The End

Hopefully I can get through the rest of this mess of a story tonight. This part of the story is honestly SO busy and so complicated that I still have no idea how to even verbalize it properly.

So we all evacuated for Katrina. Luke went to Natchitoches, LA with his dad and his dad's family. I went to Lafayette, LA with my dog, and the rest of my family went to Baton Rouge, LA. Ziggy went to Houston, TX with his family. We were friends at this point, but not together yet and my family would have preferred that he drop dead at this point, so much of our friendship was kept quiet so that I wouldn't get regular lectures and eye rollings from family.

We expected it to be a 2 - 3 day evacuation, like normal, which is why I sent Luke with his dad - since it was his dad's weekend time with him anyway. (I say that because people often don't understand how I could "send my kid away" for such a tragedy - we had NO idea that it would be a tragedy, and a weekend with his dad in Natchitoches was actually a normal event for him).

I got regular texts from Ziggy. The phone lines were so jammed and so many towers were knocked down that if you didn't know how to text, you learned fast because it was the only way to communicate. My mother had stayed at home and didn't evacuate.

Once the horrors on the TV began, all of us 20 and 30 something year olds who had never in our life dealt with tragedy all began to grow up and start making real life decisions - if my home is destroyed, what will I do, where will I live, where will I work, how do I pay my bills if I'm not working, do I go home or just sit in this hotel, is my mom alive, how do I get FEMA help, where is the Red Cross station?

Once the damage of the area was assessed and we all knew how bad or good it was, I came home to get to work. At a time like this, your job is absolutely essential, if you still have one, and if my job had asked me to fly to the moon, I probably would have. I got started rebuilding my company and rebuilding my home (I had a little over a foot of water in my house, so everything under 4ft had to be ripped out and rebuilt). All of this Katrina mess is a blog novel in and of itself, so let's skip it and get back to Ziggy.

His job transferred him to a hotel in Dallas, TX where he worked from an office there. He quickly ran out of suboxone. The desired course of suboxone therapy is at least 6 months to 3 years, depending on the level of addiction. He had only been on it a month at most. He couldn't find a doctor in the Dallas area and suddenly his texts stopped and I lost him.

We were a state apart and I had major issues of my own. I had a destroyed home, homeless friends and family members, I was working 60+ hours a week to help keep my company from dying and I was trying desperately to get my house safe and livable for Luke to come home. His father and I shuttled him all over the state in those weeks/months to stay with family while we rebuilt homes for him - he couldn't come home until basic services were up and running and our homes had power and water and were mold free - and that took a painfully long time. My mother's job went under, my dad was totally homeless and it was just - my own personal hell. While Ziggy was important, there was enough severe trauma going on for me that took my mind off of him. He was away from anyone on earth who loved him, and before he found a suboxone certified doctor, he found a dealer.

I was shuttling to Natchitoches every weekend to see Luke (a 5 hour drive each way) and to this day, I have no idea how I made it through that 3 - 4 month period of my life - it was torture on all of us.

Once I finally got Ziggy talking to me again, I knew it. I knew he was "gone" and pulling him back when he was 14 hours away and I had so much to deal with was impossible. By time I got home from work, worked on my own house and got into bed to talk to him, I barely had enough energy to even feel the pain of hearing his slurred words and his nonsense. I began to pull away from him out of necessity - I had my own shit going on and if he wanted to kill himself, well, sorry buddy, but I can't help you right now.

By early October, I had walls again and the townhouse was disinfected enough for Luke to come home. He got back to school shortly after and our lives were full of work/school and coming home to work on the house. We did his homework on a concrete floor and I learned how to cook meals in the microwave since the kitchen was the last room finished. We watched TV on kitchen chairs and our TV was on the concrete floow. Sounds awful, but we were actually better off and more "recovered" than the majority of the houses around us. (Neighbors made fun of me for fixing the mexicans coffee every morning and offering water bottles to them at mid day, but it was my house that was done before theirs and we had the same mexicans working for us!) We finally got a sofa and a TV in November. By Thanksgiving my house would be rebuilt and normal again.

Before that, Ziggy finally hit his official bottom. An addict's bottom usually involves near death experiences or jail time or both. Ziggy's bottom was a night full of hallucinations culminating with getting his parents involved, because I just couldn't take it anymore.

It was shortly before Luke came home, though I don't remember the exact date. I still had 3 - 4 people from work living with me reguarly since my house was better off than theirs and I had lights/water back before them. A phone call came in from Ziggy.

He was in his truck and said that he was on the highway and that the FBI was after him. Don't laugh - yes this part is extraordinary, but in his mind, the FBI WAS after him. He said that he had just picked up an 8 ball of cocaine (google it if you don't know what that is) and when he noticed the FBI was after him, he had swallowed the entire 8 ball and washed it down with the only liquid in his car - a bottle of windex. He was screaming and crying and freaking the fuck out.

The call lasted over an hour. Somehow, I got him to find his hotel and his hotel room and when I hung up, he was begging for me to call his mother and said that he was laying by the door to block the FBI from getting in. To this day, none of us have any clue how Ziggy managed to keep his job except that perhaps his boss contributed some of his bizarre behavior as emotional effects of Katrina. No idea, but amazingly, he did keep his job.

To me, that was his bottom. It has much much more details to it, but for Ziggy's sake, I don't think they all need to be shared with the world. So I gave you the basics and that's that.

Within a week, we had him home and back with his parents, who now knew what was going on. He still used for a while when he got home. Bottom doesn't always equal sobriety to come next. He showed up at my house for my birthday and when he walked in and saw my house - he claims that THIS was his bottom.

I say his bottom was the FBI incident, he says it was my house. Whatever - it doesn't matter as long as it happened.

When he walked in and saw my concrete floors and my bare drywall and my doorless rooms and a "home" that he once knew in the midst of being fixed, he says that it all hit him. He hadn't been there. He had "abandoned" Luke and I for the sake of a drug. He fell to his knees on the concrete and wept like a baby. He just couldn't believe, though he had heard, what I had faced/fought/rebuilt without him. The guilt that he felt for not being the one to walk into that house with me and rip up that carpet with me and and throw away half of my life with me was more than he could bear. His parent's house hadn't been damaged and since my home was his nearest concept of home, he lost it and just freaked out over not being there to help me negotiate with contractors and haggle over tile and fight with Mexicans leaving cigarette butts on the floor. What I had been doing for the past two months hit him all at once like a ton of bricks.

He told me that he would be back very soon and that he swore that he would get better. It took a little while - first of all for him to find a doctor again, and second of all for him to save up to see that doctor. He came over often - he bought me window blinds and came and installed them. He had his doctor's appointment set, so he wasn't clean yet, but he was only doing enough opiates to keep him out of withdrawels and my god, he was making a hell of an effort to try to help me and make up for whatever it was that he was trying to make up for. And I let him. Partially because I needed my house done and partially because I knew that every hour that he spent at my house fixing my floors/walls/tiles was another hour that he wasn't getting high. He was safe at my house and so I wanted him there as much as possible.

On December 11th, 2005, Ziggy took his first suboxone and went to his first Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

I watched him get his 24 hour chip. I watched him get his 1 month chip. I watched him lead his first meeting. I watched him get his 6 month chip. I drove his parents to see him speak at his first meeting. I was there when he met his sponsor and I was there - I was there - for all of it.

I almost gave up and ran away a million times. Running would have been easier. I had met a great guy after the hurricane who adored me and fawned all over me and I could have easily changed my number and let Ziggy be and just - run. But I chose to stay and since I chose to stay, I also had to choose to learn how to deal with all that hurt and still look at him without spitting on him or punching him daily.

It was actually my recovering father, who is over 20 years sober, who gave me this advice...he said, "Sandy, if it's going to work, then you HAVE to forgive him before he begins to make ammends to you, you just have to."

FORGIVE HIM???????? Are you fucking kidding me? Forgive him BEFORE he made ammends? Are you shitting me? I was waiting for the "ammends" step like a fat kid waits for cake! I deserved it. He owed MEEEEE! I deserved a parade and a trophy and a round of applause and a song named after me and my own goddamned statue for christ's sake...right? RIGHT???

Nope. Wrong. This was Ziggy's disease. It was his triumph. Not mine, and as much as that sucks and it took me awhile to grasp, I finally did. Through a 12 step program for the loved ones of addicts, and through my own therapist and through ALOT of reading and crying and hair pulling, I finally "got it".

I forgave him. I let it all go. I NEVER forgot, but I forgave - and forgiving him actually had so little to do with HIM that it's almost funny. By March, I felt safe enough to let him back into my life and Luke's life on a romantic level. We struggled and had a lot of issues. I checked his phone religiously (and I still do when he acts weird sometimes), I dug through his car and I searched for every sign on earth. But Ziggy allowed it. Part of his eventual ammends was to be transparent. I could and can dig through whatever I want and it's ok and tolerated and accepted. I can random drug test him anytime and he can't and he won't get upset. And as the years passed, I relaxed.

Last December, he took his last suboxone. He did the full 3-year therapy that is reserved for severe addicts. I'm glad he did. There were times when I resented the suboxone. It's not covered by insurance and cost us about $350 a month! But I'm glad he did it because the point is for the addict to learn how to live and deal with life without needing drugs to cope. I'm so glad that we bore the expense of giving Ziggy the full 3 years of it because studies are now showing that 3 years is the most effective and long lasting course of action.

When he got clean, he re-entered the world with over $23,000 in credit card debt (he paid for his addiction with cash advances from cards after his paycheck was gone). I resented him for the debt that "we" were in. But eventually, we paid it off and the debt we now have is our own and not drug related in any way.

We don't talk about the bad times often. I ask him every few months or so if he's been struggling or thinking about drugs or craving anything. 99% of the time he tells me "no". Recently, he once answered that he had thought about it, but he thought about it just as a memory and not as something he wanted. He has the life that he wanted - it's not perfect, but what he wakes up to now is what he wanted - the house, the yard, the wife, the kids, the normality. And honestly, if you ask him, he will honestly tell you that if he went out and got high ever again now, he would have to shoot himself right after, because everything that he would lose would be worse than death for him.

He regrets the end and how awful it was. While I sometimes think that I am the reason that he got so bad so fast, since I was the reason for the unhealthy attempts at quitting and since I was such an instigator in his life, constantly pushing his buttons and driving him to get high, he sees it very differently. On the night that he proposed to me, he told me that he believed that I saved his life. I told him that I wasn't even there for him at the end of it all since I was so busy with the recovery of my own life, and he always says, "precisely, Sandy". He says that it was when he lost me and I was too busy for him that he finally fought his way to get back to me.

His parents have told me stories of the actual final withdrawal - the one that happened under doctor supervision - the one that I wasn't there for. I witnessed, unknowingly at the time, at least 100 withdrawals, or the beginnings of withdrawals, in my own home, but the final one - that very last one was with his parents. According to them and according to his sister, he spent about 12 hours writhing in sweat and painful agony and screaming out one word. The word was "Sandy".

And that, my friends, is our love story. Conventional? No. Romantic? Not particularly. Insane? Most definitely. We fight and we argue and he's an asshole and we even sleep in separate beds occasionally, so we aren't two star crossed lovers living in bliss. That's almost hilarious. We're just normal people with normal crap going on all the time who happened to have a wild beginning.