Dear Sugar,
I’m torn. I feel like I have to decide between the two things I love the most. My wife and I have an 18-month-old daughter. Our marriage has been rocky for years. My wife is a heroin addict who relapsed (post-baby), after seven years of recovery. She had been breastfeeding and snorting opioids until the night I caught her.
I come from three generations of addiction from both my parents. I got sober myself when I was a teen and turned my life around while living at a boys’ home, which I consider partially my home. I now work as a drug counselor at this very place. I have become a walking example for the Los Angeles street kids I work with, who are much like me. This work is my calling. It has even inspired me to write my novel, which has become the most stolen book at the boys’ home where I work.
Here is where the tear in my soul begins. My wife is from a small city in the South. I met her there. My mother died when I was living there. My wife was there for me. That city healed me. Recently my wife got an opportunity for a job that’s based in that city. All of my wife’s family and support are there. She just had her second interview and is probably going to be offered this great job.
I’m confused about what to do. Things are progressing for me professionally. I’m half way through my master’s degree in social work and momentum is building in my life. Right before my wife got this job opportunity, she had confessed to being on methadone (prescribed by her doctor) for the last three months to wean her off her heavy addiction. She chose not to tell me even though I have been supportive and had been asking for connection since her relapse. It might not make sense, but I felt more betrayed by this than I do by her relapse. I just want her to have a connection with me.
If she gets the job, I don’t know if I can make the commitment to go with her because of my lack of trust in her and the positive direction of my life here in Los Angeles. I want my wife to be happy and near her family (I don’t have family to offer her as support), but I cannot even bear the thought of being away from my daughter. I don’t want to be like my father.
I’m torn and distraught. Should I be with my daughter, my wife, near more support in a healing town or continue the path of my calling with the boys’ home among the LA street kids I love?
Please help me think this through Sugar.
Signed,
Torn and Distraught
Dear Torn and Distraught,
I teach memoir writing occasionally. I always ask my students to answer two questions about the work they and their peers have written: what happened in this story and what is this story about? It’s a useful way to see what’s there. A lot of times, it isn’t much. Or rather, it’s a bunch of what happened that ends up being about nothing at all. You get no points for the living, I tell my students. It isn’t enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn’t anecdote. It’s the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.
This is also true in life. Or at least it’s true when one wishes to live an ever-evolving life, such as you and I do, sweet pea. What this requires of us is that we don’t get tangled up in the living, even when we in fact feel woefully tangled up. It demands that we focus not only on what’s happening in our stories, but also what our stories are about.
There’s a sentence in your letter that matters more than all the other sentences: I don’t want to be like my father. It’s strange that it matters since I don’t know precisely what you mean by it—nowhere in your letter do you tell me what your father is like. And yet, of course I understand. I don’t want to be like my father is a story I know. It’s code for a father who failed. It’s what your story is about.
If you do not want to be like your father, do not be like him. There is your meaning, dear man. There is your purpose on this earth. Your daughter is the most important person in your life and you are one of the two most important people in hers. That’s more than a fact. It’s a truth. And like all truths, it has it’s own integrity. It’s shiningly clear and resolute. If you are to succeed in fulfilling your meaning, everything that happens in your life must flow from this truth.
So let’s talk about everything that’s happening.
Your first obligation as a parent is to protect your child. Allowing your daughter to move across the country without you when you know that her mother is a drug addict who is struggling mightily with her recovery is a bad idea no matter how many grandmothers and uncles and cousins live across town. Until your wife is clean and strong in her recovery she should not be the primary caregiver of your child. I don’t question the profound love your wife no doubt has for your daughter. But I know addicts and you know addicts and we both know that no matter how wonderful and loving your wife may be, when she’s in her addiction, she’s not in her right mind. For that, your daughter will suffer and has suffered. It is your duty to shield her from this to the greatest extent possible.
The struggle your wife is engaged in right now is essential and monumental. Everything is at stake for her. Her ability to get and stay clean is directly connected to her ability to mother your child and remain your partner. Her addiction can’t be cured by a job or a new town, though those things may ultimately play a role in her recovery. It can only be cured by her desire to heal herself.
I strongly encourage the two of you to step back from the frazzled excitement of a possible job opportunity in a far off and beloved town and focus instead on the monster that’s hunkered down in your living room. What support and resources does your wife need to stay clean? What role can and will you play in her recovery? Is your marriage salvageable? If it is, how will you as a couple reestablish trust and connection? In what city would you like to build your life together and what does that decision mean for each of you, professionally and personally? If your marriage isn’t salvageable, how might you lovingly proceed in the direction of divorce? How will you negotiate custody of your daughter?
Those are the questions you need to be asking right now. Not whether your wife and daughter should move across the country without you in the midst of this already tumultuous time. There are other jobs for your wife. There are other jobs for you (much as you love yours, there are boys all over the country who would benefit from your leadership and wisdom). There are other times one or both of you may decide to move back to her hometown or stay in LA.
Choosing not to ask these questions right now doesn’t mean that you won’t ask them later. It’s only putting a pause button on what’s happening in your story so you can figure out what it means instead. It’s opting to transcend—to rise above or go beyond the limits of—rather than living inside the same old tale.
I know you know what it means to transcend, honey bun. You did it in your own life when you made a whole man out of the fractured boy you once were. But the thing about rising is we have to continue upward, the thing about going beyond is we have to keep going.
You have only begun to understand what it means to not be like your father. Keep understanding. Do not fail yourself on this front. No matter what happens when it comes to your marriage or your work life or your geographical location, there is no being torn when it comes to your daughter unless you choose to rip the fabric yourself.
She wins every time.
Yours,
Sugar
31 responses
I like it when I finish the letter, and am not sure quite where you’ll go with it, and then… of course. Nowhere else.
Sugar, I love how you see.
You are absolutely the guy with the big rig and the giant earth drill.
I just found your articles via Jacqueline Carey’s facebook (she’s another writer) and I have to say that reading your advice is like finding a breath of fresh air. You have a wonderful way with words, especially for someone who collects quotes as obsessively as I do. Thank you for your advice; even if the actual question isn’t one that I’m actually going through, I can always find something within your response that I should think about.
“Art isn’t anecdote. It’s the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives.”
That might be favorite Sugar-ism of all time thus far.
It seems that “I don’t want to be like my father” is playing out for the letter writer in his work, too. He is a kind of father to the boys he works with, and they are also a kind of family. It can be extra hard to think of leaving clients (a too-cold term for people you come to love) who’ve been nothing but abandoned, especially if you have been abandoned. You want to be the one who stays no matter what. Sometimes parting–the “right” way, with love and open communication and a chance to say goodbye–can be healing.
Whenever you come up with only two options and they’re both wrenching, there’s often something you’re not seeing clearly yet. Whatever questions and answers and options you and your family come up with, TaD, I wish you the best.
There is yet another option, or another outcome of not wanting to be like his father. Perhaps, through the process of navigating the difficult decisions of parenthood and adulthood and, heck, being human, this man will find compassion for the choices his father made. It doesn’t mean he will simply find an excuse to make bad choices, too. Just that he will come to understand that his father struggled, and did not have the “whatever” — willpower, luck, support, etc — to rise above it. Maybe that can or will help this good man make his own decisions.
Sugar, your writing hits me in a place I didn’t know I had. What I find so exceptional is how you manage to say what I need to hear even when the question doesn’t apply to me. You are a wonder.
Amazing as always. You’re a hero, Sugar. I hope you know that.
Oh, Sugar. I love you.
When I read the part about the mother breastfeeding while on opiates my head just screamed! Get this woman away from your child! And the whole “you need to do this for me so I can get better” thing is such typical addict behavior. If he hadn’t grown up with addicts, he would have gotten custody and kicked her to the curb… or really probably not have had a child with her in the first place. Good lord!
I admire Sugar’s ability to find a solution that’s best for all and present it in a way the listener isn’t put off by. I certainly couldn’t do it.
Words of wisdom – This post is a true-life example of what that phrase means.
Reading your column always leave me feeling better. Knowing that Sugar is out there spreading wisdom, compassion and thoughtfulness warms my heart.
Thanks for being you, Sugar.
Sugar, you’re as wise as you are sweet.
this is the first sugar column i have read that sounds original and not edited or re-written. before reading your responses, i always try to imagine what i would say to the person writing. you win on this one. your advice is spot on. there are so many “easier” short-term bandaids but your answer gets to the heart of the matter. really thoughtful and thought-provoking advice, sugar.
always there with the truth, like a laser bream, great stuff sugar
Brilliant, Sugar.
I have one thing to add, though. The wife may need some time to get her shit together. If her family and relatives aren’t addicts themselves, it may very well be healing for her to go home and have a huge support system around her recovery. It could very well be the catalyst for change. It would make sense to me if she went there, by herself, to heal for some stretch of time, until she felt really centered. Not for the exciting job opportunity, but to heal. You could Skype with her, or whatever else. She could still see her daughter and feel connected to that, but not have the weight of responsibilities that may have contributed to her relapse.
It’s certainly not the only solution, but it was the only literal, logistic solution that came to mind.
Please, add salt: There is no ‘what if’. There is no lack of trust. There is nervous, there is undecided, there is unsure. What else is new? Everyone gets that. Frankly, this fellows wife is in a spot. Whether she gets clear of it or not is entirely up to her, as anyone who has fought addiction knows. You quit when you are good and ready, and not before, no matter how much you want to make the people around you, the people you love, who you make uneasy, whose trust you fail again and again because of this compulsion, this addiction. She is going through enough. Fellow, you can’t quit on her. What job, what professional advance, what work are you doing now that you have not been doing all along? What could possibly be more valuable than the person you agreed to stick to? Make whatever choice you make. Go or stay. Leave her to figure it out, while you go off somewhere else, tortured, in pain with a win in your pocket. A hope that everything can be better. Or, take that win out of your pocket, and give it to her, along with every last bit of trust you can muster. What else is it good for? A win isn’t a win if someone you love is drowning.
I am the writer of torn & distraught. I wrote to Sugar asking for help a few weeks ago and we (my wife and I) are transcending from out story and finding meaning in it all. I feel compelled to give an update. First I must say that Sugar gave the exact advise that I had got from my support. What I have learned through the darkness of this is that “I mean something” to my daughter. I didn’t experience that kind of connection to my parents so it was hard for me to believe. My daughter comes first, like Sugar said, “she wins every time.” The second thing, I held my ground and demanded that my wife deal with this addiction first. In recovery, “big changes” early on are not good for initial stability.
The part that made me cry while reading Sugar’s response was about my father. Sugar is amazing. She honed in at the heart of my dilemma. I said little about him or my meaning but she knew. And this is still my struggle (like many of us) to fight against our defects of character. Being a father now is helping me heal from the pain of my absent father.
My wife is on the road to recovery with all the details slowly being worked out just like Sugar said.
I read this column religiously and absolutely love Sugar. To transcend beyond the details of my situation is what I have been focusing on but Sugar put it in a way that no one has been able to match. Thank you so much.
Dear No Longer Torn,
I’m profoundly moved by your response. Thank you for being brave enough to write to me seeking advice and—braver still—to write to me here and now. You are amazing, my friend. I knew that when your letter popped into my inbox and I can see that even more clearly now. Strength and love to you and your family as you journey through the days and years ahead. Your daughter is a lucky girl.
Yours,
Sugar
It may seem trite, but this letter made me think of the film Biutiful, which my wife and I just watched. Much like Sugar’s wise and honest and never easy advice, it’s a … beautiful film.
Thank you to both the letter writer and Sugar for this exchange, which deeply moved me.
As someone who had a non-absent but still hostile alcoholic father, I completely identified with the writer’s desire to not be his father, to transcend that somehow. Unfortunately, I have been less successful than I might like in too many ways, but this brought home to me the need to always work at it, to not be complacent.
Thank you again, both of you.
— Eric
I wrote a similar book to this, from my experiences, check out Pricedrop- Sugar A story About Drugs And Betrayal. Google it!
sya Jeannie
Dear Sugar is the best of what the internet has to offer: a space where we who are so accustomed to going through life with our game faces on can show ourselves at our most vulnerable and conflicted. Instead of judgement, Sugar- an anonymous stranger- doles out care, empathy, and love as generosity as she would to her dearest ones.
And right now she’s doing it for free.
Every great talent deserves to be recognized for their work, so I motion that we start a Kickstarter campaign to pay Sugar for the time she spends crafting every loving response as thoughtfully and beautifully as she does, with the understanding that she has already given so much to all of us. Who’s with me?
I have been sitting with this for a week now. My husband introduced me to your column a couple weeks back and I, of course, fell in love. The first paragraph I read was the paragraph where you talked about being on a bus (on heroin) and not believing you deserved a balloon that a little girl tried to hand you. I was (am) that person…That women who believed (believes) that she doesn’t deserve “such beautiful things.” The truly amazing reality is that the next week you published the post from Torn and Distraught. Torn and Distraught is my husband. I have tears in my eyes while I write this. He is right in that we are both transcending and finding the meaning in our story. When my daughter was born, I believed because of my past that I did not deserve her nor deserve the unconditional love that she gave me. She is the most amazing thing that has ever happened or been placed in my life. I live every day to correct my past decisions and transend past my belief that I do not deserve such beautiful things. I am human, I am fallable and I thank my Higher Power every day that my daughter is happy and healthy despite my bad decisions. I do not know what the future holds but I know that I can transcend past my prior beliefs of myself and be the mother and set the positive example that my daughter deserves.
Kickstarter?,
No need to ask. 🙂
Set up the project on Kickstarter. Then, come back here and post the link. Tweet it, too, with Sugar’s Twitter ID and The Rumpus’s Twitter ID.
The support will follow.
Dear Savannah,
You deserve every beautiful thing–tiny and big–that this sweet world has to offer you. Your daughter. That balloon. Those things belong to us if we have the strength and humility to take them. I know it’s hard to reach, but you can do it. You are doing it and I’m so happy for you. Thank you for writing to me. Your words touched my heart in a way that’s beyond words. Deep blessings to you,
Love,
Sugar
Oh, and Kickstarter? That’s really, really sweet.
this thread is pretty fabulous. the best of luck to both of you, no longer torn and savannah! and yes, let’s give sugar some money!
Kickstarter is a great idea. And Sugar, I hope there is going to be a collection of these columns published someday soon. I’ll buy copies for everyone. 🙂
Just a note of caution: The writer is a drug counselor. As such he is also a ‘mandated reporter’ – someone who (along with teachers, police, doctors, etc) must inform the authorities when s/he learns of cases of (even suspicion of) child abuse or neglect. Therefore he must inform the authorities that a woman (in this case his wife) is abusing drugs while caring for a minor child (in this case a baby/toddler). To not do so is to jeopardize his license. Whether or not he and his wife ‘work things out’, child-protective services must be informed.
Mimi, Americans are protected by law against having to testify against our spouses, so I don’t think his occupational obligation applies here. Just a thought.
I found this thread very moving. I lived with an addict for a decade while he tried to get clean. Eventually, I made the painful decision to remove our children from the home and obtain full custody. I did allow visits when he was sober, because to me it was as if he had a terminal illness, and I wanted them to be able to see him when he wasn’t ‘sick’. He died of an overdose last year. I am so very glad that I put them *first*, every time. They got to know the decent man their father was when he was sober and were protected against the horrors of his addiction. I truly hope Savannah is able to transcend her addiction. Best of luck to your family.
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