Haunted

You know how sometimes you think you have left something behind you only to hear that song on the radio or smell that familiar smell and it is all right back there in your face? That has been my life lately.

It was about this time last year that the world started caving in around me. I started labor on January 8th. I was in L&D triage on the 8th, the 10th and the 12th. (To celebrate this momentous occasion my body has decided to greet this morning with cramps. I guess we all celebrate in our own way.)

What should have been one of the happiest moments of my life was instead clouded over by Jake's drug usage. He left me in the hospital the night Zack was born to go get high. He was gone most of the next day and showed up on Sunday long enough to take me home and then leave again.

It is hard for me to think of the joy of Zack's birth without also thinking about the other events that went on in my life at that time.

Right now it is tax season. I'm working long hours and driving home in the dark I sometimes get those old familiar feelings I had when I never knew what would greet me when I got home. For everything I know about, I'm sure there is a lot more that I don't.

Which I suppose brings me to my point. I was talking with a friend about when Jake does his 8th and 9th step which is making his list and making his amends. I have thought about it long and hard and come to the conclusion that I don't want to know.

Already I can not (Mother cover your eyes... on second thought skip down to the next paragraph. Really you will thank me later) be intimate with my husband without thinking about the girl in the hotel room. Every time we do something my mind races with did he do this with her, did he say that to her. It's maddening. I know he was high, I know he doesn't remember most of it, but it haunts me.

(Mom... you can start reading here again.....) In my opinion I am haunted enough by the things that I already know. Knowing more is only going to serve to hurt me further and make it harder to get past things.

Jake has made several steps towards making up for the lost time. He spends TONS of time with Zack (and me when I'm home... which is less and less right now). He is a WONDERFUL dad and a pretty great husband. (When he's not attempting to torture me with his noxious gases.....)

He is doing what he needs to do to show us that he is a better man and telling me things that I do not know is only going to make things worse. Not better. We both deserve better than that. We deserve to be able to move forward and stop dwelling on the past. I am trying really hard to get past all of the things I already know. I don't need anymore to dig through.

I just hope that some day, when it's dark outside, I will just think of driving home to the two people I love most instead of driving around looking for one of them in the dark.

Lack of.......

I owe you a post. I've been mulling it over in my head now for about a week trying to come up with the exact right way to express the feelings that I had and what it is like to live where I lived.

Then on Friday I went to a meeting and one of the women read about having a lack of feelings when you get so far into the dark place that is living with an active addict. I spent this weekend thinking about that phrase, "lack of feelings." Was that where I was?

Then this morning it was confirmed for me. I was dropping Zack off at daycare and there was a little girl who was just starting. Her mom and her dad were there to drop her off and her mom immediately burst into tears when she handed her over.

I didn't do that.

I dropped him off and went to work and never called to check to see how he was doing. It wasn't that I didn't love Zack but I guarantee you that I didn't love him in the way I love him now. As of right now he has not gone through the phase where he cries when I leave him there. I guarantee you if you want to see a mommy blubbering like a fool catch me once he starts that phase. THEN I will cry...

The strange part is when I was in it I didn't realize how much I had really shut down but now looking back I am overwhelmed by my lack of anything...

When you live with an active addict you draw lines in the sand. If he does this I will... and at first he would just lightly tiptoe over the line and then immediately draw back. Eventually that line was blown clear apart by a violent surf and I had to choose to leave or draw another line.

I always drew another line. This process repeated its self over and over again. And every time I sank further and further into the hopeless desperation. If you've ever known an abused or abandoned child it is much of the same thing. Eventually you just start to shut down and stop feeling because it is too hard to deal with.

I can not tell you the number of times I searched through his car praying to G_D that I wouldn't find anything and ALWAYS finding something. The first time this happened I was SO hurt. Then eventually I just started expecting to find something. It was more of a bother than a hurt, I just sort of shut it down.

Then one night we got in a fight and he peeled out of the driveway. I remember being SO upset that he would leave me. He came back a couple of hours later but then as the months passed he left more and more often and the time until he would come back got later and later. The first time it almost killed me that he would leave and I remember pacing the house until he returned. By the 20th time it just seemed like old hat. He would return eventually, it was almost a relief to have a break for a few hours.


Then one night he didn't come home. And I remember the hurt of that night. I stayed up all night trying to call him. I would call every 15 minutes then every 30 minutes then every hour. I would drift off to sleep for an hour or so and then awake with a start and dial the phone hoping he would answer.

I can remember vividly the desperation as I dialed over and over again. I remember praying for him to just answer just let me know he was okay and then I remember when he would answer and not say a word. Just press send and then end hanging up on me. The first time that happened it tore me apart. I cried and cried and cussed the phone but slowly over months and years of this I just got used to it. I became numb to the feelings.

And for a couple of years this was the way we lived. He would pick a fight with me, find an excuse to leave and then call me at 6:00 the next morning telling me how sorry he was and come home. I slowly just became numb to all of it. The name calling, the fighting, the rage, the disappointment, the anger... it all just sort of melted into a giant blob of nothingness.

There was so much desperation and anger there but there was no way for me to express it. I would drive around for hours looking for him, take his keys, chase him out of the driveway ANYTHING to get him to stay home so I didn't have to feel that void of hopelessness and sorrow.

Then Zack was born and one night he didn't come home. And the next day he didn't call and that night he didn't come home and instead of anger there was just a void. I was trying desperately to bond with this little boy and all my mind was focusing on was Jake and where he was and why he wasn't there.

I was so deep into the hole that all I could feel was empty when I should have been overflowing with love and joy at just having given birth to the most beautiful, perfect child* in the universe. And instead of being happy and in love with my child I just felt empty. I didn't have that intense over protective thing that most parents do. I left him with my mom at 2 or 3 days old to go to W*l-mart and never thought twice about it.

At the time I justified it that I was just not wanting to take him there during cold and flu season and that I knew that he was safe at her house. Now, looking back, I know it was because I wasn't bonding with him the way I should have been. I was just one giant hole of emptiness.

And that, in a nut shell was how I got to where I was and why I stayed. You get SO far down into the hole of hopelessness and despair that you can't really see your way out. Being with the addict and living day to day, moment to moment in their addiction with them becomes a way of life.

I was used to hiding my purse in my car to keep him from stealing from us. I was used to locking up my checks to keep him from stealing them. I was used to juggling funds because his paycheck didn't come home or came home not whole because he had missed work or taken money and I didn't know about it. I was used to sleeping with my keys and his keys under my pillow or hidden somewhere throughout the house.

It is the here and now that I am not used to. It is all new to me to have all of these strong feelings and if you remember right on more than one occasion I have mental attacks of OMG my LIFE!! on this blog... those are because the rush of feelings can be very overwhelming.

I am now so in love with my son that I squish him every moment he will sit still long enough for me to do it. I can't get enough of him and it just pains me for other people to hold him or play with him. All of that stuff that was lost is slowly coming back and I'm realizing that while relapse might be a part of some people's recovery I'm not sure I could ever go back to that place I came from. I just think I've come too far forward and seen to much of the other side of the "mountain" to ever go back.

*no I'm not bias, why ever would you ask that??

Off My Rocker

The other day I received a very nice e-mail from a lovely lady who very politely explained to me that she thought I was certifiably insane.

Let me digress for a moment, if you have a question for me and you don't want to post it here feel free to e-mail me. If you don't agree with my opinion on something but don't want to post it here feel free to e-mail me. Anything else you want me to know but don't want to post it here... e-mail it to me. I accept and read all e-mails and unless you call me all kinds of names I will politely respond to them too. The link to my e-mail is over there to your right ------>

Ok, now back to the point of this post. Me... crazy... oh yes... it's all coming back to me now. This is not the first time I have heard that I'm crazy and it is not the first time I've thought it to myself either. That is what I was talking about in my last post when I said living with an addict or being close with an addict can distort your thinking and your perception of reality.

Let me note for the record just a few of the things I have done in my past that I now look upon as absolutely asinine.

I used to sleep with my keys in my pillow case.

I would take his keys and hide them.

I would drive around at all hours of the night looking for him even though I had no idea where he would be. I have driven up and down streets and neighborhoods just because I thought maybe, possibly I might run into him or see his vehicle.

I have sat up at nights and called him 20 - 30 times in 10 minutes just trying to get him to answer the phone.

I have chased him around in my vehicle.

For the longest time I thought it was normal to get up every 20 - 30 minutes and go downstairs just to make sure he was still watching TV or passed out on the couch. I thought everyone did this. I thought I was just being a good wife.

Shall I go on? At this point I think you probably get the point.

Living with/being close to an addict makes you sick without you realizing that you are ill. You try to force them to do what you want them to do not realizing that if they want to use they will do it no matter what.

The guilt I carry around is astronomical for this fact. I tried to force my husband to be here and so in a small way when he used in this house with my son here it was because I was so worried about him being here I couldn't see past the end of my nose to realize that him being here wasn't going to stop him from using.

So yes, I was insane. I became that way through 10 1/2 years of trying to control Jake's addition. Now, after all of that time, it is my turn. It is my turn to take care of myself and I am doing that through Al-anon and through trying to do more things with my friends or just for me.

However, the key words you need to focus on are I am trying to get better. In Al-anon we call that progress, not perfection. Sometimes I may say things that sound completely crazy and usually it is because I have slipped back into an old behavior/pattern or I have not fully worked on that part of myself yet.

Eventually, some day, I may become sane again. Until then, bear with me will ya? It's a process....

Anger, Resentment.... Acceptance

So I have a post that I have been meaning to write for awhile but I just haven't seemed to make the time. Remember last week when I promised you a post... yeah... still in my head. Then today as I was typing a letter to a family friend about how I'm doing I realized that everything I had just written was pretty much what I wanted to write here. So... here it is: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

Before Jake went to treatment and even after he left I convinced myself that everything would be wonderful if he would just stop using. After all, he was the one with the problem, and that problem was the drugs and the alcohol. Obviously if those things were taken out of the equation life would be all sunshine and roses. How could it be anything but?

Then Jake came back and I woke up from my lovely dream to realize that just because he had changed everything wasn't suddenly perfect. I was faced with a flood of emotions about the way things used to be and also the way I was afraid everything was going to be again. For me, this fear quickly turned to anger. LOTS of anger.

I was angry with him for what he had done but I was also angry with him for things I thought he should be doing and also things I was afraid he was going to be doing. On top of that I was angry at myself for not seeking treatment for myself sooner. I convinced myself for so long that I didn't need a support system and I didn't need to change anything about me that when I finally did decide to go and get help it seemed like it was too late. I had just started to attend Al-anon meetings and then the next week he was home.

I found myself very resentful of him and of the fact that he was there in the first place. I felt like I was just learning who I was and what I liked to do and then he came back and I felt like that was all taken away from me. Like I didn't have the time I needed to heal myself.

So as a result, I would blow up at him about the dishes or the laundry when really that wasn't what I was mad about. Last Thursday I ended up talking to Jess for about 45 minutes (totally missed the first episode of Survivor... THANKS Jess!! :-) and she mentioned to me that sometimes people fight about the topics but not the issues. So she told me that I needed to start focusing on the issues (i.e the reasons I was upset in the first place) and not the topics (i.e. the dirty bowl that didn't make it into the dishwasher).

This seemed to make a lot of sense to me but I still wasn't sure how to begin. So I went to my meeting on Friday and I talked to some people about it. They had some really good suggestions for me. I started pausing before I blew up about something and deciding, number one if that was what I was really mad about, and number two if it was worth fighting about.

Then at my meeting last night we talked about personal freedom which is basically being free to live your own life and be your own person. This topic is HUGE for me because I have spent 11 years doing what Jake likes or basing what I can go out and do on whether he wants to go or if I'm scared that he will get drunk and make and ass out of himself!! :-)

I've spent so much time watching him and taking care of him that somewhere in all of that I lost myself and I lost my ability to just be me. So now, I think I've turned a corner. Jake and I are talking about our, or mostly my at the moment, issues instead of fighting about them. And I am working on finding myself. Right now, I still catch myself doubting whether I should make plans or do certain things but I'm getting better.

On Sunday I'm going to my aunt's house and I didn't feel for one moment like I had to clear it with Jake or make sure he had something to do too so he wouldn't be getting into trouble. I just decided I wanted to do something and I made plans to do it. And for me... that is HUGE.

So, I think I'm finally moving forward in my own recovery. I'm getting to a place where I'm accepting that Jake is NOT my responsibility. I am my responsibility and Zack is my responsibility.

As we say in Al-anon. One day at a Time....

So...um... yeah...

I'm not sure how to begin this post or really how to end it. In fact, I'm not really sure what to put in the middle either so excuse me if I just sort of ramble in incoherent sentences and in some sort of a random order. Things at my house right now are stressful, to put it mildly... REALLY mildly.

Jake is home. Not for a visit, he is home. Sort of got dumped on me after the funeral. I told you all how he had sort of stalled in his progress two weeks ago and then he appeared to be moving again but apparently not at the rate they think that he should be. His counselor called it failure to thrive.

I don't know how I feel. I have talked to her a couple of times and she has assured me that this is not really a problem with Jake but more a problem with the environment. She doesn't feel that he's making progress because he is too focused on me and Zack and he is too far away from us. She thinks that he will do much better in an outpatient environment here, where he can still see us every night.

I called her again yesterday morning just to be sure. I made sure that she understood that I was basing my decision to let him back in our household on this information and she needed to tell me the truth, not what she thought I wanted to hear. She assured me she was.

She says that she has no doubts that Jake can do this and with five months of sobriety under his belt she doesn't think he needs a residential treatment center any more. In her opinion he will do much better and make much more progress if he can be around us and not be distracted by worrying about us.

There's a part of me that's happy that he's home. It's now another set of hands to help me with Zack and thus far, in the three short days he's been there, he has been a great help around the house too.

However, there is also a part of me that is disappointed and sad. He wanted to finish this program, I wanted him to finish this program and the both of us feel that they sort of gave up on him because he wasn't making progress as quickly as they would like.

My counselor tells me that sometimes these places have stats that they turn in and if someone is bringing down their stats they will discharge them. I don't know if this is the case or not. However, I am sure that if Jake tries at this, he can make it.

On Tuesday he will begin outpatient treatment. This weekend we will attend some meetings. There are some tonight that are an AA meeting in one room and an Al-anon meeting in another. I think we may try to hit those.

As for my stress level, it is through the roof. I think I need a Valium or a percoset or whatever it is that people pop to bring their heart rate down and make them function again. As a friend of mine so wonderfully pointed out, I have chosen to let him come back so I have to give him the space to prove to me he can do this.

I think my stress level will be much diminished once I fully embrace this concept. This is no longer my battle to fight. Jake has to sink or swim and at this point I know that if he falls I have an amazing support system to lean on and I can do this on my own. My big thing now is not that he's here but that I had no warning. I wasn't prepared for it and so I'm feeling very caught off guard and a little out of sorts.

Hopefully after a three day weekend and a whole lot of projects that I hope to get done I will feel a little more like myself.

Homework for Jake's Councelor

A couple of months ago I got a phone call from Jake. I could tell that he wanted to tell me something but I didn't quite know what, so the conversation progressed and there were these awkward pauses where I was kind of waiting for him to say whatever it was he needed to say, but he didn't quite get to it.

Then after about five minutes he just sort of blurted out, "I need to know what you love about me." Just plain as day. Simple, short and to the point. When he blurted that out my first thought was "Why?" Not that it mattered but I couldn't figure out why the heck he was asking. That was followed quickly by my mind freezing. It just went blank. It's not that I didn't know anything; it's just that I'm not really a Johnny on the Spot kind of girl.

I could tell that my silence really bothered him. He was kind of waiting for me to say something and then when I didn't the tone in his voice kind of changed and it sounded kind of sad when he said, "Well if you don’t know you can think about it and I can write it down later." And really, it wasn't that I didn't know, I was just sort of taken off guard.

So, while my mind was racing, he answered my original question of why. He told me that his counselor had asked him that day and he had told her he didn't know. So she had told him to ask me and then write it down. Therefore, never one to disappoint the counselor, I pulled my thoughts together and just started rambling things off as he wrote them down. Or at least I thought he was writing them down. Every once and awhile he would stop me or tell me to slow down so he could get it all down and then he would read back to me what he was writing down.

I thought this was sufficient; however, a little over a month ago I found out that what he wrote down was apparently the readers digest or the Cliff's Notes version of what I had told him. When I talked to his counselor after his visit in June she told me there were only three or four things on his list and they were just items written down with no explanation.

So, since she was trying to work on Jake's self esteem, obviously he has low self esteem, all addicts have low self esteem, she wanted me to think about it and write down what I loved about Jake.

At first I didn't really think that this would be as much of a reflection project as it has been. I thought I would just write a few things down and then move on with life. However, when I was talking to a friend of mine about this project right after I received it she said to me that she thought it would be kind of hard. In her opinion I had only known him as an addict and so if she had to write down ten things she liked about Jake she wasn't sure she could do it because she's not sure she knows the real him.

At first this really caught me off guard and I admit, I saw red. I thought how rude of her to say such a thing. She is not married to Jake, so of course she couldn't write down what she liked about him. She was seeing the superficial stuff, not the real him.

I on the other hand have known the man for 11 years; of course I know what I love about him. Don't I? In fact it kind of made me defensive, like obviously if I've stuck by him for this long I should know what I love about him. Shouldn't I?? And then I started thinking about it. I ran through the list of things that I had given him the first time and there were several character traits that I do love. Several things that are fundamentally him but there are also several things that I am now questioning.

As I listened to myself say them out loud I wasn't so sure that some of the things I loved didn't sound like what a parent would love about a child instead of what one spouse would love about the other. You see Jake and I have fallen into a very parent/child relationship over the past 11 years.

Mostly out of necessity I have taken on a parental role in taking care of the finances and continually having to remind him to do household chores. He has a prepaid Visa card because he has been unable to manage money and therefore has never been allowed (see that parental role) to have a regular credit card or checking account. I also did a lot of parental "babysitting" when he was home. Calling to check to see where he was, trying to make sure I knew his friends or where he was, going to get him if he didn't come home, things like that.

At first I was unsure if I was willing to give some of those roles up because I'm pretty comfortable with them. But after some more reflection I've come to the conclusion that if he wants to get a good job and work full time while I work part time I would gladly give up the role of the main breadwinner. If he wants to step it up and take care of his house I would gladly give up the role of nagger of the year. (I never really liked that one anyway.)

In fact one of the things I am most looking forward to when he returns is having a normal adult relationship. I don’t want to have to question where he is or what he's doing. I'm NOT his mother and I'm tired of being "forced" to play that role. I have actually grown quite comfortable with being able to sleep the whole night without waking up for every little sound wondering if it was him and being able to work a full day without having to call him and worry about where he is or what he's doing.

In fact, so much of the last eleven years of our lives has been in such turmoil that some of the things I convinced myself that I loved about Jake had really just become things I was comfortable with. And in the same token, so much of what I thought were qualities that he had I am now questioning whether were lies or truths. Do I really know the real Jake??

In the end, what I thought was going to just be a quick write down the things I love about Jake has turned into a two month project of really examining everything about our relationship and everything about who he is to me. I have really had to examine the roles that we have kind of put ourselves in and decide if I love those qualities and those roles or if I'm just comfortable with them because they are all I know.

So once I sorted out the things I wasn't sure were things I loved but were more like things I was comfortable with I discovered that the list was pretty small. So I decided to look back at our website and through my old journals to try to remind myself of who Jake was and who he has been to me. And you know what I discovered? More anger.

In fact it has taken two trips home for him and two trips down there for me and lots and LOTS of question and answer sessions for me to finally process all of that anger. I have anger about things that he has done and said and I also have anger about things that he should have been doing or saying.

On top of the anger I have resentment. All of this has been a lot to process in the past two months and not at all what I thought this process was going to be. However, I think I am finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm finally starting to remember what it is that has kept me with Jake for all of these years and the things about him that just make me smile inside. For two months I have been looking all over for him and this weekend, while I was visiting him, I opened my eyes and there he was.

I feel like I've come full circle and I can now start to be Jake's biggest fan and supporter again instead of his biggest critic. For several years now I have been the first one to question what his motives are and take a position against him. Now I finally feel like I can begin to support him and believe in him again. I've come to a place where I can once again take his side or believe him without needing to call his counselor and question him or check his story. It's taken me a LONG time to get here… but it sure feels good to have arrived.

Answering Questions & A Bit About Jake

I have gotten some wonderful comments on my last post. Several have been anonymous and I wonder do you leave them that way because you don't want me to know who you are or because you don't want others to know who you are?? Either way, I greatly appreciate all of the support and compassion that you all continue to show me. You are a great help to me in this time of my life.

I have gotten a few comments and/or questions that I would like to address though. First of all, to Jess, I have not told you about Jake because it is not a HUGE deal (well it was on Tuesday but it's not now). I intended to do a post about it today but then last night while reading all the old journal entries they seemed more important so I wrote about that instead.

The deal with Jake is that he is not progressing as quickly or as much as his counselor would like. Basically he is still stuck in a lot of his old behaviors that they are trying to change but he is not doing it. I don't think it's for a lack of trying on his part, I just think it's hard to change everything about yourself. (Which is what they ask them to do there.) I know for me I'm doing a lot of self evaluation and while I can see the problems it is much harder to actually go about fixing them.

What really brought this situation to a head though was that Jake told a lie. Last week he called a group on his father. Out of respect for his dad I won't go into great details here except to say that his dad drinks and Jake is uncomfortable around it and so they had told Jake how to talk to his dad about that and a few other things. Jake did call his dad but he didn't talk to him about that stuff because he thought it would embarrass his dad or make him mad.

However, when the group asked him, he lied to them and told them that he did talk to him. Then when he got back from pass he was upset about his dad again, he stood Jake up when he was supposed to meet him at the fair, and so he called another group. In this group he mentioned that he had, in fact, not talked to his dad about the drinking and other items. So, when they had treatment reviews on Tuesday he was essentially "called out" for lying.

That basically brought the whole thing to a head. His counselor talked to Jake about how he has yet to come up with a good reason that he's in treatment. When asked he will say because he wants to get sober for me or Zack, but really he needs to have a reason to be sober for him and he hasn't found that yet.

He also still has a huge problem thinking for himself. He consistently looks to me or to the counselors for approval when he has an idea. He wants desperately for someone to tell him how to do things instead of coming up with his own ideas. He does his homework to get it done and then he has to redo it 3 or 4 times before it is right instead of taking the time to think it through and do it correctly.

And those are just a few examples. According to his counselor everything Jake is doing is typical addict behavior. It is all things that she works with all of her clients on. The problem with Jake doesn't stem from these factors it stems from the fact that he is in a rut. He has basically been going no where for about two weeks and so she told him that he needed to come up with a list of reasons for them to let him stay.

He came up with that list and for now he is there and hopefully this will be what he needs to begin moving forward again. At this treatment facility you can stay as long as you need to but you have to continue to move forward to do it. You can't just sit still and take up space.

So to answer another question that I got, no he is not coming home right now. Will he come home eventually, yes that is the plan. If he does what he needs to do and he graduates this program than yes, he is welcome in our home. If he can't get it done than I'm not sure what will happen. I want desperately to tell you all that if he doesn't graduate he won't come here but right now that's not realistic for me to say. I have learned that if I am going to say something I need to follow through with it so I'm just going to leave it open ended for now.

About what I love about Jake. Someone said that it shouldn't be hard to think of the things I love about Jake. I think I made it harder than it was. You all have opened my eyes to that quite nicely. I think I just needed to dig through some of my emotional baggage and get to the real Jake. The Jake that keeps me smiling. Once I dug through that and realized that they don't have to be the "huge" things that I love they can be little things too it became much easier. I should have it finished as soon as I finish this post.

Finally, on to my last question. Do I feel obligated to stay with him so that he stays successful with his recovery? Wow, when you guys ask questions you go for the gusto don't you? Actually this has been something I have struggled with quite a bit. When people asked me why I didn't just leave him and let him rot in the getto this was my answer. If I left him he would have no one else who would go get him. And for a long while that was true.

Now, however, I don't know how I feel about it. That's a fair answer isn't it? If nothing else, it's honest. I do wonder what will happen to him if we do not stay together. That is why I fully support his counselor when she says that he needs to find a reason that he wants to be sober that is for him. For a long time he has told me that I'm all that he has and without me he has nothing. While that's a sweet sentiment and all, I'm really hoping that he can build back up some of his self esteem and get to a place where he loves me and he wants to live with me but he knows he could live without me. I don't want to feel like if I can't leave him (should something happen where I feel we can no longer stay married) because he would relapse without me. That's a hell of a burden to carry around. Even for me.

So now, I think I've answered all of your questions and told you a bit of an update on Jake in the process. If you have any more questions or if I was unclear on anything please don't hesitate to ask or e-mail me. I am one of the most open people you will meet and part of my reasoning for writing about all of this is to educate and to make sure that no one else who is going through this feels alone.