Update: Letting the Last Hope Go...
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Anytown, USA
Posts: 59
Update: Letting the Last Hope Go...
So as many of you know, I finally left my ex-afiance on 1 May and moved away to a different state... Only 5 weeks later, I'm saddened by how far he's fallen in those few weeks. He no longer has my phone number or address, not that I was afraid he'd come by, but it helps me know that it's a permanent separation. The only request he's made of me is that I call his local land-line (he cannot make long distance calls from his skid-row hotel).
I know that family members would love to have daily phone-contact with their loved-ones, to know they're "at least alive" and to have that one chance daily to tell them "i love you, too". Me too. He never asks for any help, money, or assistance (he knows that I wouldn't give that to him anymore). But I think it's just that it's a voice over the phone to say "I love you and I care, have you eaten today? hope you have a good nite". The conversation lasts usually less than 2 minutes. He asks me to call around noon and 6pm. And, if I am not busy with something else, I call him for a moment. I feel like it's the HUMAN thing to do.
The sadness comes with hearing how messed-up he is nowadays. The past few days the conversations are very slurred and difficult to understand. I know that he is slipping into the ether, hopefully he will hit a bottom. I don't know. But now because I know that he's just killing himself with drugs, I'm probably not going to call him very frequently anymore... and slowly not at all. I'm sad, because all he's asked of me is a 2-minute phone call (and I dont feel at all manipulated into giving him anything, money, etc). I'm just saddened that his existence has become so twisted and blurred.
In some ways, it makes letting go of this last piece of him easier. In other ways, it makes it harder. One of you wonderful people had mentioned "Survivor's Guilt", and you are soooo correct in describing it this way.
I will probably not call him tomorrow... Maybe just 1-2 times this week. It feels to me like I'm sending a ship-on-fire out into the ocean to burn to ashes and be swallowed unto the sea. There's nothing I can do to save him, and it's difficult to listenen to him slur through the conversation and ask me to please call him tomorrow. And the man I loved, isn't the man I'm speaking to anymore on the phone... It's like the shell-pieces.
How can he decline so rapidly into his druggie life? How can 5 weeks tear up this man so quickly? I feel in a way that he was at least holding it together while I stuck around, but now he's just falling apart. Hopefully he'll hit a bottom.
...As for myself, "SO WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP MYSELF THIS WEEK?"... Well, moving in with my parents to recover spirtually and financially from this experience hasn't been easy, but I'm working thru it.. I've been to 2 job interviews this week and have another interview next Tuesday. If I get one of these jobs, I can move out of my parents' home and into a place of my own. I have no intention of telling ex-afiance if I get a new job, or any other details of my life, so that he doesn't think that he could move "back in the box". I'm keeping my progress (and sometimes emotional slips) to myself. I feel like we're now headed on different paths, and I no longer want to include him on the joys and/or difficulties in my life. The only thing I'm angry with myself for these past 10 days is that I'm letting my exercise and eating habits slip-up really bad. I'm eating emotionally, and not exercising. I will try to change that this week because it's good for my body/mind to continue to exercise.
That's all for this week! Thank you for reading. Hope everyone is having a refreshing weekend....
I know that family members would love to have daily phone-contact with their loved-ones, to know they're "at least alive" and to have that one chance daily to tell them "i love you, too". Me too. He never asks for any help, money, or assistance (he knows that I wouldn't give that to him anymore). But I think it's just that it's a voice over the phone to say "I love you and I care, have you eaten today? hope you have a good nite". The conversation lasts usually less than 2 minutes. He asks me to call around noon and 6pm. And, if I am not busy with something else, I call him for a moment. I feel like it's the HUMAN thing to do.
The sadness comes with hearing how messed-up he is nowadays. The past few days the conversations are very slurred and difficult to understand. I know that he is slipping into the ether, hopefully he will hit a bottom. I don't know. But now because I know that he's just killing himself with drugs, I'm probably not going to call him very frequently anymore... and slowly not at all. I'm sad, because all he's asked of me is a 2-minute phone call (and I dont feel at all manipulated into giving him anything, money, etc). I'm just saddened that his existence has become so twisted and blurred.
In some ways, it makes letting go of this last piece of him easier. In other ways, it makes it harder. One of you wonderful people had mentioned "Survivor's Guilt", and you are soooo correct in describing it this way.
I will probably not call him tomorrow... Maybe just 1-2 times this week. It feels to me like I'm sending a ship-on-fire out into the ocean to burn to ashes and be swallowed unto the sea. There's nothing I can do to save him, and it's difficult to listenen to him slur through the conversation and ask me to please call him tomorrow. And the man I loved, isn't the man I'm speaking to anymore on the phone... It's like the shell-pieces.
How can he decline so rapidly into his druggie life? How can 5 weeks tear up this man so quickly? I feel in a way that he was at least holding it together while I stuck around, but now he's just falling apart. Hopefully he'll hit a bottom.
...As for myself, "SO WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP MYSELF THIS WEEK?"... Well, moving in with my parents to recover spirtually and financially from this experience hasn't been easy, but I'm working thru it.. I've been to 2 job interviews this week and have another interview next Tuesday. If I get one of these jobs, I can move out of my parents' home and into a place of my own. I have no intention of telling ex-afiance if I get a new job, or any other details of my life, so that he doesn't think that he could move "back in the box". I'm keeping my progress (and sometimes emotional slips) to myself. I feel like we're now headed on different paths, and I no longer want to include him on the joys and/or difficulties in my life. The only thing I'm angry with myself for these past 10 days is that I'm letting my exercise and eating habits slip-up really bad. I'm eating emotionally, and not exercising. I will try to change that this week because it's good for my body/mind to continue to exercise.
That's all for this week! Thank you for reading. Hope everyone is having a refreshing weekend....
Rest peacefully Sonny Boy
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Florida, Tennessee
Posts: 840
(((SAS)))
Lots of hugs and prayers going your way. I feel the sadness in your post and it is truely understandable. Try to give yourself time. Time to heal, time to mourn and time to carry on. Things will get better. One step at a time. As bad as it may all seem, try to stop and see the good out there, when we live in the past or even in the future, we loose the now. You are doing good things with your life. Keep taking the next right step.
Hugs and Prayers
B
Lots of hugs and prayers going your way. I feel the sadness in your post and it is truely understandable. Try to give yourself time. Time to heal, time to mourn and time to carry on. Things will get better. One step at a time. As bad as it may all seem, try to stop and see the good out there, when we live in the past or even in the future, we loose the now. You are doing good things with your life. Keep taking the next right step.
Hugs and Prayers
B
Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Between the ocean and the mountains
Posts: 653
Your post is one of the saddest I have ever read. I don't know what to say. I am glad you are with your parents right now, for that is what I would want for you. For you to be in someone's safe nest right now, loved, included.
His slow vanishing must be excruciating for all who love him.
God bless you as you survive this. In some way that you can't know yet, your suffering will enable you to help someone else some day.
Bluejay
His slow vanishing must be excruciating for all who love him.
God bless you as you survive this. In some way that you can't know yet, your suffering will enable you to help someone else some day.
Bluejay
Forum Leader
Join Date: Dec 2008
Posts: 10,944
(((SAS))) My heart breaks for you and for your former fiance. Addiction is a brutal disease.
What great news that you are getting back on your feet! I understand how difficult it is to have to move back in with your parents for even a short time. I needed to after my divorce, too.
Keep looking for ways to help yourself move forward and be kind to you...you deserve it.
Hugs, HG
What great news that you are getting back on your feet! I understand how difficult it is to have to move back in with your parents for even a short time. I needed to after my divorce, too.
Keep looking for ways to help yourself move forward and be kind to you...you deserve it.
Hugs, HG
Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Kansas
Posts: 10,182
I had survivor's guilt for a long time too when I left the EXAH. However, his phone calls were so nasty and threatening that I started hanging up on him, and the calls eventually stopped.
I was in a tailspin for days after I talked to him on the phone, and I didn't want to live that way anymore.
I was very sad when my mom sent me his obituary three years ago, but I also believe he is in a better place. Some people never get recovery.
:ghug :ghug
I was in a tailspin for days after I talked to him on the phone, and I didn't want to live that way anymore.
I was very sad when my mom sent me his obituary three years ago, but I also believe he is in a better place. Some people never get recovery.
:ghug :ghug
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Anytown, USA
Posts: 59
Yes Freedom, I agree. In many ways, this experience has helped me rediscover an intimacy with God/HP that I had lost, prayer, and raw inner discoveries of myself and my true love for another suffering human being. Resignation, too, of my own powerlessness to help him anymore, and that only the HP can decide when my ex-afiance's "time" is to be called back into the Arms of God... On our last day together at home, my ex-afiance asked if it was okay to keep in his wallet the: "In Case of Emergency please Contact" with my email address and old residency address in his wallet, so that in case he didn't make it into a recovery center (my dream, not his) that I would know, and that police would be able to contact me. It wasn't a burden, it was the least I could do after walking away from a situation that was impossible for me to continue to exist within.
I do not think that he wants to recover. He's 40 years old, alomst 41. He grew up in foster care, never adopted. His mother gave him to social service at birth at her age 17. His father is in prison for life. He has two daughters (different moms from his teenage years) whom he has abandoned by drug use (I only found out about them years later). Spent over half his life in-and-out of the juvenile and adult penitentery system. As today's reading says, "Into the Orbit [he goes]..." I cannot save him, he doesn't want to be saved, and the only Decision-Maker is God/HP. I know that Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center has said that they will give him a bed on 18 May, but I'm uncertain whether he'll be in jail or Otherwise in 11 days.. But it is always amazing to me how these addicts seem to keep surviving on what "normies" would consider below-standard existence... Maybe he'll make it. I dunno.. But I continue to separate myself from his daily life more-and-more. He's no longer the man with whom I fell in love.. So that makes it easier. If he were still that person, I could hold onto the Hope. But now he is even starting to let me go, too... We have nothing to say to each other except, "love you, miss the life we had, what are you eating today? have a good nite". Like we both know it's over, but we just never had "It's The End" conversation.. Just like waving good-bye from the Sea Shore, tissue promises to see each other again.
Really hard, but I keep also the memories of the anger and humilation in the upfront of my heart, knowing that I cannot live with him in his current state of crazy-making. I do not trust him, cannot leave my purse alone in the same room with him.. Where is Love if there is not Trust. So, I continue to struggle: the part of me that sympathizes with his struggle, and the other part of me that is angered that he is fully embracing the Monster that loves drugs more than himself. So I sit on the sidelines and just watch it happen.
And try to get on with MY LIFE without him.. I wish he was here to be with me and enjoy my sucesses/failures, but he has selfishly chosen to drown himself. Angry. Sad. Angry. Sad. VCrazy. At Peace. Confused. But always knowing that if I didn't leave him, I would have drowned with him... I'm begining to Float Again. I may be using my Water-Wings, but I'm Floating back to the surface, and I've let him go..
I do not think that he wants to recover. He's 40 years old, alomst 41. He grew up in foster care, never adopted. His mother gave him to social service at birth at her age 17. His father is in prison for life. He has two daughters (different moms from his teenage years) whom he has abandoned by drug use (I only found out about them years later). Spent over half his life in-and-out of the juvenile and adult penitentery system. As today's reading says, "Into the Orbit [he goes]..." I cannot save him, he doesn't want to be saved, and the only Decision-Maker is God/HP. I know that Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center has said that they will give him a bed on 18 May, but I'm uncertain whether he'll be in jail or Otherwise in 11 days.. But it is always amazing to me how these addicts seem to keep surviving on what "normies" would consider below-standard existence... Maybe he'll make it. I dunno.. But I continue to separate myself from his daily life more-and-more. He's no longer the man with whom I fell in love.. So that makes it easier. If he were still that person, I could hold onto the Hope. But now he is even starting to let me go, too... We have nothing to say to each other except, "love you, miss the life we had, what are you eating today? have a good nite". Like we both know it's over, but we just never had "It's The End" conversation.. Just like waving good-bye from the Sea Shore, tissue promises to see each other again.
Really hard, but I keep also the memories of the anger and humilation in the upfront of my heart, knowing that I cannot live with him in his current state of crazy-making. I do not trust him, cannot leave my purse alone in the same room with him.. Where is Love if there is not Trust. So, I continue to struggle: the part of me that sympathizes with his struggle, and the other part of me that is angered that he is fully embracing the Monster that loves drugs more than himself. So I sit on the sidelines and just watch it happen.
And try to get on with MY LIFE without him.. I wish he was here to be with me and enjoy my sucesses/failures, but he has selfishly chosen to drown himself. Angry. Sad. Angry. Sad. VCrazy. At Peace. Confused. But always knowing that if I didn't leave him, I would have drowned with him... I'm begining to Float Again. I may be using my Water-Wings, but I'm Floating back to the surface, and I've let him go..
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Kansas
Posts: 10,182
He sounds a lot like my EXAH. He was in more juvie facilities than not when he was growing up. Then he started the trips to the penitentiary. He had just gotten out for a second term (armed robbery with a host of other charges) when I met him. He ended up going back for a year on a PV after we had hooked up.
He never did have any kids, though apparently he adopted the older kids of the second lady he married, as his 'children' and 'grandchildren' were listed in the obituary.
He never did have any kids, though apparently he adopted the older kids of the second lady he married, as his 'children' and 'grandchildren' were listed in the obituary.
A Brand New Life
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 287
When I read your post I realized that it happens to all of us, my ex-afiancee also made promises of a great life and when we had our baby girl I was forced to wake up and realize that moving into my parents may suck for awhile, but getting on my feet and making a good life for us is what pulls me through. I also feel the survivor guilt you refer to. It pisses me off when he can't get it together in almost a year apart. The addiction has them so wrapped, they can't even bother to think of what you are going through as a result of their actions. I will keep you in my thoughts and I know what you are going through...some days are hard, but just remember your goal. You are so wise for not letting him know the details, that will be so helpful in truly moving on with your own healthy life. Don't feel bad about taking care of yourself. Anyone who loves you feels you should look out for yourself before caring for others...that is a step all of us codies face every day. Keep posting and come often, you have support here.
Living in a Pinkful Place
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Louisiana
Posts: 7,545
sending out prayers for comfort and continued strength for YOU!!
You are a very brave person and I truly believe you are doing the best thing for YOU and for your ex A. whether he ever gets clean & Sober, he won't have the carry the guilt of taking you down with him and you will know that you stepped out of the way so that his HP can reach him if he is ever open to that calling.
HUGS,
Rita
You are a very brave person and I truly believe you are doing the best thing for YOU and for your ex A. whether he ever gets clean & Sober, he won't have the carry the guilt of taking you down with him and you will know that you stepped out of the way so that his HP can reach him if he is ever open to that calling.
HUGS,
Rita
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