steve1840

i am trying hard to detach. it's like a scene in a movie where someone has slipped on a ledge and the other person is holding on, but the one who is hanging is getting heavier and starting to slip. you keep trying to hold, but slowly you loose another inch. you know you will not be able to save them, but you still hold on, feeling them slowly slip. the desperation. the helplessness, the despair of knowing the inevitable. you look one more time into their eyes. you try to say everything with that look and then in an instant they are gone.

you cannot leap yourself to catch them. but you see the beauty you once touched. you know you can never look into those eyes again.

steve1840

ha! well done, cynical one. i'm not falling though. i have slipped, but i will not fall

keepinon

Good.. I hope u don't fall becuz manyof us have run right off the cliff after the addict. This analogy has been used b4 and I used to be grabbing my daughter by the ankles, trying to reason w/her why she shouldn't go off the cliff, calling 911 w/my free hand for backup, making sure there was a net in case she went over,etc. Doesn't work so save urself the heartache. If you are healthy,your addict friend at least has a healthy example to look up to..

lightseeker

let go or get dragged.....one of my favorite recovery sayings. The healthier you become the more chances that your loved one will reach her own bottom and find her way out of this horrible addiction. It's counter intuitive because everything within us wants to hold on tighter. And truth be told.....the only way there is any possibility for recovery is to actually let go. It is all but unbearable to do this but it is why so many people keep enabling addiction.

oshkoshberjosh

What you feel for her, she is not capable of reciprocating at this time. Imagine she was not using, but that she simply didn't feel for you what you feel for her. What would you do?

I am struggling with this myself. I still find myself reading and rereading such romantic, sweet, warm text messages from my romantic interest before he started relapsing. Flash forward 3 months later and I just found out two days ago that he has been spending a lot of time on a dating website. He is incapable of feeling love right now so he is just looking for his next thrill I think.

I am right there with you, struggling through this although my romantic interest hasn't hit the low levels of yours yet. But why should I put energy into someone who is incapable of feeling genuine love right now?

lightseeker

Osk....what you wrote really took me back to the early days when I was mourning "the man that was". Although my husband has been sober now for 5 years the man that I fell in love with has never returned. A lot of his sweetness/charm was also wrapped up into his addiction whether he was ingesting or not. As sobriety became the order of the day life on life's terms changed a lot of how he deals with people.

I think that a lot of time that we hope for a person that is just gone forever. Are we ever the same after what we've been through? My answer is an unequivical "NO". At least I know that I am not. And I know that I can't expect my husband to be that man.

I think that there is just a whole lot of grief surrounding addiction and it boils down to the serenity prayer......help me to accept the things that I can't change and have the courage to change the things that I can (that would only be me and not him or anyone else).

URMYEVERYTHING

Next time you want to be a dare devil make sure to go with a safety harness on! (smile)

Keep your head up. You have gotten past the hard part (deciding to detach). The rest is just a matter of putting it into action.