To my friends who keep on asking me why I am writing about my husband’s problems on the internet or even talking about it in public I repeat and this time I also put it in writing, I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed anymore.
I was against mentioning the problems he once had but today I am, in a funny way, almost proud to share them. What people don’t know or refuse to understand is that by talking about Robin’s past with alcohol and drugs more often we will all realise that there is actually other people out there going through very rough times due to their own issues with addiction and that most of them are either in denial or don’t have the courage to address it. Some may not even think it is a problem that can be dealt with.

Yes, Robin is no longer using and has stopped doing twenty years ago but an addict will always be an addict. When I say to you readers, that my man was drinking and taking drugs every single day but now isn’t and doesn’t even imagine his life with any mood altering substances, I am actually trying to make you understand that there is hope, people can change.
Some people may think they are at the end of their life, they have touched the rock bottom, in short, that nothing can be done to save them. No it is not the end if they are still alive. Plenty of people have been through it and have managed to get out of it why couldn’t they?

If I don’t share, how would everyone know? How some of you, who like me had no idea whatsoever about what addiction was would know? Addiction like so many terrible things in life such as diabetes is a disease. It is not a behaviour (like I used to think), a way of life, a rebellion, an adventure, or something led by curiosity. People are born addicts. Robin was born addict, so were both his father and brother. It is a condition they will have to live with for the rest of their life. They have to work on it every single day (meetings, self help groups, paying attention etc…). Robin for instance does not drink alcohol in any shape or form. At home for example mouthwashes have to be alcohol free, coq au vin has to be coq au grape juice, any flambés (flambéd the english way) meals are done using alternatives and so on.
To reach that new lifestyle he had to change everything starting with his friends, hobbies, of course receive treatments…

I am not ashamed to talk and share about this, above all when I know it will help. I am proud.

Mimi Chin Up Lefever

As much as I shout, scream or even bark, I would never ever let my man down. Same with my children. Whoever hurts or disrespect him would automatically be on my black list for good.
Of course I would every now and then be your typical wife. I would curse him in front of relatives and close friends. Say how annoying he can be and so on. My mother can’t stand this lol. I sometimes wonder if she doesn’t love him more than me?! Woman, I am your child not him! He is white for Africa’s sake!!
In my culture the son in law is always right not the daughter in law but come ooooooooon!!
I would say bad things about him but I will never allow anyone to say anything nasty about him. Not in my presence for sure. I am his wife, cursing him is my right and my duty!
If someone does and I don’t react or simply smile that person should know that they have just drawn the biggest red cross on them. Robin would be annoyed with someone but after a while put it behind him and forget about what had happened (does he??) and carry on as if nothing ever occurred. I do not. I would rather have someone be mean to me than to him. Try to watch any female animal with their babies and see what happens when one of them is being attacked… This is what I am. I gladly become vicious. Concerning my children I don’t even want to write about it.
I would have left if he was still using when we met but not if we had had children. In my family, my country, my culture we do not divorce even if/when the husband or partner is a fucking piece of rotten shit that should have been aborted. It is like that and we accept it. However, nowadays we do have exceptions… unfortunately. People are leaving the continent the countries to study abroad and when they return to Africa, they return bringing in their mental and carry on luggages some western habits. Freedom ( for men, women and children), courage to dare doing things that are normally forbidden by society such as leaving someone for someone else, divorcing, smoking if front of adults for teenagers, baring tattoos for women, taking drugs and other insignificant/significant things (I would say this now). I am not blaming the West for my folks “emancipation” if I can call it like that. I am just mentioning a few things with the divorce in particular to show that back in the days a divorce or a woman raising her voice while talking to her man was a big NO NO (I wonder if I would have coped back in those years.. It would have been funny. I remember my spanish teacher in secondary school saying to me in front of the whole classroom that I was the kind of women that should be beaten up every morning from 4 to 6… 0_o. I laughed. I won’t today. I wish he could see me now.) kids smoking in front of their parents wasn’t even imaginable…

I am one of those who strongly and deeply believe in staying with a partner no matter what especially when there is a child involved. My mother did, both my grandmothers did and I know I will. Even if it means making my partner’s life hell on earth 😉
Some of you reading this (women especially) are right at this instant raising both eyebrows turning them into a colourless rainbow digging more lines on their foreheads. Well that’s me. I may regret it one day who knows but I rather do so than find myself 20 years along the line saying to myself what if, what if. At least I know what I am staying with rather than trying to check on the other side of the fence and find a grass so bitter it tastes like nothing. My life, my present and my future all this, is for my kids and my husband. Ivorian people say people marry against each other not to. I am married against Robin and I accept and love it!

I am not well phisically and mentally when one of them is ill. I hate Robin being ill, thank God it doesn’t happen frequently. Boy, does he get on my very sensible tit when he is, behaving like the child he is. Those are the only moments I wish we had separate rooms. At the same time, it wouldn’t work as I would not close both eyes and would spend all night checking up on him. Same thing with his snoring (sorry darling but this is my blog! ;). I hate it but will not sleep if he doesn’t or stop in the middle of the night. I imagine that he is not breathing anymore and panic takes over me. When this happens I nudge him a bit or turn him over and guess what… the symphony is back. I know I am crazy.
When my kids are ill, just imagine me.
I tend to tell people when they ask me how many children i have that I have 3, Robin being the eldest, Pips the middle one and Lia Chintaho the youngest. Lia Chintaho because she has chinese-mongolian like eyes. At one point when we left the hospital after her birth I thought the midwife exchanged her, but luckily she looks so much like her dad and as her paternal grandfather pointed out once when we told him she just couldn’t stop frowning, he used to do the same when he was a baby. From what I heard and saw Lia is a carbon copy of her father and grandfather at the same age, 2. Hopefully she hasn’t inherited their genes.

I over protect my family. I can’t stop myself behaving like an embarrassing mother with Robin in particular. Wether we are alone or in public I do things like removing ketchup in the corner of his mouth, you know, with the saliva on my finger tip. He hates it and the more he complains the more I want to get rid of it. Also, I am ridiculously hopeless when he is next to me chewing on something, because I will always say what are you eating and he will always reply, nothing. The nothing just raises the hair on my neck, I simply go for his mouth and try opening it wide. Do I care?! Nope!! He will eventually give up one day and reply the way I want ^_*
I remember us coming from Verbier in 2005 after a disastrous (for me that is) snowboarding trip, standing on the plane waiting for one of the crew members to allocate us 3 seats so that I could rest my left leg (I broke two ligaments in the back of my knee falling of the chairlift. Thank you Robin. 😉 I know what you’re thinking right now but I know you pushed me with your “Jum jump jump!”
Bref, (meaning in short in french. Some of you should probably buy a french dictionary. Some stuff are better said in my native language.) he had something on his face. I can’t remember what it was but i know I had/needed to remove it and he didn’t want me to because people were passing by. I promised I was sad with tears in my eyes. (silly me!)
Some people say the fact that I was born in July, being a cancer did shape my personality. I don’t believe in any of this but I should look into it one day. I just think it is the way I am. I am kind of the same with my friends but less extreme.

When I am the mother, I don’t care I just crack open his bubble.
When I am the wife, I let him be and give him his space.
When I am the friend, I try and don’t insist.

Mimi, me…

It’s after eleven thirty and like every night I won’t be going to bed before midnight. The rest of my family is already in bed. Is this the moment I prefer the most? When I can seat in front of my computer, listen to my music and just type away and browse the web…?? I am not sure as I truly like it when my two little girls run around getting on my nerves and of course when the biggest child of all starts faffing around for God knows what. You must have realised that the biggest child of all is my husband…. the addict. I think I should stop calling him like this, after all it is not a plague (well sometimes honestly I tend to feel it is!).

I was looking at the header of the blog, the picture of the stones I took when we went to Cornwall for his birthday last year (Geez already?!). The picture was taken on the way up to the Mount St Michel (sometimes I wonder how I let him take me to strange places. The building was way up the sky which is a no go area for me. I like to know that my feet are firmly on the ground).
We were climbing up these very dangerous man-made steps when I noticed it. I got the camera out and took a couple of shots.
It’s now I can say, the best thing that I liked that day (I liked the other stuff we did, but this was special ;).

I have used this image for the header of both the french and english blogs as I feel it does actually represent the heart I have in my chest. Yes it is cold, and obviously hard but I think as a partner of someone suffering with an addiction problem, a mental problem, I cannot have a normal heart and live with my husband and above all love him to the point where I accept and will accept certain things.
As I said before, we non-addict are normal people (if I can say so ?!?), we see things in a way addict wouldn’t do, not even to save themselves from an overdose.
Yes they are bright, interesting, beautiful, amazing people but boy don’t they act and behave stupidly when they use or sometimes not… We just don’t see things and appreciate them the same way. It is frustrating!

The cold part of my heart helps me pretend to be blind in front of certain situations and behaviours. One can’t always pay attention to every single details, not if you want a relationship like mine to last. I am a woman and this is what we do best (after gossiping. To gossip is actually talking about insignificant stuff in a badly detailed way I would say) scrutinise. We watch whatever the people who live in the same home as us do with a microscope. Writing this makes me laugh now. Things have indeed changed over the years.
I don’t sulk and moan when he is in his bubble, I don’t ask questions about his “strange tuesday morning meetings” anymore. I just take things as they come (well to a certain point, I am not dead I am still alive with all my senses.) and I try not to rationalise as I know it will not work!

The hard part of my heart helps me overcome whatever is beyond me. I work in the field now but I still find it quite hard to accept a few things. My heart doesn’t sink anymore when he is “weird” (he has always been weird anyway, he was born weird!). I will put a smile on my face now when I deep inside feel like screaming or kicking 😉
One of my colleagues once said a very interesting thing to me when I thought I just couldn’t cope with him anymore. At first I laughed and told her she was crazy but she said no because it does work. “When you feel like spitting in his eye, kiss him instead” Duh!!??? Really?? When I feel like spitting I actually do worse (I can remove the eye, oooh yes!)
You have to have a certain maturity with a very strong willpower to do such a thing.
I do now.
I can look at him with a smile when inside me I am cursing the day he was born.

I am more tolerant now and less judgemental even if often I feel like shaking the addiction out of some people. I do say every now and then to my husband, such and such needed a good beating when they were growing up. I know this is mean… Well someone somewhere feels like me I am sure!

In order to love and above all accept our addict partners, siblings etc… We need more willpower than they do.

What I think about addiction and addicts is completely personal.

I will start by talking about my own vision of the “thing” and this before and after I had a clue what this was.

As I said earlier, the before will be very short. I did not have a clue about what addiction was. I knew of course that one could be “accro”, addicted to chocolate, cigarettes, cocaine etc… but not to the point where the thing liked could take over one’s life.
Then came the other perspective of the “thing”. I started seeing addicts as people with no sense of power whatsoever. For me anyone who can’t just stop anything with a simple NO is powerless and I used to despise people like this. I am not ashamed to say so as my mind was already set. However this way of seeing things was what was incrusted in my mind until I discovered what suffering from addiction was.

Today I would say, the addict is the most selfish, self-centered and careless person on earth… but NOT because the addict has just decided to be so but only and I repeat my word ONLY because he/she is simply powerless with the illness.
Yes, addiction is indeed an illness, but one that is so dreadful and shameful that in certain places in the world it is still a massive taboo.
I have noticed that the word and its knowledge are well spread in West Europe, central Europe, the UK and North America. The other places such as Africa, South America, Asia and Middle East have for some the knowledge but refuse to talk about it and the others just like me years ago do not have a clue.

He is my addict… in recovery.

He was born in the 60s, the 2nd in a family of 3. Looking at the pictures of him baby, toddler and then teenager I find it really hard to believe all the things he did from the age of… 12. He is the proper description of an ADDICT. I would say he is an addict through and through.
Those who knew him when he was still using as he sometime says, won’t believe he has stopped and those who like me can’t even imagine him holding someone’s cigarette won’t believe he ever did use.
He started drinking when he was still a kid. Yes at 12 we are still children whether we like it or not or whether society acknowledges it or doesn’t, either way drinking and getting drunk at that age is outrageous to me.
It went from drinking to self harming and eventually to the serious stuff.
It’s funny but writing about it now makes me sad for him. I have known the story for a long time now, but it never had that effect on me. I used to have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Anger towards both him and his parents as I thought somehow they failed him. For me he was just a kid that needed a good beating (well I would have beaten the addiction out of his system!).shame of him, above all when he talks about the things that happened with no shame whatsoever not even a tiny bit regrets.

It is over 20 years now since he last held a glass of alcohol, smoked a joint, swallowed any kind of dodgy pills and snorted a line of coke. I was not around when this happened but I can assure you I would have probably dumped him… if this had happened when we met I don’t think I would have stayed anyway.

Him, my favourite addict in the whole wide world is Robin my husband.