What it is like to experience the gambling addiction of your partner.
Mr. X (aka "Marvin")was diagnosed by the court psych eval as having a "personality disorder". I can only speculate that his lifelong pattern of addictive behavior is part of that.
When I first met Mr. X, I was barely out of high school and he was 31. We met in an Internet chat room, and he hid his abusive behavior by adapting all of his interests to match mine. He listened to rap music. He bought me dolls and cups shaped like Winnie the Pooh. He told me stories about how horrible his mother was to encourage teenage rebellion. I thought he was a fun person to hang out with, only much later would I learn the truth..
When I first met Mr. X, he was addicted to gambling and went to the casinos several times a week. I was too young to enter a casino so I usually sat outside, waiting. Mr. X called himself the "Marvin-izer". He made me believe he needed to gamble so we would have this great life together. Gambling is his destiny. I needed to be supportive. If I wasn't supportive there would be fights...
I can't believe I was once that little girl slouched against the wall outside the casino, waiting..hours ticked by. My limbs grew stiff, my mouth dry. The pot of gold at the rainbow never appeared just the ugly leprechaun.
It scared me how ordinary people were consumed by the casino then turned into ghosts. I felt so all alone, standing outside the gleaming glass doors with my hands jammed in my pockets, and my head hung low—gazing at the gritty concrete. If I stared long enough, I thought perhaps Marvin could feel my longing, and that he would pry himself away from the poker table, and would come back to me. I was too young to go inside a casino but I imagined the felt tables, green as an Amazon river with the dealer’s hand snaking across, steadily making its way towards a pile of cards, neatly stacked liked an Inca temple. I knew that Temple yielded treasures—the jeweled colored chips, so prized by Marvin. These chips held our future, our dreams... Marvin made me believe that he needed to gamble in order to make our life better.
Smoked pulled from within its dark caverns, curled around Marvin as he eyed the action at the poker tables. The cherry colored lights above the slot machines puckered, whispering...
My ears were deaf to the unformed sounds of shuffling feet, chatter and robotic slot machines became one voice, a hum upon which so many felt was their “lucky day”.
I had not seen Marvin in what seemed like several days, I could not remember our last conversation or the last meal we shared or even kissing him good night. He simply had vanished.
-- Emily Court, Sept. 2014