lesliej

Yesterday, Valentine's Day, was the one year anniversary of my final break up with my XABF.

I had joined SR when I asked him to leave my house after yet another relapse in November of 2011, and then as I continued posting here and going to meetings, I continued to struggle with the loss and I cautiously began to see him again.

So come February 14th 2012, we had a nice date but when he rushed out of the house (out of bed) to " get some cigarettes before he had to get back to his SLE by curfew" I knew exactly where he was going...to smoke crack.

I was done.

I am here to say that I was NOT sad yesterday!
I was relieved. I felt love for myself. I felt respect for what I have learned. I felt compassion and care for him. My heart has traveled a very long way in the last year, and I am proud for the hard work of healing that I feel.

I write this for those of you who cannot imagine letting go.
I once could absolutely not fathom, could not imagine letting go.
I thought love could cure anything, but love...and I alone will always know how much I loved him...can not cure addiction.
I still hold love for him in my heart, but my heart is free of the pain and strife, the frustration and confusion, the heartache, the guilt, the misgivings, the accusations...on and on and on.
My heart is free.

My life has grown and filled in so quickly with deep happiness. I take care of my beautiful precious 9 month old grand daughter and have only happiness when I arrive two mornings a week. I am glad I am not arriving sleepless and in despair. I am glad that her little spirit calls me to play with her, with freedom and joy.

My business is thriving, and so many doors have opened in the last year that I am at awe. Promises. I am not without some anxiety and life is not perfect...but it is manageable and interesting and exciting. It is sane. I realize so often that I am being cared for, in part because I am learning to care for myself.

I write this for people who are where I was.
If you cannot imagine letting go...maybe someday you will. And then you will likely see, as time passes. that it was the right thing to do.

Hindsight is amazing. The lies, the manipulation, the deceit...I no longer take it personally, because I can see it more clearly as something of the past. Something that I see with a lot of honesty...a sad situation that I was enmeshed in, that I was in turmoil over. I had my part. Now I own it. I respect and honor the part of me that was so desperate. I love that part.

That part of me has gifts of hope and belief, that part of me works hard at my own recovery and expects others to do the same. That part of me sees the best in people and wants to share my best parts too. That part of me has love.

Expecting that someone struggling with a horrible addiction could honestly and successfully be in the kind of relationship that I want in my life was my mistake. That is not possible, plain and simple.

Thank you to the people on this site for all the support I felt and needed so badly. I think I wrote a book during those months of letting go. I know...I'm a rambler. I needed to process...to share, to ask for help. Thank you.

And to those of you struggling to let go...
deep inside you know if you should or not, and if you should let go then it just takes time to peel away all the layers that you use to try to protect a love that you think exists but is banished, burned and buried by addiction.
And as you let go your vision will clear. You spirit will find relief (re-life). Your heart will heal.

Anaya

Great post! Thanks for sharing what you've learned, how you've grown, and for giving hope to others. Have a wonderful day.

jll657

Thank you for the wonderful post.

I am wanting to leave my abf. He spends all his money on his habit and thinks of his family last. I wish i had a better plan financially so I could go through with the break up.

KittenBoo

I needed this today. Thank you for posting this. It brings much hope...

KLM

I am where you WERE.
I am happy to hear you are doing well.
Your post gives me hope.
Thank you.

pianogirl1193

Wow Lesliej, i can't tell you how much that post meant to me. I broke up with my ABF of two years two weeks ago and it feels like I will never recover from this. Your post gave me hope and it just resonated with me so deeply. I hope I feel the way that you do in a year!

Thanks again and congrats on how far you have come.

lesliej

I have learned SO so much about how to care for myself...how much I needed to love myself enough to detach from the despair and pain of being involved with someone active in addiction (a chronic "relapser")

I found the book "Facing Codependency" by Pia Mellody verrrry helpful. Sometimes it is really good to understand your patterns, the original source of why we behave a certain way, or why we make choices.

Even though when I met my ex he did not "present" with all of his issues, they did emerge. That is when I had the choice. I had already fallen in love...but I realized thru all of this that I fall in love "too fast" (one sign of codependency or systematic dysfunction in family of origin) and so when I could have made the choice in those early months to leave I was already swimming in the endorphins of mad love that I wanted so badly.

The there is the hope factor. Yes, one can be addicted to hope. Addiction turned my hope to fantasy...letting go of the hope was the hardest.

I finally turned it over to my higher power. I was losing all the other people in my life. Still it felt like he was my man...(my "source" of love).

It is amazing how fast life can fill in.

If it is meant to be then it will happen...way way way down the road. It was not meant that I should "pay" for love with so much anguish. I think my higher power has better love for me than that. At one point I probably thought I deserved to pay so dearly.

Like I said, I still love him, always will.
I learned a lot in my journey thru darkness with him, and I am still learning.

Glad to have been heard by someone who needed it. You are never alone on this path.

Lily1918

"...if you should let go then it just takes time to peel away all the layers that you use to try to protect a love that you think exists but is banished, burned and buried by addiction."

so eloquently written and 100% truth. thank you for your ESH

pianogirl1193

Your post sounds like I could've written it! (except i'm definitely not as far along in this 'recovery' thing as you are.)

I realize i must not love myself very much if I stayed in such a bad relationship for so long. I also suppose I fell in love much too fast and so that made it very hard to walk away. Also, I hung onto hope that he would get and stay sober like it was my God! It really was a fantasy.. I'm still holding on to some hope that is probably unrealistic, but i'm working on that.

I guess if you got through it, I can!

Question though... You said you will always love your ex (which makes total sense). I think I will probably always love my ex also, evn if i do move on. But do you think you would feel insanely jealous if he moved on, as in met a new girl, got married, etc? Would you have a year ago when you recently broke up, and what about today? That is something I am very worried about. I broke up with him but I still want to keep him for myself (kind of just like, on a string, just in case), even though I know I can't have him (and really don't want him) right now!!! That's pretty messed up. Wondering if you felt similarly at first....

ZiggyStardust91

Leslie, thank you so much for sharing this. I am early in my recovery from my XAGF. The wounds are still fresh, and I can see similarity in our tales. Thank you for giving me hope. You have made my day, and it has just begun.

Ziggy

laurie6781

(((((pianogirl)))))

Having had to divorce 2, yes not 1, but 2 Husbands, due to alcohol and drugs, I can
tell you that the further you get into recovery, it won't matter. The ones I always
had empathy for were the 'women' after me, that they had 'suckered' into being
their current enabler.

Continue to work on you and grow into living a serene and peaceful life and NO you
will not be jealous. It will become weeks, then months and then years of not know-
what is happening to the Ex and that is great because he will be your Ex after all.
He will no longer be living in your head 'rent free.'

Work on you, you will start to feel much better as each week goes by!!

(((((lesliej)))))

Thank you for a beautiful update! Your share is very important for all of us to read.
Those of us in recovery for some time now and those new to recovery. Why? It
reinforces THAT THERE IS HOPE for ALL of us down the road!

Love and hugs,

lesliej

I used to have what felt like an actual DREAD that he would find someone else...and that she would have him just as he became whole and healed. I felt like I would be throwing away all of the time that I had spent trying to help him "get" recovery and that she would then pick up the beautiful man I left behind...I also dreaded what his family would say about me leaving him...that I was heartless, that I didn't have enough care, etc.

There were a lot of fears around losing him.

But hindsight changes things. My perspective has changed so so much over the time that I have been away. I don't pine away over the romanticism and the "dreamy" ways that we were together. I appreciate some of the beauty that we shared, however I have a lot more balance and I see the reality of where we were at, where I was at, and where he was at. I remember the anger, and hostility, the shaming and blaming, the broken promises, the desperate hope. I remember his mental illness exacerbated by relentless relapsing (really another word for binge user). I remember just. how. much. he would have had to work so so so hard to catch up to any sense of normalcy in life after having crack use as a lifestyle.

I also realize that there is probably a huge dark closet of secrets that I know nothing about.

My vision has cleared, and I realize that to have what I dreamed about would have taken a decade to rebuild...and instead I am building my own life...without crack.

We even text...just only very occasionally, but in a friendly way, and he came and participated in a performance at xmas. I pray for him.

His road ahead is so long and hard...and I watched as he never really properly tied his shoes...and I had to decide it was just to heart-breakingly dangerous. I would not be jealous of anyone who took up partnership on that journey.

Thank you Laurie for the kind words. At first it was hard not to be welcomed by any old timers here...but I realize I was hurting really badly here before...and that my super lengthy posts can be annoying. I also had a hard time taking advice from anyone who had not had to actually make the break...

Ah well. Live and let live.
Al-anon and SR saved my life.

pianogirl1193

laurie6781, thank you for sharing your experience. I guess I would feel empathy for anyone who got in a relationship with him now (nobody in their right mind would!!!) Thank you again... I will try to remember what you said!

lesliej, thank you for your response to my question. It helped a lot. It is good to know that your feelings about it have changed over time... hopefully mine will too. Thanks and !!!

KLM

Lesliej... I so relate to your first paragraph.

Thank you.

lesliej

it is part of the systematic dis-ease.

manipulation, deceit, lies...they don't only come from an addict...they operate within the spirit of the codependent too.

I realized at one point that the manipulation I experience from my ex was not necessarily malicious, probably not even intentional... it had become part of him, ingrained.

so the fear we experience, the dread...it is our own ingrained manipulation, it is our mirror form of the disease, we end up lying to ourselves out of fear

distance and time give so much clarity to the machinations of both addict and our own part in the unhealthy bond.

jennyarizona

Letting go is the hardest thing.

If we let go we think it means we don't care.

We think it means we don't love.

It goes against our grain to not try and save our loved one.

But, oh, oh.

On the flip side of the letting go...

We're telling our loved one they can't control us...

or our happiness.

And we realize it's okay to not carry them on our backs anymore.

Without all that weight pulling us down, we finally have the ability to look up and see the sky!

Sharing your peace.

Hugs and blessings.

GardenMama

I am not an old-timer, but I sure remember your words to me when I arrived here desperate last summer. You are wise and you have clearly worked hard on your recovery. Thank you for this thread. Very powerful.