SoberRecovery : Alcoholism Drug Addiction Help and Information

I don’t need to rehash my story. We all know what it’s like to be an intimate partner with an addict. The first several months of no contact, I walked around with so much anger, so much resentment and I literally had never felt so much hate for someone in my life. Over the past month, I decided to just let it go. I’ve read a lot. Thank God for this site because I read all your posts frequently. The ones that recently cut the most over the past month or so is when I started to look at myself, my behavior, how sick I had started to become and how hateful I was at the end of this relationship. So I apologized. I opened the door to this human being not because I wanted him back, not because I wanted to be friends, not because I would ever love or trust him like I once used to. I did it to heal. And it worked….well, at first.

Sorry this is going to be long. So I sent a letter. I told him that for a long time I had so much anger and resentment towards him and I wanted him to validate all of the things that I knew the answer to already. I told him that I cared about him as a person, I forgave him, I knew the things he did were the result of the addiction and not who he was a person before, that I hoped that he find peace, love and happiness in his life, etc. I told him that I needed to apologize for very specific things that I did and my reactions to him in the end, and that for those reactions I was sorry. I needed to do this in order for myself to heal and move on. This is just a snapshot but the letter made me feel better and it was sincere. I told him that he would always have a place in my heart, that I knew his addiction was never a personal attack on me but I kept reacting like it was, that I didn’t handle things well, on and on.

So thank God for everything I’ve learned on this site because even after all the stuff I’m going to tell you all, I feel ok today! I got a few emails in return. Basically it was “my life at this point is drug free, I never apologized to you because I didn’t want to cause you anymore pain, I will never think bad about you as a person, I know I was too much to handle, I will never forgive myself, I have cried myself to sleep every day for three months, if I even think about your daughter I will cry myself to sleep, I had something so special given to me and I screwed it up, I spend all my free time helping others and it is the only thing that helps, I never want to get in the way of your personal happiness etc” It was all about his pity party. Having so much knowledge from this website and all you have taught me, I just saw it all as a wow, there is nothing specific about what he did that he apologized for. Oh well, if I were in the frame of mind I was a few years ago, a year ago, even 6 months ago, this would have been upsetting to me that he was so shallow, so all about HIM and how HE feels, how selfish he really is. The whole thing was about him. I just replied and said I had to forgive him and that I did and that I didn’t think the back and forth email was a good thing, etc. He responded with the “you will always be in my heart and I think about you every day and I never lied to you when I told you I’ve never loved someone this much in my life”.

So I let it go for that point in time and I should have just let it go for good. But oh no, I needed to send one more email. I poured my guts out to him, not in a I want to get back together kind of way AT ALL. I just tried to explain how I felt, how certain things still sort of haunt me, that it’s hard to put closure to things when you really have a lot of unanswered questions, that he had lied to me so much in active addiction that I started to question my own sanity after he got out of rehab. I asked him to answer a few questions for me and just come clean so that I can have some sort of closure. My letter was sincere, it wasn’t angry, it was human. I even told him we both know our relationship could not be repaired, but it would be nice to have some truth. The first response I got was that his aunt was living with him now and that he would respond to my email when she went to bed.

Three hours later, there’s an angry response – This makes me so angry (um, what? Asking for the truth for a change, the sincerity), yes I took Adderall after rehab and I feel bad enough as it is for that (LIE LIE LIE, I found out for a fact he had relapsed to opiates after rehab- people admitted it to me and he just has no idea I know), I stayed sober much past Mother’s Day (LIE LIE LIE – I had asked him if he was having a manic episode or if he were on some binge the day he left my house on Mother’s day), on and on and on. The entire email was a lie with of course a little twist of anger and some sort of attempt to manipulate me into believing it was all my fault and now he’s angry because I will never believe anything he says.

All I can say is wow. Honestly if this were me a few months ago, this would have crushed me. I have grown so much. I read his email and it didn’t bother me nearly as much as it used to. Regardless of whether or not he’s doing drugs, he’s an as—hole. He has no recovery. He is still selfish. He is still lying. He is still the same person he was in active addiction. . . lying, manipulating, distorting and projecting. I was proud of myself. I replied with a simple response that said, it was obviously a bad idea that we were in contact, that we should go back to no contact and that I will still be the bigger person and tell him that I still hope he is happy and doing well in life. It just amazes me. So I’m on the wagon again. Some people never change. As much as this sounds weird, I deleted all the emails, all the emails I had saved in a folder from the past year, anything that reminded me of him was finally wiped off my computer, I shrugged it off, I didn’t let it ruin my day, and it gave me peace. I’m finally at peace. I don’t hate him. I don’t love him. It finally took this last go around to help me realize I am indifferent, I did not cause his anger, his addictions, or whatever other problems he has. I finally feel free!

Sorry this is so long. I feel like I’m rambling but as weird as this is, after all the crazy I described above, I feel good today. I’ve finally let go, detached with love, controlled my reactions and let the addict be the addict.