Cassandra, I just read your post, I'm sorry that you are so sad. How giving of you to respond to me earlier, when you yourself are dealing with so much pain. I know how you feel, because that feeling you are experienceing is exactly why I joined this group.
To figure out how to let go.
For I too, have had my addict, that I love dearly, leave. However, I made the mistake of getting sucked back in - BECAUSE that is how I felt. (what you just wrote of)
He too is one of the funniest men I have ever met.
When he was gone- at times it felt like someone hit me in the stomach and I couldnt breathe.
It sucked. and so I went back.
Maybe what my therapist told me will help you. He said inside everyone of us there is a little child, and sometimes the child wins..... the child is the one with the hope that he gets better, and that everything will be fine. The child desperatly seeks his love, and wants to look for the slightest shred of evidence of why we should stay.
And here is when our adult needs to hug that little girl and say to her "sweetie, he loves you as much as he can, but he CANT love you the way you deserve. He is not good for you- or for your life, and I'm not going to let you go there again. I know it hurts, and you can cry, kick and scream, but I'm going to protect you from him."
He told me to take a picture of myself from when I was little and look at it hard when those feelings of "what could have been" when missing him gets too hard to handle. And ask myself what a loving person would tell that little girl. To look at ourselves in the most innocent form and love that person more than anyone else. Protect her at all costs.
I know that I am not there yet....
Though I am trying very hard.
I just need to be here, so that when I cowboy up again and ask the man I love, my addict boyfriend, to leave, that I never turn around again.
My thoughts are with you.
Cess