Originally Posted by lesliej

When I met my ex I thought it was like a lightning bolt gift from heaven! I knew he had struggled but I just didn't get it. I was in recovery (at that point four years sober) and I just thought well...hey, recovery works!!! I didn't know crack. I thought that two beautiful souls had found each other in the damaged goods bargain bin..and that we were going to accept each others past, hold each other up with dignity, integrity and beauty, and love each other into bliss!

I was wrong. But that initial feeling...that lightning bolt gift from heaven...it was/is so very hard to get over. There are still residual waves of effects from the heart break I felt in leaving. I will say this again...addiction/codependency turned dreams into denial, faith in recovery into addiction to hope, hope into fantasy, and love into addiction.

The whole bad ride, the spiral downward, was so heart breakingly tragic and traumatizing that it is no wonder why it takes so long to move through the processing stages of grief, healing, and rediscovering love of self. Maybe that's what the initial lighting bolt gift was...it was that I was going to learn a really really f'n hard lesson...to love myself.

Acceptance is key in this journey. I know my ex is still cycling around. I check in on him still on fb...why? weakness still. love? hope? loneliness? codependency? I don't need to label it so much as just accept where I am at and keep moving forward toward greater serenity. Life. Like the line in the movie "Trainspotting"..."choose life."

I accept that there was something in our connection that hooked me in a way that feels like a fundamental shift. It was life changing. Once an addict always an addict...and I was addicted to him. So now I have to learn to live with that, to live with that with grace, and dignity and integrity and acceptance. I have to accept it so that I can love that part of myself too...so that I don't have to go ever go back and relearn those old lessons.

My acceptance includes the idea that as much as an addict, even months and years in recovery, might still have triggers and cravings...so too do I.

My ex and I found each other in the "damaged goods bin" and we loved each other. He accepted me, and he helped me open my heart...I just didn't know...I didn't know there were conditions, and that the damage was deeper than I thought. I thought we would be in recovery together. But we're not. I had to get out of his way...and he had to get out of my life.