Reevaluation

(Please note that all things said in this post about my friends are how I feel about what is going on. They may not necessarily be what they feel or think or even how they would react.. it's mostly how I think they will react or why I think they reacted a certain way.)

When someone is in a situation like Jake is there comes a point in time when you have to reevaluate the company that you keep and decide if they are your friends because of the addiction or your friends no matter what. Unfortunately for Jake 99.9% of the "friends" that he had were only so because they used together. I have had his phone for the past 2 1/2 months. No one has called to check on him. Some of these people knew my number or the house number yet no one has called to see how he is.


The strange part is some of the people whom I thought I would put in that 0.1% of real friends have not called either. I'm not sure if they feel uncomfortable with the situation or if they just figure when he gets out and wants to talk to them he will call.


Oddly enough, on the outside, I find myself in a similar situation with some of my friends. Tracy Lawrence has a song out now called "You find out Who Your Friends Are." (Or something like that) and that song describes a lot of what I've found myself going through these last couple of months and even to a certain extent before Jake left.


I once heard that sometimes your friends are only your friends for a reason or for a season and I believe that is definitely true. In college I had a friend who was my friend for a season. We were in classes together and I was able to help her with her homework and we could hang out sometimes. However once college was over, or really just that semester, she sort of just drifted off into the wind. I still think about her sometimes but I'm sure I will probably never see her again.


At that point in my life I also had a friend for a reason. We were roommates. We talked and hung out because he was there. We knew everything about each others lives because we lived in such close quarters it was convenient to share everything. Then I graduated and he moved away. I still chat with him every once in a while but I couldn't tell you who he's dating now, if anyone, and he wouldn't be able to tell you how Jake is doing.


When Jake and I moved to our house he was really the only friend I had. Then slowly I acquired some friends and he acquired some "friends." I was never allowed to hang out with his "friends", for obvious reasons, and so we started doing some things with my friends. The more we hung out with these people the less I shared with them about Jake and I and our relationship.


With every new couple that we would hang out with I shared less and less until from the outside they would only see a normal couple with the occasional disagreement. Every aspect of our relationship was censored. These people knew all about me and my life but very little truth about Jake's and my life together. This was not their fault really. They believed the truth that I gave them.

If we got into an argument on the phone and they were there I told them the parts that I wanted them to know. I was very careful to change facts or circumstances so that they would know we weren't perfect but also not know the "extent" to which we weren't so. I did this because I wanted to be normal. For so long now that is all I have wanted.


Most people have goals for their relationships. Things they want from them. They want their husbands/wives to do x or they want to be able to get to a place in their relationship where y happens. For me I never really had those goals. All I ever wanted was to be normal to argue about the things that other people do and to never again have to have an argument because I found what looked like drug paraphernalia or because he would get mad and disappear for hours on end.


Then March 20, 2007 happened and this whole little world that I had created came crashing down. In some ways it was a relief. I could finally stop censoring everything and could just tell 100% of the truth. The same thing that I had always told Jake "Tell me the truth and let me decide how I deal with it" I could finally start doing myself.


I like not having to hide anything any more. I like being able to tell my friends everything. I don't like what it has done to some of my relationships.

I have one friend who has really stepped it up. Her and her husband have been there for anything I have needed during this last 2 1/2 months. They have devoted weekends, evenings, money, time, sweat and an occasional hand in something unmentionable while cleaning some part of my previously disgusting house that should really have been cleaned MONTHS sooner!! She always calls and asks if I need anything and she always asks me to go out and do things.

However, I can't help but feel like when Jake gets home, all of that will change. It feels very much to me like in her and her husbands eyes I am no longer normal. I feel like they know all of the things that I hid from them and they are not able to forgive Jake for those nor are they willing to hang out with him. This makes me more sad than you can imagine. I have loved hanging out with them but when Jake gets home I can't just leave him home and go hang out with them. As much as I love these people I can't help but feel like our relationship is going to change a lot when he get back. Like I could come hang out with them when I'm alone but not with him and I won't be alone forever.

I have another friend who has also been a great help to me and my son. She also calls and asks how things are going and is consistently checking on me and wanting to make sure I'm ok. I do not see her and her husband a lot because of distance but they have made me feel as if they would be willing to over look Jake's past and move forward with us as friends. I appreciate this more than she will ever know and I hope that we are still able to be as close as we have become these last few months once Jake comes home.

Then there is the friend whom I used to be closer to than all of the others. She is hurt by my "charade" and our friendship as sort of fallen apart because of it. She feels as if I "lied" to her in a way by not telling her of the troubles that I was having when I told another friend of mine. I can't say that I blame her. Some people do not fully understand how important it is to appear normal. I hope one day that I can fully convey to her that I did not keep everything from her because I didn't trust her, I kept it from her because I didn't want her to see me as different.

The friend that I told happened to catch me on a bad day about a month before everything fell apart and it all just sort of pored out. She asked what was wrong and I needed an ear to babble to so I babbled away. I knew at the time she was not incredibly fond of Jake so telling her was not going to destroy any image that she had of him nor was it really going to tarnish her opinion of him. (Which wasn't that great at the time.)

However to my other friend, I didn't want to be the wife of a drug addict I just wanted to be Heather. Or at times HeatherJake. I was afraid that if she knew his history (she knew the past she didn't know the recent past) or what I had fears that he was still doing she would not want him around her or her children. Again, I can't say that I would blame her if that was the case.

Now don't put words in my mouth here when I say this. I have NEVER gotten any indication from her that this would be the case. Everything I did was solely based on the fears that I had of how things would go.

Now all the cards are on the table. For the most part I think she has moved on from the initial hurt of me not telling her what was going on. However I'm unsure if our friendship will ever be the same. Her and her husband don't call me any more. I wonder if it isn't somewhat like Jake's "friends" that I mentioned up above. Maybe she thinks that I will call her if I want something or want to do something.

That is where she doesn't fully understand the mind set I am in. I don't want to be the 3rd wheel if I'm not wanted and I don't want to make her and her husband uncomfortable. When I have seen them sometimes they ask about Jake sometimes the conversation seems to make them uncomfortable (more so her husband than her). Sometimes I feel like they would rather just gloss over it and go back to things being normal.

So I don't call. I figure they will call me if they want me to "tag along" when they go somewhere. And since they are not calling me and I am not calling them you can only imagine what a cluster f*** our relationship has become.


From the outside to a lot of my other friends it seems as if she is being insensitive, not calling me to see how things are going. However, I see the other side of things. Perhaps she is just giving me some space and waiting for me to call her. Well dear friend, that is probably not going to happen any time soon. I can barely keep track of where I left my son let alone a social calendar. If you want to see me please call. If I'm busy... call again, and again, and again.


And really that goes for all of my friends. I am sorry that I have not been the best friend that I can be lately. I'm sorry if I forgot your birthday or if I have arrived 20 minutes late to something or spaced it off entirely. I never planned on being a single mother with a husband in rehab and adjusting to it has not gone as smoothly as I would have hoped.


Right now my life is about taking care of my son and preparing myself and him for the eventual return of my husband. I hope when that happens that my friends turn out to be real friends and not just friends for a reason or a season. I hope that they can eventually see past the things that Jake has done and understand that addiction makes people do things that do not always have a logical explanation.

I keep coming back to that song about finding out who my friends are. Friends that I thought were friends who have gone away and friends that I wasn't so sure about who have really stepped it up and become big parts of my life. I really hope that they can understand that someday I would love to be normal and I would love them to continue to be a part of my life as I strive to get there.