Letting Go
Hello All - I'm new to this forum, and have been reading some articles, and threads by other members over the past few days to get some clarity. The past few years I've been on one crazy roller coaster ride with an addict, and I took myself off the ride.. finally. I met him 5 years ago, young, and fell in love. Everything about his addiction, and his life was drip feed to me over the years. I did 3 bids with him, I've driven him to detox, I've watched him stop breathing in his sleep, I've seen him come back from OD'ing, and show up at my house after running out of an ambulance. I've have seen and loved him at his worst. I always believed in him, and eventually his addiction wore me out, and I lost myself too. He relapsed last January, and that was the beginning of the end. I realized I couldn't do it anymore. He didn't care. He was doing what addicts do. In complete denial, and completely void of how it had affected my life. He came home after a week long binge of shooting up, to detox in our bedroom. He became a different person to me. Watching someone detoxing is horrifying, and will wear down more then almost anything. I didn't recover from his relapse, because nothing changed, he got through it, and the next weekend was back out running around and using. The only difference was, heroin was a thing of the past, and cocaine was his new drug of choice. About 5 months later, he proposed to me, and we were talking plans of marriage, and starting a family. 2 weeks after he proposed, turns out he was having an affair, and it eventually turns out he had been cheating on me throughout the entire relationship. All pre meditated. If he wasn't cheating on me with the drugs, the stealing, it was with other women. We broke up last Summer and since then he has tried to weasel his way back in and out of my life. Nothing in his lifestyle has changed. The closest he's come to recovery is a yearly AA meeting, or the AA program in jail. Still living the 'party' lifestyle of drinking heavily, popping his suboxones on a regular basis and a weekend filled with drug use. He told me he doesn't have a drug problem anymore, he's 'over it'. He's been shooting up heroin since he was 15, and he's going to be 30. He is what he is. He's an addict. And his addict behaviors run his life. I'm here because I want to stop hating him, and to stop thinking about the hurt, the betrayal of the things that I've experienced with this relationship. I'm at the angry stage, I have completely cut contact with him.. for the 2nd time. He pops in and out, he has a way of suckering me back in. I always knew that loving an addict was tough, and there are times you've been to hell and back, but I never realized just how much it was affecting me mentally & emotionally. I want to heal, and not repeat the same mistakes, and recover from the codependent traits I developed. I was reading on here too, about the 'crazy making'.. it's so true!! I can't even count how many times I've had to step back and question my own sanity. I'll make up my mind, and he manipulates me right back to the beginning - and then I feel guilty, or that I'm overreacting. I know, and I do know, being away from him is the best thing for me. He makes me worse, the addiction, the behaviors, the lies, the insanity.. makes me worse.
I've let him go.. how do you let the hurt and betrayal go of their actions? of my actions? Some days I say I hate him, but then I realize I'm more mad at myself for staying, and putting up with so much bs, and ignoring the red flags. Of believing that love, and hope could cure his addiction, and that he'd change.