since I had been told that he had cancer back the previous June, I started to really feel stressed and overwhelmed. I often found it quite challenging trying to juggle a successful return to work while meeting my own immediate family’s needs - Sara was only twelve when all of this started and had yet to lose anyone close to her from death so...

At the same time, I found I was at the beck and call of my mother without the benefit of any safety net. As I knew that this was incredibly hard on her, I tried not to take some of her many and frequent outbursts personally . I got it. She felt powerless to help her life partner, a man that had looked after her now since 1956 and visa versa. All faults aside, they really were a truly magnificent couple who loved each other deeply until the very end.

OK, this entry now seems to have taken on a life of its own, so in the interest of looking towards a bit of a conclusion on the way to wrapping this all up, I'm not going to bore you with all of the specifics of what ultimately caused my Mother and I to have this serious falling out. Instead, the following anecdote should illustrate quite nicely what I was more of less up against.

By the time my father finally passed away the second week of March, I was pretty much overwhelmed with so many different emotions, never mind feeling so very, very tired. Through the last week of his life, I had spent every night at the hospital sleeping beside my father in a bed that his nurses had put together for me. The following day the only thing that I wanted to be excused from was having to take my mother to the funeral home to finalize our earlier arrangements. I was so very shattered that I just didn't have it in me to do this. As Jim and I had taken Mom there prior to Dad's passing, I figured now that it could be my brother's turn, especially as he had only visited him twice the whole time he was in hospital.

At the time, I really didn't give this request much thought at all, but it soon became quite apparent that perhaps I should have. My Mom was a little bit demanding of my time the first few months after Dad died. After working hard all week, I rarely had a chance to slow down once the weekend arrived as I was required to chauffeur my Mom around so she could get whatever errands she needed to get done. It seemed as if every place that I happened to take my mother, whenever she was offered condolences, she just had to stop so she could also share a particular story with everyone. 

All puffed up and proud, she told everyone who would listen what an absolute rock my brother had been to her, and how she wouldn't have known what to do had he not been there to look after everything the day after my Father’s passing. Canonization for sainthood must surely be around the next corner. Not one mention of what I had done for five months, nor even the last three months that he spent in the hospital. Nothing at all, nary a word, and, to make matters worse, she did all of this right in front of me, and not just on one occasion, but multiple times. I started cracking up in short order let me tell you.   

This was barely the tip of the iceberg and now that my Father was no longer around to temper my Mother's actions and treatment of me, I found our situation intolerable not to mention untenable. The longer it continued, the more I felt poisoned and shattered, and increasingly more and more depressed. Ultimately, for my own self preservation, I ended up having to sever all ties with my Mother. It turned out to be easier than I had ever imagined, and in the end I managed to avoid my mother and her abuse for nearly eighteen months. 

P.S. TO BE CONTINUED 

A Pain That I’m Used To Is Almost Done

Just over two years ago I posted A Pain That I'm Used To concerning an uncomfortable situation that had developed with my employer a couple of months after our attack and Jim's stabbing. After all of this time though, we are still dealing with its aftermath although I am hopeful that this will all come to an end fairly shortly. Now, unfortunately, having to go to Small Claims Court to reach some sort of settlement has to occur. This part of the whole ordeal is something I'd like nothing more to avoid, but no such luck. A number of months ago we finally retained a lawyer to help us out, she's been briefed with all details of our situation, all necessary papers have been filed with the court and all necessary statements of defense from our employer have also been filed. Nothing else left to do but show up for court bright and early Friday morning. GULP.

For the short version, we are basically suing our employer for approximately $7500 because they disposed into a large dumpster in front of our apartment building, about twenty or so of our personal possessions and furniture without notifying us in advance. When we attempted to confront them about this matter, we continually received their cold shoulder. They refused to offer us any sort of explanation or apology for their actions against us. We didn't pursue it at the time for a number of reasons. It was so soon after the attack that fear was the overriding emotion driving pretty much every aspect of our lives. We didn't realize that we could actually do something about it. We couldn't afford legal representation for this matter two years ago. And so on…Two years on, our situation has changed on all fronts so once we discovered that we could, indeed, pursue them to attempt to recover our costs for this debacle, we decided we'd be fools for not moving forward. Although we did have to give our lawyer a $2000 retainer, if we are successful then all costs will have to be paid for by our employer.

For the long version, the following is the text of the original entry from August 2008:

Some things stay the same; some things never see to change. As the months pass by since Jim's attack and its savagery seems to fade from some people's minds, the more difficult it seems to become for us regarding our work situation. Immediately after it happened, everyone from the office staff here in London right up through to the VP of Operations in Toronto couldn't get to us fast enough with promises for our physical, emotional and financial security. Now that three months have passed since this incident almost all of their promises seemed to have fallen by the wayside. The only thing that I am not really worried about – yet – is our physical safety. We still have a beautiful roof over our head which we do not have to pay for as well as having all of our utilities looked after. Right now that is all that we seem to have. This fact is disturbing to say the least.

All of our forms were to have been filed and completed, etc. for a Workman's Compensation claim for what happened to Jim and any forms that we were responsible for have been submitted. When I last spoke to the head of Human Resources of the company about a week ago, she mentioned that the company would no longer be paying us but that WSIB would be taking over from now on. Now when I spoke to WSIB earlier today, they advised us that our claim had been rejected because our employer had not submitted a series of forms. Fit to be tied at the moment mostly because I wasn't able to actually speak to someone at WSIB but had to leave messages on two separate answering machines there. GRRRR. Of course when I called through to Toronto, I could only reach voice mail in the HR department. Oh how very, very typical.

I wouldn't be quite so insane about all of this if something awful hadn't happened here in London with my Regional Manager almost three weeks ago. Shortly after Jim's attack, we moved into our current apartment because no one in my family was feeling terribly secure living on the ground floor of the apt building. Now since Jim was still recovering from near life threatening injuries, he obviously was unable to move any of our furniture or stuff up here. Naturally, one of my daughters managed to break her arm barely a week after Jim's attack so she was also unable to offer much help or assistance. That left just me and Sara who barely weighs a 100 pounds on a good day! Naturally, it was tough carrying some of the heavier stuff for us so a few items were left behind in our old unit. I advised the office of this and apparently it wasn't much of an issue until the time came when they needed our old unit.

The weekend after I was notified that they were going to need our old unit, I moved everything except for one couch out of it. This left behind couch was a monster to move so I had to leave it. When I talked to my boss she said that was no problem that she would get some of the maintenance guys to help. I waited for a number of days and no one came to help. One day Sara's boyfriend was over and we managed to get it upstairs and into the hall of the fourth floor. Could not get it into our unit no matter what I tried. Finally the head of maintenance showed up to help me but no matter what he couldn't get it in either. This couch just also happened to be near brand new. We had had it only a month. Looked like we were going to have to trash it which was a darn shame. Because I had been waiting to get this couch inside before I moved a few more of our other articles in, I stashed some of our stuff in an empty unit which just happened to be located directly beside our current one. This is also standard practice if you happen to be a Building Manager of an apt building – you tend to take advantage of empty units and store stuff in them on a regular basis. This is done by near everyone and is not remotely unusual.

I had mentioned to the office about this furniture being there in the empty unit also but for some reason my Regional Manager decided to take it upon herself to have the contents of this unit emptied into the dumpster out front of our building. There was a lot of stuff of value there also. Why she didn't mention that she was going to do this so we had a chance to move it into our unit or get rid of it ourselves, is a mystery to us. Even after talking to her about it, she had nothing to say regarding her reasoning. I am so sick of everyone telling me that whenever I need help while Jim is recovering to just let them know and then when the actual time arrives, nothing at all. It is beyond insulting. What is really terrible about the whole thing is that when we went to check the dumpster not all of our stuff made it there. Any of our electronic equipment seemed to be missing. When we asked about this, we initially got a whole bunch of different answers until someone obviously started to feel a little bit guilty cause somehow some of this stuff was located – sitting in the paralegals office getting ready for her to take home!

Excuse me? How awful is this? You're stealing from someone not only that you work with, but also from someone who has already had a series of horrific stuff happen to them, someone who's interests that you in your position should be guarding. Insane. I wasn't going to get the police involved but on our last visit to the specialists we mentioned what had happened and one of the doctor's took it upon herself to call the police. I guess that she is a fairly good friend of the detective handling the attack. The police feel we have a fairly strong case for theft, etc. So far I have given a statement but I haven't had them approach anyone in the office yet regarding this although after today, I plan on giving the go ahead. I've also given everyone enough time to return all of our electronics and even though I've received assurance that we'll get them back, we still have not.

Following is a list of the items that we ended up losing – that I can remember so far because I know that there is more but probably won't know something is missing until I go to get it.

• antique sewing table w/antique Singer sewing machine
• walnut dresser w/five dresser drawers
• all components to construct our bed frame i.e. slats/foot board
• Sklar Pepplar arm chair
• creme coloured leather love seat
• creme coloured leather arm chair
• 20″ tv set
• 17″ flat screen computer monitor
• 17″ computer monitor
• dvd player
• large collection of various types of cables for use with computers
• digital camera w/case
• laptop computer w/leather case
• collection of electric helicopters plus their accessories
• all of our winter coats – four individuals for a total of eight coats
• six fabric laundry sacks of clothing primarily Jim's winter clothes
• all of Sara's bed linens including comforter, three double sized blankets, set of curtains, sheets, pillows
• two extra-large Rubbermaid storage containers w/hinged lids w/contents removed
• misc. hand held tools
• two basic desk chairs

The Grass Is Never Greener

I love my brother to death and am so excited that he’s able to come home for a quick visit thanks very much to the generosity of our Mom. He arrives home tomorrow evening and will be spending a week in Ontario before he has to return to work down east in Nova Scotia. This time though his family will be following him a week later as they all finally are able to make this permanent move. He found a nice four bedroom semi-detached house to rent which he says is pretty reasonable etc. This is a tremendous relief to him as he has spent the past year stressed out to the max drowning in an every increasing debt load with no apparent relief in sight. I guess after spending the past ten months or so trying in vain to convince his wife that they were in an incredible mess financially, she has finally accepted this most unpleasant fact. Of course, only since her father sat  her down to talk to her a week ago does she believe any of this. WTF? After listening to some of the things that my brother has recently told me, plus some of the things that she has been saying, I now strongly feel that their living well beyond their means is something much more serious than an inability to stick to a budget. She seems to have an addiction of sorts, an illness it would seem.

Besides the $200 000 mortgage that they have, she has managed to accumulate close to $150 000 in personal debt alone. How is this even possible? They’ve got three lines of credit alone that total almost $103 000, plus about a dozen or so credit cards all maxed right out to their limit. They may own more for all I know as these were the numbers that my bro quickly rattled off to me the other night while we were on the phone. I kind of have the feeling that this is but just the tip of the iceberg. This almost seems worse than a drug addiction. She obviously is incapable of practicing any sort of self control either. He says that all she ever worries about is what her friends or neighbours would think if they didn’t have this or that or whatever…

I knew that she was the type of individual that always seemed envious of what others had. She rarely seemed satisfied with her lot in life nor was she shy in letting others around her know  how she felt. I also knew how very important it was to keep up with those proverbial JONES, apparently at any cost. I knew that she was concerned with appearances but I had no clue the depth of this behaviour. I know my bro has spent the past 15 years providing for his family like few other men would be able to, and yet, she continues to find criticism in what he does.

She was the one that made him take this job out of province. She applied for this job on his behalf, sent out his resume to the company that he now works for as well as arranging his interviews, etc. Like the obedient husband he is, off he went to a strange province with no benefit of any sort of family or real support, and for the past four months  has worked and lived like a dog with nary a word of complaint. Literally every penny he makes is sent back home, and how is he rewarded? Every night, he has to listen to her sob and cry and carry on about how hard it has been since he left, how she has to do all of the housework and gets no break at all from the kids. I guess she berates him and goodness knows what else – this according to my Mom who has been told all of this directly from the horse’s mouth herself! Apparently, she says a whole lot worse stuff but I’ve not got the stomach right now for all of that garbage.

Nor do I think any of this mess has really registered with her properly as just the other day she was telling my Mom that there was no way that she would live in a rental less than $3000/month, nor would she live in anything but an immaculately maintained home – this from someone who hasn’t a clue how to even do housework! She said that she wouldn’t take anywhere that already had carpet as she didn’t want anyone else’s dirt near her. Only hard wood or laminate would do. No townhouse or apt either. Goodness gracious. Wonder how she’s going to react when she sees the $1200 beauty her husband has rented for her? And, who is she kidding? The only reason she is accepting anything right now is she has run out of time. She is literally getting out of Dodge the day before the bank seizes her home, vehicle and then shuts down all of the utilities - this will happen when you fail to pay any of these bills for months at a time!

Karma. It’s a bitch. Not saying that she deserves it this bad but she did make this mess pretty much all on her own. Again, its my bro and nieces and nephew that don’t deserve any of this and yet, they’re the ones that end up suffering over and over. It is really so very, very sad.  

Don't Drag Me Down

Talked to my brother for the first time in over three months. It was so sweet to finally get to talk to him. He’s finally got a phone so he’s now able to keep in touch with his family in Ontario while he slaves away all by his lonesome in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He had to move out there at the end of March for work as he had been unable to successfully find anything suitable here. Last August, after having worked at the same company for over 21 years, he found himself without employment when his employer went bankrupt. No owed vacation pay, no severance pay and now, apparently, none of the monies he’d been contributing for his retirement for the past two decades! For this last one, his former employer is now under investigation for having used his employees benefits illegally for other stuff that he shouldn’t have. Imagine that!!!

My brother has been finding it pretty rough all by himself, and I certainly don’t blame him. He had to leave a wife and four kids behind. They’ll be here until his house manages to sell as they can’t afford to join him until and unless it does, and unfortunately, right now it doesn’t look good at all for them. First off, they paid way too much for it when they bought it five years ago, and even though he has made more than $100 000/year for close to a decade now – plus his wife also works – they don’t have so much as a bean saved up between the two of them. Never mind the fact that neither one of them bothered to put some money away for a rainy day, they’ve also managed to max out four or five credit cards, have a line of credit with the bank which is outstanding, as well as a car payment that all had been a challenge to meet financially while gainfully employed. So now, things are looking bleak indeed for them.

I really feel badly for my brother and the little ones cause they’re all more or less victims in this situation. They have all been at the mercy of my sister-in-laws neverending nor never satisfied quest of keeping up with the Jones. She is incapable of being thankful for what she has right in front of her and has spent the last fifteen years constantly criticizing one thing or another. Its so tempting to remind her how absolutely and utterly terrible she treated me back in 1999 when I found myself in a bit of financial trouble. The names she called would make your toes curl, and at times, I’d love to throw all of this back in her face, but to what end? I know I wouldn’t end up feeling any better, in fact, I’m guessing I’d feel worse. Won’t accomplish anything either. Just knowing I could do this is powerful enough for me – plus, she has finally shown her true colours to my mother after years of subterfuge that I even have someone to talk to about her ridiculous behaviour and treatment of others!!!

If you’re interested at all you can get some background if you start HERE, then read THIS next and finally take a look at this ONE. This should give you a better understanidng of what I am ranting about at the moment, plus saves me a boatload of typing especially cuz I suck at typing!

Victim Impact Statement

If anyone is interested, the following is my Victim Impact Statement which I read to the court the day that two of the three accused were sentenced. One of the attackers received 8 years while the other received 7 years. Very emotional day to say the least.

"To completely articulate the impact that this attack and stabbing of Jim has had on us is really most overwhelming and near impossible. You would think that twenty one months would be more than enough time to complete this task, and in my head, I’ve easily written my victim impact statement at least a thousand times now, but when it finally came time to get serious about it, the task felt daunting at best. I wondered how I would be able to adequately convey the physical, emotional and financial traumas we were forced to suffer because of this event. The physical, emotional and financial impact that this attack ended up having on me has forced me to live a life I barely recognize anymore and become a person I don’t know.

In Sept of this year, Jim and I will have known each other thirty years – he was 14 and I was 16. For most of this time, he has been an integral part of my life. Both of our personalities just clicked and in no time, we had forged a strong friendship. Right away I knew he was someone that would always be an important part of my life. He made me laugh and cry and angry like no one had before or since. He was someone I knew I could always trust and depend on him no matter what. He made me feel safe and secure and gave me self-confidence and poise as a result of this. To me he was fearless.The day of the attack called all of what I believed into question. Everything I thought I knew was ripped away. This fearlessness, boldness, audaciousness that made up a large part of Jim and myself was torn from us that day. We are, and continue to be, in therapy because of the attack. Since the attack, I have had feelings of total loss and disparity. I have not really slept a full night. I require medication to assist my sleeping. I now have panic attacks and flashbacks that causes me to freeze. I have a fear of people in general. I will cross the street, rather than to meet and face people. I now have fears of something terrible happening to another family member, and am fearful for my safety and the safety of my family.

The attack itself was frightening but them to have to wait for hours to hear how Jim was doing was doubly so. He was so severely injured that he required over six hours of emergency surgery. I didn’t get to see him until close to 1am the next day. He was unrecognizable hooked up to all of the hospital’s machines. His body was bloated and initially he was unable to breathe on his own. He looked like the Frankenstein monster with staples all over his upper body, face and head. It was just short of a miracle that he even managed to regain consciousness and then finally return home. His physical recovery has been slow to say the least, but I will let him speak to this.

It has been our psychological recovery that is taking its time and toll, as well as the financial difficulties that have resulted because of the attack. In many ways, this has been harder than the physical and emotional recovery especially as none of this financial duress was a result of our own making. For something we had zero control over as well as nearly having to sacrifice a life for, it has been unduly stressful. It certainly has been a very bitter irony that one of the more dramatic consequences of the attack has resulted in affecting our family’s bottom line. While it is fairly easy to give a dollar value to our loss of income over these past twenty-one months, it is slightly more difficult to calculate other monies lost as a direct result of this attack.

As the attack occurred while we were fulfilling one of our job duties, our immediate supervisor was able to submit the appropriate forms necessary for us to qualify to receive Workers Compensation. Its another issue entirely though that the company we work for delayed almost three months in actually doing this. As neither Jim nor I were able to immediately return to work, we both began to receive Workers Compensation benefits which equal approx two thirds of our normal salary. Now, as part of our compensation package with our employer, not only did we receive our own two bedroom apartment, we also had our telephone, cable and internet paid for by them. Once we started to receive WSIB, our employer no longer covered the cost of the above. It was now our responsibility. So suddenly, not only were we receiving about a third less pay than we were used to, but from this reduced amount, we now had to cover these additional expenses of over $1000/month. This added stress is just one more thing that we’ve been forced to deal with because of the attack.

It hasn’t been just Jim and myself that have suffered because of the attack. Both of our daughters were teenagers at the time of the attack and as much as we tried to shield them from its effects, this proved impossible. They ended up being greatly affected because of the emotional and financial stress weighing heavily on me. While Jim and I attempted to adjust to each new change as it presented itself, I found myself getting increasingly angrier and bitter with our circumstances, and these feelings were then that much more difficult to hide from the girls. I was overwhelmed with feelings of self doubt and started to feel that I was failing them as a parent. I started to fall into a depression especially as relationships with my daughters started to change.

I have also just recently discovered that I may face yet another obstacle as a direct result of this attack. Currently, I have no job to return to as it has just been phased out of the company that employs us both since the beginning of the new year. Once again, we are victims not of our own making. Certainly, this will no doubt present another fairly large financial challenge to us – now just one of many. I really had begun to believe that we would soon be able to start to put all of this behind us, to make it a thing of the past. Yet, this seems near impossible as we seem to be faced with additional obstacles far too frequently.

Certainly the therapy that I continue to receive for my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at Victoria Hospital has greatly benefited me, and is starting to alleviate a number of my symptoms. Jim has also started therapy with a different therapist and I believe that he too is finally starting to feel some benefits. Still, this offers only small comfort. Yes, we are all starting to heal, but in the end, this attack has fundamentally changed me as a person as well as the way that I now look at the world. I no longer recognize my reflection in the mirror and am not the person that I once was, or will ever be. This experience has so altered my life forever, as well as how I view life.

"

I Can Almost See Our Ship On the Horizon...

In another couple of weeks, it will be two years since Jim ans I were attacked, and Jim stabbed. In many regards, this event seems like it happened a lifetime ago, while at other times, it feels like only yesterday. To say that its been a challenging two years most certainly is an understatement. Yet, at the end of the day, no matter what we've had to go through, both of us are still standing and standing fairly darn strongly! Whew...anyway.

Financially, these past two years have certainly been some of our hardest, and there have been so many times when I have absolutely felt utterly gutted by it all. So, what does one do? What can one really do but soldier on? Apparently, this was the right thing to do, and when they say that good things come to those that wait, they may very well be spot on. Found out today that WSIB made an error in the disbursement of some of Jim's benefits and that they have corrected this error by putting a cheque for $6 500 in the mail to us as of yesterday. YES!!! We also found out on Wednesday that the company that looks after group benefits for the company we work for also made an error and will be correcting this very shortly - this was a $6 900 error by the by!!! So by the end of next week, our bank account will have over $13 000 more than it did this week. Thank you very, very much.

Don't get me wrong. No amount of money will ever be able to erase the events of two years ago, nor even begin to compensate us for what we've had to endure. This is so not the way to go about receiving money, but at the same time, I've not got so much pride that I'll refuse it either. HELLO??!! All this means is that we'll be able to finally start replenishing our savings account that we were forced to drain while waiting for our WSIB to kick in - thank heavens we ended up having a bit of a cushion to deflate back then as we would have been so royally screwed.

So, starting our weekend off on a bit of a high note floating through the rest of my Friday.

CHANGES

I can hardly believe that we are now more than halfway through the month of April and that I've literally only gone near my computer, never mind surfing the net, about three or four times!!! Busy, yes, I guess I must be. I know that so far this year, there have already been a significant number of changes in my life. Where to even begin...

Very, very briefy, and in point form right now - plan on elaborating on each and every point over the next few weeks. PROMISE!!!

• daughter moved out of our home into her first apartment with her boyfriend of close to three years, then moved back home after this relationship broke up, and then moved out again all on her own to her very own apartment
• two of the three accused that had attacked my husband and I,  plus stabbed my husband multiple times, decided to plead guilty right before we were about to proceed to trial so we had to attend both of their Sentence Hearings where I had to read my Victim Impact Statement
• accused number three has decided that he wants his day in court and has elected for a trial by judge and jury although so far no date has been set so this whole ordeal is still so not over yet
  
• spent a good, long month actually working on my Victim Impact Statement for real as opposed to continually composing it in my head
• my baby brother, and his wife, who just had their fourth child a week and a half before Christmas decided that there was no real employment future for him anymore in Ontario so he accepted a job in Halifax, NS, and within a three week period had flown out for a job interview, accepted their fairly lucrative offer, found room and board for himself in a pretty decent house at an equally reasonable rent, moved his arse and whatever stuff he needed out there to start work, while having to leave his family behind to get their house sold and packed up, allow the kids to finish out their school year at the only school they've ever attended - their ages are 11, 9 and 7 currently - and generally just adjust to  a very foreign situation for them as a family
• decided on my own that I simply did not want to attend anymore PTSD therapy as I felt that I realistically was as well and recovered as I could possibly be, so had the hospital discharge me stamped READY TO RETURN TO WORK - boy, could I have been any farther removed from the reality of my situation???

Now, these are all of the major changes I've encountered so far in 2010. There are all sorts of minor and by far, less significant stuff I've also dealt with but compared to this heavier stuff, barely warrants a mention right now. Later, maybe. And, just in case, anyone is even still out there keeping track, I've muddled through all of this with nary a stumble. I am still on Methadone Maintenance Treatment - MMT - with a current dose of 40ml/day. At one point, I had actually gotten my dose down to 30ml/day but found that once I had returned to work, this dose was simply incapable of sustaining me for even a 24 hour period so I was forced to increase my dose - for now, anyway, or at least until my body has gotten used to its increased physical activity level which has obviously changed pretty dramatically  since I've been back to work. Even though it seems to be rapidly flying by me so far this year, all in all ,though, life seems to be pretty sweet right now whicg suits me just fine!

I Fought The Law

After seventeen months, and a couple of false starts, it looks as if we may finally be getting our day in court. In less than 12 hours, the preliminary trial of the three men that attacked us and stabbed Jim is about to begin. Obviously, I am nervous. Am not expecting to get much sleep tonight although I also have no intention of actively sabotaging myself either - tempting as this may be!

Figures that the weather just took a turn for the worse. Yikes. The temp managed to reach a high of 4C today, although with the wind, I guess that it felt more like -1C. Tomorrow morning, they're forecasting the temp to be just above zero Celsius which is too cold for this time of the season that's for sure. Right now, this near freezing weather is causing me to have a near meltdown in my attempt to pick out an appropriate court - and now weather - outfit. I suppose that if this is the worst thing that I am currently battling then I am not really in as bad a shape as I might perceivce.

Additional mood updates as my evening progresses!!!

Suicide Is Painless II

Well, we really don't have much more info today than we had last night. The standoff with the police did eventually end peacefully approximately two and a half hours after it had started. No one was hurt, although allegedly Charley was holding his ex-girlfriend against her will with him in the garage. This is the same female that he beat beyond recognition last year, and who he was not to associate with by any form of communication imaginable as part of his sentence. Now, to be fair, it is never him who violates this order. Each and every time, it is her, and each and every time she does this, it comes to no good. Yes, she was very much the unfortunate and undeserving victim of last years assault, but otherwise she has been nothing but poison. He has changed almost beyond recognition from when we first met him six years ago, and these changes have all happened within the past two years.

To be fair, he has always struggled with mental issues. Since Sara was sixteen, over three years ago now, she has tried relentlessly to get this young man some form of medical help but so far, to no avail. His mother is in complete denial regarding  his mental state of mind, even at times such as this. At one point Sara even became a patient of Charley's family doctor in order to talk to him about her concerns. He is beyond desperate and is badly in need of professional health.

Right now, I'm kind of pressed for time so have to be brief, but I'd be remiss if I failed to mention how absolutely amazing the police were in regards to my girls last night. I had to call 911 with the correct address, and was fortunate to get the same dispatcher as Katie. While on the phone I asked if the police would be able to call us back once they had arrived at the scene and everything had been sorted out - at this point there was no hostage taking, et al! She said that normally they don't do this but she would ask.

The girls continued to call his house. At one point the phone was answered, and he identified himself as one of the officers on the scene. He engaged in conversation with Katie and she was able to supply him with a bit of Charley's mental history and possible current state of mind, etc. When all was said and done this particular officer ended up calling the girls back twice, and both times their conversations were fairly lengthy. He deserves to be commended as he was able to calm the girls down considerably, plus assure them that now there was a very good chance that Charley would end up receiving long needed medical attention. Patience he had in spades to be sure.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Suicide Is Painless

I was actually planning on talking about something entirely different than what I am about to talk about but even the best laid plans, etc, etc. Earlier this evening my foster daughter, Katie, and I were sitting in the living room having a bit of a chit chat. I was sitting on one of the couches while she was at the computer half heartedly surfing the net. We were'nt really talking about anything particularly heavy, just swapping humorous antidotes to pass the time. As Katie is a fairly social and popular girl, the phone pretty much rang endlessly while we talked. She's got call display so she pretty much ignored most of the calls. I had been dying for a washroom break for a bit so finally I made the move to head towards one of our bathrooms. One of the calls she had been ignoring was from one of the girls oldest male friends.

We're going to call him Charley. He's now 21, but I've known him since he was 15 and the girls were 13. He's always been a very sensitive and somewhat troubled young man. I never really knew how much until the past couple of years. Both my girls have been very protective of him often to there own detriment at times. By what Sara has told me as well as my own conversations with him, I suspect that he may very well be schizophrenic, and if not, then certainly mentally disturbed. He hears voices and often has black outs where he remembers nothing. Often these blackouts can cover many, many hours. He's also done some scary and violent things while blacked out or after voices have finished talking to him. While he was still a minor my daughter begged and pleaded with his parents to get him help of any kind. So far, they've done nothing although I would like to think that after what is actually still occurring this evening, that they do something now.

Once I discovered the entire truth about Charley and everything that was going on around him, I was forced to limit my daughters interaction with him. It was for their own safety. Any time that they've been allowed to socialize with him, they've had to do it under our roof. Yes, I am all too aware that they now are both adults and most likely going to interact with him whether or not they've got my permission or not. Thank goodness though, they are both pretty mature and level headed and recognize that right now he is not a positive factor in their lives. He has just recently finished serving five weekends in jail because of what he did last year to his ex-girlfriend. During one of his blackouts, he beat her to within an inch of her life at the busiest and major downtown intersection at 10pm on a Friday evening. Finding witnesses to this beating apparently was not an issue.

Not going into the immediate fallout from this attack, but there was a lot and it still appears to be happening a year and a half later. When Katie finally did answer his call this evening, he said that he was calling to apologize for what he was about to do. He said that he couldn't deal with the police anymore, nor could he return to jail. He couldn't go on anymore and was ending it now. She obviously started going hysterical. I didn't even get into the bathroom before I was back in the living room to find out what had gotten her so upset so quickly. Pretty much able to piece together what was going on from her end. He hung up as he needed to call two more people. She was convinced he was serious so we instructed her to call the police, etc. Finally after calling 911, she got him back on the phone. He was barely coherent by this point and understandably abusive on finding out what she had done - one of the others he called did exactly the same thing. I've never been so glad that when they were younger I had demanded the address and phone number as well as being allowed to talk to the parent's whenever they went to a friend's house for the first time. It made it easier providing accurate info to Emergency Services.

For about an hour and a half after she made the call she heard nothing. This was particularly distressing as during the course of their second call she had overheard him gasping for air, possibly vomiting and finally drifting away until she got no response from his end. Eventually, she reached someone at his house - one of the officers called to his residence. Currently Charley has managed to barricade himself in the garage with some sort of weapon, and most of his very residential street has been evacuated while SWAT or this city's equivalent deals with the situation. The officer was exceptionally gentle with my daughter. They actually asked me if they could go over just in case they could help. I said absolutely, as soon as the police spoke to me with their permission. Hello? OK, I get it. They were pretty much told that they would be turned away because they couldn't guarantee their safety, etc. The officer assured Katie that he would be looked after, and as long as the situation doesn't escalate into anything macabre or violent, he would be taken to the hospital and placed under 72 hour observation by order of the police.

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Pen Is Mightier...

I have been keeping a journal of some sort on and off since I was about 10 or 11, so about 34 or 35 years now. I kept one religiously all thru high school and university because it seemed like so much was happening with things changing so quickly, I was afraid that I would forget stuff and at that time in my life, I wanted to remember everything, good or bad. As I settled down into married life in my twenties and then motherhood in my thirties, keeping a journal was but a faint and distant memory. It was the farthest thing from my mind. At that time, there seemed to be no time left to undertake this sometimes time consuming task, plus, for better or worse, my life had seemed to have settled into something of a routine. Excitement and change seemed to be memories of the past. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, just different.




Seven years ago this past June, my father was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away the following March. For the first time in over a decade, I picked up pen and put it back to paper. Towards the end of his life, I found myself in a long since forgotten place, but suddenly it became extremely important that I remembered everything that was happening around me these last seven or eight months of his life. Now more than any other time, I did not want to lose so much as a single memory from what was happening. I was so very afraid that I might forget something about his last days. For all of us, it was definitely a time of change.


I carried my journal with me everywhere. I filled up dozens of blank ones over this period of time, and every time I started to feel restless, I would write, and write, and write. Many days, I had a lot of time to do this. For twenty plus weeks, I spent each and every week day waiting in various rooms at the hospital for my father to complete whatever appointment he had that day. Every day he had his radiation treatment, plus there were a multitude of other types of appointments related to his cancer. To top everything else off, he was also getting chemo at the exact same time as his radiation, although the chemo finished about a month after the radiation. For just over five months, I drove him to the hospital five days a week for his treatments. Most days we would be at the hospital the entire day, but there were others where we were lucky enough to get out of there within the hour.


Regardless of the length of each visit, there was plenty of time for me to reflect and write. It was also a time for me to really get to know my dad all over again, as well as he had a chance to reacquaint himself with me. Bittersweet is an apt description I should imagine. After he passed, I continued to write as an outlet for my emotions. To this day, I carry a journal with me everywhere I go, and any time I feel the need, I write something in it. An entry can be one word to endless pages. I have found that whenever I am restless, upset, bored, impatient, irritated, you name it, the moment that I start writing I am immediately calmed. My recent journals follow no set form. They range from neat and tidy to tremendously disorganized and messy. I paste pictures in them sometimes. I doodle in them. I make sure that each one is different from the next. I haunt stores looking for unique and different books to use as journals. I have become quite creative in my quest to make each somewhat unique in its own way.


Now, I also keep an on line journal, although it is nowhere near as current or updated as my written - I am hindered somewhat by my complete inability to type as well and as fast as I would like. It was about five years ago that I was told about livejournal.com . This became my first foray into on line journaling. It seemed to take me an exceptionally long time to feel comfortable expressing myself publicly, although once I more or less got the hang of it, it became easier and easier. For the most part, I have liked using livejournal, and in fact, initially, I ended up having a number of separate accounts there. In the beginning, I mostly used them to display and store my art work. But these earlier attempts were dishonest at best, half truths at the most. They in no way reflected my actual life, although they did allow brief glimpses of it from time to time.




As I became more familiar and comfortable with this method of journaling, it became increasingly important that they start to actually reflect what was really going on in my life at that time. Initially though this caused me momentary paralysis as I certainly had no desire to lay bare those portions of my life I had spent years pretty much hiding from the general populous. My "alternate" life needed to continue being exactly that - one face for the majority and another for the precious few that were familiar with my drug use/abuse. That face was not yet ready for public consumption.


With the identity that I had been using, I found that this was going to be impossible to be completely frank and open about my lifestyle. Finally one day, I created an alternate online identity to reflect my alternate life. This is the one that I continue to use today. Over the past four and a half years there has been a blurring of my real and of my alternate world. This has become possible because my comfort level continually increases allowing me the luxury of honesty. For the most part, my mask is still there. I try to keep my name and my families and those that are important to me as anonymous as possible in an effort to ensure that their privacy is respected, as there is no certainty that they may feel as relaxed as I.


The majority of my drug use/abuse years are currently not available to read anymore online as the site that I had been using for this particular period of my life, literally disappeared overnight about two years ago. I used to be part of a group of addicts and recovering addicts that all had their personal journals at JUNKLIFE. At any given time, there were about twenty to twenty five of us sharing our stories with each other and anyone else who was interested. Sadly, it is now gone. After a number of frantic months attempting to contact the web master, I finally was able to get all of my writings from my time spent there. Until I received them, I was utterly gutted, as I had well over two hundred separate entries just from the two years I had been writing there. More importantly, I needed these writings available to me as an aid in my current recovery. I had only just started MMT when my site disappeared, so the lion's share of what was happening to me during this period reflected my very active addiction, as well as documenting how I allowed it to get so out of control. With each passing month, you could see where I was inevitably heading - the proverbial, or cliched, rock bottom.


Now, while I have all of these entries stored on my computer's hard drive, I have utterly no clue how to get them uploaded once again to the INTERNET. They were sent to me as one .sql file - whatever the heck this means cus I've so got no clue! Ideally, I'd like to add them to this site, or even if I had to, start a new site for my archived writings from my addiction period. I can go through this very large file and enter one entry at a time by copying and pasting it, and then back dating said entry with its original publishing date and time. I've manually entered a few, but it is just too time consuming, and honestly tres boring to have to do it this way. This site was actually started approx May 2007 when I first started having trouble accessing my previous site. Any writings from that point on are all original to this site, any before this time, were culled from my previous two sites, and are sadly not remotely enough to really paint the complete picture of my severe addiction years. If nothing else though, they are a start. Perhaps I'll suddenly feel energized enough to enter a few more of my old entries! LATER...

NO LONGER NEED - OR WANT - THE CHAOS

One of the first things that Jim and I did once we had both reached our stable dose of methadone, after paying off all of our outstanding bills, both legitimate and not, was move as far away as possible from the locale that almost proved to be the scene of our undoing. Just as quickly as we were able to move, we both got rid of our jobs, and found brand spanking new ones. Obviously, we felt very strongly that the only way that we would ultimately be successful with our recoveries was to make a complete break from the lifestyle that ended up getting there. We, literally, needed to start all over again from little more than nothing, other than our strong belief that we could succeed with this in the end.

Surprisingly enough, this ended up being easier than we expected. Paying off our rather large debts that we had managed to collect over our most recent habit, ended up not taking as long as I had thought this would. Its bloody amazing how much disposable income we ended up having available to us once we no longer needed to spend anywhere from $1800 to $2600 each month to feed our habits. I started MMT in February 2006, while Jim followed me about three months later. By October of the same year, we had managed to pay each and every last penny off that we owed.

Without exception, all of the legitimate businesses that we had outstanding debt with were thrilled to accept our money. In fact, so were all of our dealers - we rotated through three separate individuals at this time in order for us to purchase what we needed on any given day. For the most part, all three were pretty dependable connects although around the time that we both started MMT, London was in the middle of a bit of an opiate drought. Even with these three, it had started to become more and more frequent and difficult to find opiates on a daily basis. This had started to bother me as obviously having to endure every increasing periods of withdrawal was by no stretch enjoyable.

Also, our main connect had started to lose track of the picture, and had begun treating us with disrespect, and had begun to take us for granted. For close to two years, we had purchased from him 240 8mg dilaudid pills - a third of his legitimate script - each and every month, without fail. Now, if we take the time to do a brief bit of math, this translated into a substantial amount of money. He sold his pills for $15/piece if one was to purchase them singly. He would give you a bit of a break when you bout a couple, selling them at two for $25. Now if you happened to have $100 at your disposal then you could get ten pills for this amount. Now, obviously, for the most part, Jim and I tried to buy these pills in bulk. There rarely were no more than maybe a half a dozen smaller purchases throughout the month. Now, one would thing that if one of his customers was buying 260 units monthly that perhaps he would be able to cut them a bit of a break, but sadly no. He charged us groups of ten - sometimes on the very rare occasion groups of twelve - which translated into 26 groups of ten units each, charged at $100 per group, which adds up to $2600 each and every month!

When I say that we were regulars, I truly mean that we were indeed that. I am in no way attempting to inflate our use, and in fact, am extremely ashamed and embarrassed even sharing this info, as it paints a pretty distasteful picture of what we allowed our addiction to become before we were finally able to put the breaks on it. Now for just over 24 months dealing with him, we never deviated far from this number. We almost always paid in advance, and always paid cash - no bartering or asking for them up front, etc. If we did have to request a front, it was rarely for more than a few days. Now, I get why he didn't want to cut us too sweet a deal as he had begun to rely on our money each and every month. Who wouldn't want to receive this amount, especially considering there was no work needed at all whatsoever in getting it? No hustling, no nickel and dime sales, less traffic coming and going to his house because he didn't need a dozen or so more customers minimum to replace the two of us.

Towards the end of us dealing with him, he started to act illogically and then some. Paranoid much. He started to see people in his bushes and trees in his garden, and all that tends to accompany this sort of mental breakdown. Funny what a hardcore amphetamine addiction can do to you! And he had a raging one at that. Old story of him starting to spend more money on this than the amount of money that was actually coming into the house! He still was getting our full funds and obviously still more from other sources, but it never seemed to be enough. He actually was about to raise his selling prices - which one tends to have to do when your new girlfriend is pocketing a couple of hundred of your units on a regular basis! This starts to add up and negatively affecting one's bottom line! I was prepared to even deal with this, but when he started to get mean by holding our addiction against us by playing little games of pretending that he was down to his last two pills, etc, well I quickly started to lose my patience. Suddenly, the thought of him even fronting something to us was no longer going to be an option, and when he did decide to be all magnanimous, it literally became a joke. On a number of occasions, in the dead of winter when our truck was in the shop having a new engine installed, he had us walk 45 mins to his house, and when we got there, he was prepared to front us no more than three pills. WTF? Proverbial straw, anyone?

What I ultimately found utterly repugnant in dealing with him was the rude and disparaging way in which he had started to treat us the last six months of our doing business with him. In hindsight, I know now that this treatment wasn't specifically directed at us alone, but that also, is so not the point because I felt that we should never have been lumped into his "loser pill popping" customer that he had always loathed and despised. Firstly, he wasn't someone that we had just recently met, but an actual friend of ours going back just over two decades. We also were in no way associated with his brand spanking new 21 year old junky girlfriend, who he had gotten when he traded in his high school sweetheart, who was also the mother of his three daughters. Ashley sure knew what side her bread was buttered on thats for sure. She played him beautifully, especially seeing that the prize at the end of his tunnel was his monthly script of 720 pills each and every month. Just her presence meant that each month, it could literally be assured that a good 200 pills would come up missing. You could also be assured that she would hotly deny having any knowledge of where these missing items might happen to have ended up. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math on this one, that is for sure! Anyway, long story short, both Jim and I got ourselves to MMT tout suite! Didn't even take the time to look back, either.

At least he has now gotten his karmic reward, three years later. No time like the present is my saying and as I've mostly been a pretty patient person, I had been in no rush for him to get his just desserts. As I mentioned earlier, another reason for his anger and bitterness three years ago was a direct result of his massive speed addiction. This would most definitely still be an issue today for him, if he was even able to afford it to be! Unfortunately, his lovely girlfriend has managed after all these years of getting him good and hooked on his pills. Prior to this, he never, ever bothered to touch them as they had been his means to an end for him being able to buy piles and piles of speed!!! Now as many of you are all too aware, once both partners in a relationship start sharing an opiate addiction, it replaces pretty much anything else of importance. As its an expensive addiction, once hooked, some decisions need to be made. Most people find it hard to carry out two addictions full time once opiates are thrown in the mix, and its really not much of a surprise that rarely anything else is able to beat opiates. All or nothing generally.

Anyway, this is pretty much all that I'm able to type tonight so I'll try to finish the rest of my story before the end of the weekend cause its just too, too much. Briefly, we ended up running into the darling couple a day ago, and to say that both of them are in grave need of choosing a different path to take, would be the understatement of this century. He was beyond sick with withdrawal and to be honest, I'm not even sure why unless he's already managed to go through his monthly allotment of pills. If true, then this would truly suck, as I know from years past that he'll not be able to refill his script until February 6 at the earliest, still a good two weeks from now.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Jingle Bells...

Am taking a bit of a timeout because right now I need to catch my breath and count to ten about a half a dozen times! I am T-H-I-S C-L-O-S-E to throwing one of my daughter's cats from the balcony, but as its the season to be jolly, I'm sitting at my computer instead. Its bad enough that I spent seven hours shopping today, but now I come home to our Christmas tree having been mangled by one of the cats!

I know, I know, I can still hear my husband lecturing me about the lunacy of attempting to properly decorate the Christmas tree with six cats living in the house. Even though the tree has been up near three weeks, so far all of the hanging ornaments have had to be removed as well as ensuring that there was nothing at all hanging from about three and a half feet and below, I honestly thought that otherwise, the tree would get through the holidays unscathed. How very wrong was I!!! I've also had to remove some of the presents from underneath the tree as one of the cats was trying to unwrap them.

The youngest - and smallest - of the cats has learned to somehow climb up to the top of the tree and shake the heck out of the branches. Obviously, once he is all finished, the branches are lying all willy nilly, and all over the place with huge, gaping holes everywhere! So right now, I am sitting here looking at a near stripped down tree. Looks as if I am going to start decorating it all over again from the start. As it was, the only things around the tree were a few hundred clear lights and bows that I had crafted out of Christmas ribbon - varying in width from 1" to 3", in either royal blue, silver or white or various combos of these three colours. I've managed to return the branches to where it now looks like a normal tree. At least the tree is artificial and its wires are flexible so that the branches can all be reshaped. This was the easy part, now for the hard part!!!

98 Pound Weakling

Pretty much from the very start, I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with methadone - I took my very first dose of methadone in September 1999, nine years and two months ago. Now a decade ago, I was in pretty grim shape physically. I had allowed myself to waste away to near nothing, and at 5'7", I barely topped the scales at 105 lbs, so potential weight gain from this particular treatment was very much a non issue for me. Or so I thought. Within no time, I started to experience a rather dramatic metamorphosis and actually started to look rather healthy. A decade ago, this didn't really bother me all that much as I desperately needed a few more pounds on my body, but now I find myself in the middle of a most unpleasant and unsavory situation.

Funny, what kind of effects, a decade ends up having on our changing bodies too. I now find my self, at the ripe old age of 45, waging an ever increasing losing battle, not to mention having to deal with, until now, some really foreign emotions and thoughts. Its frustrating enough on its own coming to terms with this change, but having to deal with the accompanying boatload of emotions, doesn't help at all! For someone who had never had to give their weight so much as a second thought before all of this, this new reality has been monumentally difficult and stressful.

I've now since discovered how easy it is to be cavalier about weight and diet, et al when no problem exists. This should seem quite obvious, but surprisingly enough, it isn't at all. I've since discovered that its much easier to be without vanity when no struggle exists. If there is nothing to obsess over, there is nothing to obsess over. Now, unfortunately, I seem to have something to obsess over, and that something would seem to be the size of my jeans! I will admit though, that I am still not in possession of a scale so I have no idea what my actual current weight would be, or the actual number of pounds gained these past couple of years. Honestly, I really don't need to have anymore of this rubbed in my face, anyway. The fact that I no longer wear a size five or seven is pretty indicative of the amount gained that I certainly do not need any more confirmation, trust me.

OK, OK,  I know exactly what each and everyone of you are about to say to me now. I know that methadone alone is not the sole guilty culprit here. In fact, there is next to no research or findings or even studies stating that weight gain is even a direct side effect of taking methadone. Logically, I am all too aware of this fact, but, I am also very aware of the undeniable fact that I started to aggressively gain weight once I started Methadone Maintenance Treatment. This is a fact that is next to impossible to challenge! I get it. Suddenly, you're no longer on some endless quest to feed that monkey. After a few months on MMT, your life actually starts to return to what others take for granted, boring and routine. With this, your appetite returns and with a vengeance, although for everyone else, this is normal. Most probably, you even become more sedentary, so its really no surprise that the body ends up having such a huge transformation. Logically, I know this, but it still doesn't end up making my current situation any better.

I think what really bothers me even more than the weight gain, is the fact that I can't help but constantly stress over it. In the past few months, I find myself thinking about this more than I ever obsessed and agonized over drugs! Maybe I'm replacing one with the other. How's that for irony? Grrrr....I can't believe that I am actually publicly ranting and whining about my current situation either, although this just illustrates how depressed this whole situation has gotten me. My mother's constant comments certainly don't do much to help my self esteem either. There is nothing like a conversation with my mother to make me feel ten times worse than I already do. She has a knack for pummeling me ever further into the ground. Its not like I am a beached whale either - I am currently wearing between a size eleven and thirteen, with the larger size starting to no longer feel quite as tight as it did about half a year ago too. Each and every time I see her, she ends up fueling my self obsession with the weight, even if I've somehow managed to finally reach a place where I feel a modicum of peace.

OK, no doubt I could go on endlessly on this subject if allowed, but even I have to admit that I am starting to bore even myself! Enough already. Get over yourself! 

The Policy of Truth PART FOUR

Now of course, moving in with my bro wasn't going to be enough for SIL.  The moment that she could somehow manage it, they were married and she was pregnant with their first. They now have three little darlings by the way. So, suddenly their space above mine was not anywhere near adequate enough for their rapidly growing family. For now, SIL accepted moving out of this space and renting something that was more suitable. In the meantime, their old unit was rented out. There was utterly no problem what so ever trying to get a tenant to fill their empty apt as our house was located in very desirable Old South. In fact, we had a waiting list. Without having to do anything at all for the most part, the tenant more than paid for my bro's share of our mortgage and then some.

You would think that this would be more than enough for SIL, but no, of course not. She viewed this house as tainted. He had lived their with that other woman after all so nothing short of him getting rid of this constant reminder would satisfy her. Now, never mind that by this time, my family had lived in our part of the house for close to seven years. We had put enough of our own money into its upkeep, etc but more than this, this was pretty much the only home that my daughter knew. She grew up here. She was barely four when I took possession of the house. She had only ever gone to the one public school. All of her friends were in this neighborhood, in fact, anything and everything she knew was to be found here.

It so didn't matter. SIL wore away at my bro until he himself was convinced that he absolutely had to sell this house. No amount of logic could change his mind. Why would anyone in this day and age get rid of an income property if you didn't need to? It just didn't or doesn't make sound business sense. Well, like everything else, she ended up prevailing and so the house was sold. It was sold at a loss as we didn't end up regaining all of our initial down payment but she didn't care. They still got money out of the deal and as she wasn't around seven years earlier when my bro and I threw $30 000 towards our down payment, what did she care what the actual amount of money was in the end? She's just one dumb stupid b***ch is all that I can say.

Actually, digging this particular memory up has now angered me so much, I must conclude this entry here rather than where I had initially planned on ending. I now need to do a bit of sulking.

Mainliner

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2005 07 29

OK it has been a crazy day at work which kind of sucks for a Friday as I tend to like to ease into my weekend. I apologize in advance to anyone actually reading this entry as my thoughts are all over the place plus combined with the fact that I am also working I suspect that this entry will have absolutely no flow. That being the case,  for some reason there are a few things kind of bothering me today that I need to vent about and this, I guess, is the place that I can do it.

Went to my girlfriend's before work today cause I owed her a little bit of money and I wanted to get that out of the way. Not only is she a good friend but she is also one of my dealers, one that I am ever slowly fazing out because it is getting harder and harder for her to separate work and business and as a result I am now having difficulty also so...Slightly veering off topic now. Told you there would be flow issues. I was a late bloomer so to speak as far as drugs are concerned. I never actually tried any until a few months before my twenty first birthday when I smoked my first joint. Now I am fairly confident that I have made up for lost time. And except for a six year period about a decade and a half ago when I didn't use or abuse anything except for cigarettes and alcohol I have pretty much used some sort of drug every day since my first joint.

This being the case, I also want to state that I think that the reason(s) I still use and abuse and don't seem to have this overwhelming guilt about my usage is that I really haven't had any dignity stealing experiences relating to my use. By this I mean that I have never had to use my body in any shape or form to acquire whatever happened to be my poison du jour. I know alot of female addicts who suffer terrible self-esteem issues because of some of the things that they may have done to get that much needed fix. I am not judging. I know how lucky I am to be in the position that I am in. I was lucky. I have never stolen to feed my addiction - well, I didn't return all of my father's painkillers to the pharmacy after he had passed away but I rationalized that one away. And I did bring back the majority of the stuff that my Mom had given me to return so...

Now I know that this seems to be going nowhere but trust me I have a point. OK so I have never had to sell my body or my firstborn or my husband but over the past year I have been loaning my vehicle to my friend to use while I am at work and for the use of it I usually get some sort of tip. Call this a rental charge. Now as we are first and foremost friends she tends to take a lot more liberties with me than I suspect she would with someone else. I know she does. She has become sloppy in what I think her responsibilities should be when she has my truck. Like I will ask it back at a certain time and she will show up three or four hours later or she won't be here to pick me up when I am done work or even better she will end up giving some lowlife creep a ride in it and then suddenly $750 worth of my husband's tools are missing. And she tells me that she only left it unlocked for about five minutes while she ran into her house to get this guy looked after. Yeah well that is all his friend, who was literally waiting in the bushes, needed to grap everything that was in our backseat. Then she says that this could have happened to anyone. Well, no that is not true because scum like him would never have been in my truck so he would have no idea what goodies I had stored there. Plus she doesn't think that she should be held financially responsible for these items yet the outstanding bill of $385 that I have with her has to be paid immediately or else.

Or else what? I won't get any more of your crap dope? I won't be left standing outside for an hour and a half at night in a rainstorm waiting to be picked up by my vehicle? I won't have stuff that my husband, not even me, uses to make a living stolen from my truck while you are looking after it and then don't do crap about it? I won't have to put another $1200 in repairs into the truck a day after you have had it for a three day period in which you towed a trailer that I specifically told you not to tow? I have put $5200 in repairs into the truck since Christmas plus have also paid the $440 a month we have to pay to get the stupid thing insured.

Anyway it is times like this that I end up getting kind of depressed about my habit. I feel dirty or compromised or something that I can not quite articulate. I resent my usage I guess. Like I said I think for the most part I have been really lucky. I have never had to pawn all of my worldly possessions. In fact I have only been to a pawn shop maybe twice in my life and the visits were totally not related to dope. I have never been homeless or even jobless. I have never been really hungry. Like there have been lots of times that I haven't wanted to eat but I pretty much have always been able to eat.  I sometimes shudder when I stop to think about the shear amount of money that I have probably spent over the last twenty years but it is not as if I can take that money with me either so I can usually shake that thought pretty fast.

Again I am not entirely sure what I wanted to really express today. I was just mad and what actually set me off is that when I went to pay part of my debt she of course was out of pills - so, yes I am actually at work having not gotten anything prior which is a minor miracle in its own right - so I said that I would grab a bit of speed instead. I just wanted a quarter so I gave her another $30. She said that she didn't have any broken out that I would have to take a half but that I could use this as a down payment towards the next time she needs the truck. So I look at it just as she is hustling me out the door and I say to her that there is no way that this is a half and she said that I would have to weigh it at home. Now she knew that I was on my way to work and that I did not have any scales at home so I don't know what game she was trying to play. I said no that it was a quarter and that she in no way was going to get the truck and say that she had already given me something. Yuck, feel gross just writing/typing this out. 

The Policy of Truth PART ONE

From the moment I changed the way I was going to record my deepest, darkest & most personal & private thoughts & feelings, I made sure that I oh, so enthusiastically dove in feet first with no regard or thought to possible or potential future issues & problems lying patiently in wait just to wreak havoc on my otherwise chaotic existence. While initially my first entries were tentative at best, I never once lied, deceived, nor even bothered to embellish in an attempt to present my life as more exciting & interesting than it really was. That would have been too easy anyway, too much like cheating. Anyway, it is far easier as well as considerably more mindless to whip up a bunch of semi exciting & titillating tales to share with faceless, nameless strangers. Combined with the fact that I am an utter crap & useless typist, I certainly did not need any additional distractions from my task at hand, so to speak. This little bit of typing here in front of you (up to this word right here) has now taken me a sum total of 33 minutes to complete. I know, I know, I am the suckiness typist ever, ever and once again ever. My current stupidly, brief attention span sure does nothing to possibly correct said situation either. Well, PFFFT...

OK, moving along now. In a bit of an attempt to keep my entries as anonymous as possible, I have endeavored from the beginning to limit any direct & specific references regarding any of my family members. I've done my darnedest to respect their right to privacy, etc, etc, etc. Why I may feel completely comfortable sharing some of my more potentially private moments with complete & utter strangers, I certainly do not presume that my friend seven blocks over from me or cousin or aunt or younger sister, will be able to do the same. And with all things being equal, blah, blah, freaking more blah...WHATEVER... While some members of my family have made brief and fairly neutral appearances from time to time, for the most part I've made a fairly concerted effort to ensure this infrequency. Now, this decision was made & maintained for no other reason than my continued desire for my own self-preservation. I knew that the moment I changed my mind that I would be opening an obscenely massive Pandora's Box.

Interaction with my family over the past decade & more specifically since my Dad's passing in March 2003 has been varied and lively to say the least. Too many of my stories would require extensive back stories & history in order to be completely understood & appreciated. Now if I was a wiz at this whole typing stuff then I wouldn't hesitate in the least, but sadly I am not. Well, as today turned out to be one for the record books & as I now have this overwhelming desire to share, it seems that now it is. No time like the present, blah, blah, blah! The only thing that I will ask of you, dear readers, is your patience as I start to share with you what has actually taken a decade to reach. I will endeavor to provide as great an amount of my family's history in each and every of my upcoming entries.

What happened today was certainly something that I had begun to doubt would ever actually occur. My Mom & I ended up having literally this five hour marathon bitching session regarding my brother's wife who we shall call Big Berta from now on, & her apparent current abusive treatment of my Mom, as well as her previous abusive treatment of me.

As I have always been a firm believer in karma, I truly had faith that one day, a day just like this day, would eventually arrive & on a day very much like today, Big Berta would finally be held accountable for all of her past transgressions against me & mine.

It has now been nearly seven years to the day that my Dad reprimanded me rather severely leaving me no chance to provide my side of recent events between myself, my brother and Big Berta. In fact, my Dad automatically accused me of being nothing more than a trouble maker & that this type of behavior needed to cease and dissent immediately or even sooner. He never, ever wanted to hear anything else at all in regards to this matter.

For seven years, I managed to keep my mouth shut. I quietly kept my own council. So, not a single word from me was ever heard again regarding what had ended up beeing her excessive & abusive treatment of me, not only in my own home, but in front of my then eleven year old daughter. I remember thinking at the time that while all of this was all occurring, that somehow it was just all so convenient, how she had even been able to take advantage of her surroundings patiently waiting until it was finally her turn.