#DRUG #ADDICTION IN SAMOA IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED:

[Dimary Krystal Letisha Ulberg, is 31 years old, with 3 children — two girls and one boy. They currently live Tafuna, American Samoa. She is employed as a Senior Fisheries Officer/ Port Coordinator by the Cook Islands Fisheries Field Office of the Ministry of Marine Resources in Cook Islands, based in American Samoa.

She gave Samoa News permission to publish her story and the SN editorial board has decided to publish it in it’s entirety — as a 3-Part story — its publication days are Wednesday, May 6, Friday, May 8, and Monday, May 11, 2020.

Samoa News believes it’s a powerful story that needs to be told and read in our community that is suffering from ‘aisa’ addiction, where ultimately we are all victims. Faafetai.]

PART I

For the patient reader, it took me several months trying to write and finish this, a lot of thinking whether to send out or not — may it reach your mind in a peaceful state and in good judgement. 

We got married in 2007. Everything was a whirlwind romance; that young naive kind of love thinking you would conquer the world together and you can’t imagine any day away from each other.

In 2013, the diagnosis became evident. I started seeing burnt foil around the house, burnt spoons, burnt scissors, cut up straws, broken glasses, burnt glass tubes from nowhere, broken cotton swabs, money and valuable things went missing.

I didn’t mind at first because I was cleaning up after our 3 babies, then it became so frequent around the house it was getting too normal. The changed behavior, the active and the moody days, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it must have been drugs and so it was. After a few days of studying the different narcotics, I have finally arrived to the drug, the one drug that would become my enemy for the next 6 years of our marriage, methamphetamine or “aisa” in Samoan.

2020 marks the 7th year since we have been battling with my husband’s meth addiction in our marriage. It has been the longest ride ever of drained finances and broken promises. 

On the first few days after taking a hit or the “high” days, he would clean like a robot, rearrange all the furniture, break things apart to see what’s wrong and fix them all again like an original manufacturer. He would think he’s invincible. He would attend to his own company and never come close to my kids and I. The thing that he loves to do most would heighten; producing and writing music for hours on end and staying at his piano until his rear warms up the chair enough to light a fire.  He would never raise an argument with me even when I try to from all the rage I have, because he’s taken another hit. I could go wherever I want without him questioning or go with the kids the whole day and he wouldn’t care.

The struggle, however, came creeping in, not on the ‘high’ days; but on the “moody” days (3rd or 4th day after taking the meth hit depending on how strong or weak the dose was).

It’s having to be forced to cater for all the sexual pleasures because if I resist, he wouldn’t let me rest and there would be a long list of blackmailing. It’s having to cry throughout the whole time doing it because I didn’t have a choice although my eyelids were falling heavy on my face. It’s having to be called a slut sleeping around with all the men at work and all the men in the neigbourhood.

It’s having to keep reminding myself over and over again that I am a woman of worth and value. It’s having to move between 4 different rental houses within 1.5 years because part of the reason was to get me away from sleeping around.

It’s having to be questioned on the next “moody day” about what I’ve been doing the whole time he was high. It’s having to let him tell me bad stories of myself he’s heard from random people with no proof to show.

It’s having to suck up all the pain when going to work and pretending everything is okay at home. It’s having to put on a fake okay face almost every morning.

 It’s having to protect his reputation and trying to impress everyone of how such a loving husband he is because I didn’t want to get embarrassed.

It’s having to come up with lame excuses when he sends an angry and nasty text or email to my work colleagues or friends because I’m a slut and they're the reason why I am and not to associate myself with them, or I'm a bad influence to them.

It’s having to protect his name every time a phone breaks when our families try to contact us. It’s having to come up with silly excuses when there’s an important family gathering that we had to attend as a couple.

It’s about all the ridiculous lies I had to create for bruises and scars here and there caused from him wanting another meth hit.

It’s having to hide the purse every single time and counting all the money and hiding bank cards to make sure it’s all there. It’s having to loan occasionally to get us by with the kids because money always went missing and there were too many expenses to budget on.

It’s having to look for him in the early hours of the morning with the kids sleeping in the car praying I don’t find him dead on the road.

It’s having to be quiet in the house because he claims there are cameras everywhere and there are people standing outside the window looking and watching our every move. It’s having to be blamed that I am poisoning his food and water and wouldn’t dare eat anything I cook because I’m trying to kill him and my family is in the attempted murder mission too.

It’s having to deal with the accusation that I am doing drugs too, that I am involved with everyone selling the drug and we are dealing and bringing the drugs into Samoa and American Samoa.

It’s having my stressed out dark eye circles as proof that I am a drug addict too and we’re in this together. It’s having to resist him offering me the drug for a hit several times so that we can experience the high and pleasure together. Its having him make me sleep early in case I sneak out at night. It’s having him lock our doors and windows with spoons and forks so that if the utensils are moved, it’s a sign that I’ve left the house.

It’s having to see my kids cry while he tells them not to lie about where I went while he was high, because he wants them to tell him what he wants to hear and they're put in the position of being forced to lie.

It’s having to stand and watch phone after phone after phone being broken because he claims someone is hacking it and watching us through the phone, through the laptop and through the computer.

It’s having to spend money again while already on a tight budget to buy what has been broken because it’s needed for work or for contact with family. It's having to look for external drives, flash drives, games, tablets, laptops, phones, valuable things around the house to find out later he sold them for a hit if there was no money.

It's having to sit in the car and be quiet because he says there are bluetooth wires and speakers surrounding the car and people are watching us and stalking us.

It’s having to be quiet with my kids in the house and let him have his long rest after the moody days so he could wake up clear headed the next day and go to work. It’s having to pray that he doesn’t get fired every time he gets away with a lame excuse of why he can’t come to work.

It’s having to suck up the shame when you find out later that there was money borrowed from the office or neighbors or friends or family and the excuse was to buy kids’ food. It’s having to hope that the job he has would keep him occupied and keep his focus away from drugs. It’s having to not want to come out of the house because I’m embarrassed of the fight the previous day that the neighbors saw or heard.

It's having to keep on wondering when is ever the right time to call the police on him and put him behind bars, but could never find the heart to do that to him especially to our kids.

It’s having to not enjoy my duty travels and keep focus on work because I am either worried about him back home with my kids or he’s bothering me all the time. It’s having to deny some of my work duty travels because he wasn’t reliable enough to watch the kids although the allowances would help with family expenses too.

It’s having to eat myself away with food as an emotional eater because that’s alI I could do. It’s having to not care about how I looked anymore or what I would wear anymore because I was getting too used and comfortable of the stress levels.

It’s having to lock myself away from friends and families because I just didn’t want to get out of the house or go anywhere aside from work because I had to keep the money coming in for our family. It’s having to spend endless nights crying and feeling sorry for myself, asking when it would end. Its having to tuck my kids into my arms and saying sorry to them over their sleep because I’ve taken it out on them again.

It’s having to fight myself mentally and emotionally while trying to stay strong for my kids. It’s having to think twice every now and then about committing suicide. It’s having to take the knife off of my chest again with a little bit of cloth coming with it because I was that close.

It’s having to purposely get rid of the hunting rifle in case I pull the trigger on us one day. Its having to come down from a chair every time I try to levitate myself with a rope or belt. It’s having to think twice of taking my own kids’ lives and then mine so we could escape the pain.

It’s having to burn the bible because I didn’t believe in God anymore. It’s having to stop listening to gospel music because I hated it. It’s having to stop praying for a while because it was a waste of time.

It’s having to drive full speed on the road several times with the kids praying for an accident to happen so we could go away easily and just like that, so he could suffer and mourn us his whole life.

It was having to drink many random pills lying around the house so it could take an overdose effect. It was having to not care anymore whether the kids watch us scream our lungs out or not, roll on the floor like psychos, fighting, throwing dishes around the house and breaking things.

It’s having to keep doing talk interventions with families and him to break the habit. It’s having to drive and practically live on the road with the kids for hours on end because I did not want to go home and face the pain. 

Then all of that goes away for a while, for at least 4 days or 5 days sober.

He has his moments of victories, his tries and efforts that I was always so proud of, with the longest sobriety being a month and a few days at one point. You have that window to start all over again, to be able to give him your trust again, to be able to become a loving family again.

I would feel like a bad wife if I don’t and I challenged myself every single time to give him one more chance. I kept thinking about all our good times together and kept hoping to have him back again someday and kept telling myself maybe this is his last one, just maybe.

I beat myself up thinking maybe I’m not praying hard enough, maybe I’m not being patient enough, maybe I need to work harder at our marriage, maybe I’m being too mean to him when he’s high or maybe I’m being too soft, he needs help he can’t fight the addiction.

Then the cycle repeats itself, the pattern continues. There’s another meth hit. One more chance always turns into the millionth, always turns into the thousandth separation and I would go back to him in less than a month or so. We would start at square one over and over and over again. I felt stupid, fed up, I was just drained.

Here I am oh patient reader and it’s nice to meet you, I'm Dim, thank you for reading this far.

Please share for our women out there struggling through the moody days of their husbands' drug addictions. They need our help.

Happy Mother’s day in advance to all you fighting warriors!

#staymotivated #motivateothers  #stayencouraged #encourageothers #staypositive #buildothers

Romans 5: 1-5

(Part II will be published on Friday, May 8, 2020)