My hobbies? The last thing in the world I wanted was more alone time to sew or stamp or paste. I’d had enough isolation. Enough one-sided conversations with dogs. Having another person in the house was so satisfying. I made the whole box of pasta for my super rich bolognaise sauce. I roasted a whole pork tenderloin, a full-sized roasting chicken. I’d stopped replenishing my Tupperware supply. With two people, there were never any leftovers. Jimbo had never kept a home. I had to teach him the basics like how to turn on the dishwasher and how to load laundry into the machine. For a time, I thought he’d share some of these tasks with me, but I was wrong. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. If I brought homemaking into his experience, he brought a life of belonging into mine. I was finally included into the mainstream of We. God, how I loved that pronoun. We watched Law and Order. We’re having lunch. We like spaghetti. In Walmart, we raced wheelchair shopping carts side by side, and I commiserated with the checkout lady about husbands who don’t remember to reload the toilet paper holder while Jimbo fumbled to find the proper coupons in the clippings folder. We shouted our orders into the drive-thru microphone, sets of two. Two cokes. Two pot pies. Two. Two. Two. Two is an even number. Two is a number that implies balance. Two is magic. We went to all our appointments together. We sat close together in doctor’s office waiting rooms. We helped diagnose each other, reviewing symptomology and incidences in complicated conversations. We got most of our information from the internet. We shared the same issues. Pain. Distress. Nonspecific discomforts. Jimbo introduced me to his pain management doctor, who was a friend of a cousin, and who wrote prescriptions for the lollipops that Jimbo loved. Morphine pops. Fentanyl pops. The pain doctor took care of all Jimbo’s refills. All his therapies. We bought discount packs of spinal epidurals that we scheduled together so we could hold hands during the procedures. At night, we rested together in bed, holding hands and watching television. I felt like I was finally able to breathe for the very first time; every pill was a revelation, every treatment a discovery. I called him Husband and he called me Wife. Wife! I loved the sound of that word! For the first time in my life, I was part of the club, an honored guest in the secret society called marriage. All the defenses I’d built up, the hobbies, the small friendships, the hours and hours of recorded television entertainment, were like sunfish boats set asea. Gone. Disappeared with all the mishaps and stories of my single life onboard. I’d always believed that marriage was a happy place. “I’m so glad I married your grandfather,” my grandmother spoke with the satisfaction of a person who’d made good choices. Apparently, she’d been dating another guy when she met my grandfather. He’d stolen her away, she recalled the fairy tale element of their union. My grandfather had died at the best part of her life, leaving her alone for the hardest part, old age, and yet she talked of their time together with simple lightness. “He used to surprise me every Halloween,” she recalled. “He’d put on a rubbery face mask and go around the side of the house to ring the front doorbell. When I’d answer, he’d yell, “Trick or Treat!” He also used to drop her off places and forget to pick her up. And he wandered off every time they had company to the house, preferring the companionship of his dog and his pipe to socializing with people. But mostly, she’d been happy. My parents did not share any of their marriage difficulties. I do remember one large container of flowers delivered to the house with a note in my father’s handwriting that read: Anger makes wrinkles. “You get used to each other,” my mother provided wisdom in small packages when we were girls. Maybe she confided in more detail to Celia who married at twenty-six and therefore had a need for more serious information. There was much I’d missed as a single person. I am sure I idealized my parents’ marriage, but what child doesn’t? By the time I got married, my parents had already passed their fifty-third anniversary. My sister never suffered an unhappy married day. But then, it is possible that the difficulties she encountered were not shared with me. She was, in some ways, like my mother. Reluctant to share too much about her own issues What she did share were the insignificant mishaps, the minor snafus of living as a pair. Conflicts over paint colors. Unleaded gas in the car or premium. Small insults. Habits and tics of silly annoyances. If I hadn’t met Jimbo, I’d have never known what it means to absorb another person, to join as one. The secrets afforded to the married were at once offered to me and I soared. What a marvel, to be a couple! To share the air with someone, to sit quietly and listen to each other’s breaths. I learned his sounds and he learned mine. His stomach percolated while he slept. His urine splashed in the toilet water like spring rain, delicate and intermittent. The patter of his pale bare feet on the laminate flooring was soft as ballet, for a pudgy man he walked with an angel’s grace. We kissed. We kissed and tickled and tumbled on top of one another. What had been a terrifying concept, that I would never be loved, became a known trust: he loved me. Jimbo loved me. And he showed his love in attention and hugs and in a constant consciousness of my well-being. “How do you feel?” he’d ask, and I’d answer, “I feel with my hands.” This was our private language, our secret banter. It meant: I am so happy to be with you. I loved making his pastrami sandwiches on wheat and driving him to his appointments. I loved watching his favorite television shows and learning how to read the horse racing sheets. I loved everything about him. That we could not have sex didn’t really bother me. I welcomed him into my bed as you’d welcome a discomfited child who scurries under the blankets for shelter during a lightning storm. Come to me. Lie with me. Let me stroke your face. Every night at eight, Jimbo calls his mother. They have a very strong connection. Indeed, they share an intense history. After the car accident that killed his father, Jimbo took to his bed, in his mother’s house. She cooked his meals, delivered his meds. She drove him to doctors’ appointments and picked up his prescriptions. At night, she drew a chair up close to the bed and they watched television together. It was no wonder that she got a little persnickety when Jimbo and I started seeing each other. I was hoping she’d be happy for us. That she will not come to our little wedding is a serious disappointment, but no matter how I press, he is unable to convince her. I am already planning the party. I want bowls of jellybeans on the tables, servers dressed in renaissance costumes, and an old-fashioned popcorn machine with a butter dispenser stationed at the entrance. Also, I’m going to pass out party horns so everyone can participate in the festivity. I already invited the tattoo artist who opened a business in his garage across the street and a few of my better neighbors. Plots will come of course. And Perla, my friend. Perla and I used to see a lot of each other. We’d visit after work, sometimes we cooked dinner on Perla’s little Hibachi grill. I was a bookkeeper then, balancing payroll, paperwork, and soul-crushing boredom in the rangy back room of a dental office where I hardly ever saw another person other than the office manager, who poked her head into my space occasionally to say Hello and Did you find the amended invoices I left for you. I could have done the job in my sleep. Perla lived in a tiny house on a large property owned by her parents who were rich, I think, back in Mexico. They’d tried for a few years to fix her up with a husband from their country, but no one would have her because of her scars. She’d had shingles as a teen which left her face puckered and pinched from her forehead to her neck. One side of her mouth hitched up as if lifted by a pulley. Perla had a menial job, a receptionist I think, in her uncle’s small appliance repair shop. She lived a quiet life, like mine. We had similar comfort zones, keeping mostly out of sight, satisfied with our homey crafts and our little survivals. But that was before. One night, at eight, Perla called and asked if I’d like to go shopping at the discount bazaar with her on a Saturday, an activity we used to do together. “I can’t,” I told her. “Jimbo doesn’t like when I go out without him.” “So bring him,” she said. I heard him mumbling to his mother. “My legs hurt,” I heard. “I can hardly walk.” “He has trouble walking.” “He can walk next to me,” she said. “That way, he won’t feel self-conscious.” I felt a momentary pang of missing the amusing banter of her friendship. Perla and I had a lot of good talks, we had some fun here and there. Mainly, we occupied each other’s time when no one else would. But I didn’t need her anymore. I’d shed her along with my single woman designation. I didn’t need friends. I had Jimbo. Perla was not letting go. “Just because you have a husband does not mean you need to ditch all your friends, stop having fun,” she challenged. “Remember that Halloween party?” She made me smile. I loved parties, I always had. “Remember?” she said. “God, we had the most fun!”
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As I began to read, it read like fiction. But this is not fiction. It is a Reality NOW happening across the world and especially in the United States...
I thought I knew all of the key words as I read--Co-dependency, Intervention, Addiction... All of these I had learned about through the media/books. But I knew as I read, I knew nothing about what happens to the individual who is, oftentimes accidentally, pulled into a life of drug addiction. After the beginning of the book, which is in first-person, I learned that she was a single woman--one who had never actually achieved any of her goals that she once dreamed of--that she even planned for and began early activities, such as gardening...
As we learn that she is in her mid-30s, we see a beginning of her looking backward, wondering how so many years had passed, and, that she was still alone. Soon after her family was surprised and dismayed when she announced she is marrying--a jobless, ill man who is a heroine addict. It was about that point that I realized that I didn't even remember her name... But, Jimbo, was to become the main character of this story... Sadly... As I read, after learning that initial shock of who she was marrying, all I could do is grow sadder and sadder as I read, still in my fictional fantasy that it would slowly change as in a romance story, and a true relationship would evolve between them...
I was wrong. This book is not fiction! But, still, I was shocked as the book...suddenly...ended...
Readers, I was never really knowledgeable about the drug problem facing our young people. My life had been molded by the church's activities and then began working at age 18 on a college campus where, again, I spent my days working and learning, and moving forward in a career... Many already know that I was overweight most of my life; I used to think that I could not condemn those who took a drug of any sort, since I also use food as an addiction. I was wrong. Very wrong. There is no comparison...
With food, I was only hurting my body, myself. I was still in control of my mind and made choices daily that were sound and based upon events of the world. Even as I would watch movies with scenes where there were people in a drugged state, just laying there, it never sunk in of what that individual had chosen, or not chosen, to become...
Folks, if any of this sounds like you. You need to consider this book a Must-Read! I will NEVER forget what I learned of the reality of "doing drugs" as was possible by reading this story of how a lonely person, in this case, a woman--but it could have been anybody--who is seduced into "feeling better" through a single pill...
A pill that becomes another pill and another... Especially if your husband, in pulling out his own drugs, chooses to pop one of his into your mouth...
It made me nauseous, sick to my stomach... I hurt for this woman and all that have lost control of the lives they were meant to live by addiction... I had one experience that gave me a "slight" taste. When I had a surgery to remove a brain tumor. I was given one of those pills beginning with oxy...I was to be in the hospital a week... As I look back, there were immediate signs that this medicine, which is now on my "allergic" list was harmful to me. By the end of that week, on the final day, I became so emotional, couldn't stop crying, that they had to give me a shot to calm down... I had a similar though not as extreme with birth control pills...fortunately a biochemistry professor who was a friend of mine, told me to get off the pills and drink water until they were out of my system...
I include these personal "minor" experiences for me to point out that each individual is different. What one person can tolerate, for another, it could be deadly. Obviously Jimbo had been much slower in building up his major addiction which had taken over his life. But what he did, I call it straight from my heart... It was murder, even if legally it could not be considered that.
Folks, I will be further discussing this book with the author. I'll be thinking about how to approach this traumatic experience, so watch for that soon. However, when I finished the book, I realized that I really had no further need. She has shared her heart, her loss, her fears as she watched what was happening to an individual who was to the point that she was not able to listen, and act, anymore. She had become addicted to laying in bed next to a man... where only kisses were the romantic life she had so wanted... Still her loneliness had created the need, the drive to find "someone," even if he was clearly wrong for her in so many ways...
Lisa shares the reality, the times when she and her sister would meet and talk and she would see some glimmer of hope that she was pulling away from the situation in which she found herself. Only to soon find that...it...was...too...late...
Parents, Teens, Everybody who has concerns for drugs being readily available, Please read this book. And never assume that their availability is not purposely being permitted... Seduction of our teens is continuously; Men who desire young girls, like Epstein, are legion--many choose to use date rape drugs for the rapes that are ongoing while there is a political party that thinks that those children that are born from rape should be kept by the young molested girls... even though under 10, as many of you will recall. Where are we headed? Certainly it is not love that drives children to take a pill when dared by somebody who has easy access, often from their homes...
I applaud Lisa for having the strength to write this story. It could not have been easy... I am grateful that she did. It opened my eyes and made me realize that even reading or watching Law and Order Special Victims doesn't give any real knowledge of exactly what is taking place. This book provides an ongoing daily diary, you might say, of the life of a woman who once lived and loved Jimbo. Yes, I could probably find her name in the book... But each reader needs to fill in her name for yourself... I, personally, am grateful for those in my life who could have gotten addicted by "testing..." drugs... Sure, I tasted beer, I puffed a cigarette once, but my mind was not receptive to either... I learned the potential danger only through prescribed drugs, which I could not handle! People wake up!
Do your duty to yourself and family. Read the reality of a lost life! Consider the life as it should be! NOW!
GABixlerReviews
Less opinionated post on Amazon for use to share if needed...
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