To the man who took my life, turned it upside down, used me, squandered everything we had and still made me feel like I wasn’t enough.
Well done for getting sober. I believe its been nearly 18 months now. I know that after you left rehab I said I couldn’t do this anymore and walked away.
I didnt have anything left. My whole life, my whole world had drowned in your addiction. Every part of my life was touched, tainted and blackened by the lies, the abuse and the manipulation.
I will never forgive you for taking me to court over our children. Spending the last 18 months pretending that you are the picture of respectability, that it was ‘active addiction’ that caused you to do those things. That shrugging it off and disregarding all my pain and out of your control. I hate you for making me into the bad person who wouldn’t give you a second chance. I gave you second, third, fourth, twentieth, hundredth chances. You took none.
I hate you for lying this whole time that you have been in a relationship. 18 months on and you still tell me, the kids and the courts that you go to work, go to meetings and go home. I hate that you are still manipulating me and those around me.
Mostly though, I hate myself. I hate myself for not leaving the first time I could see where this was headed. I hate myself for loving you. I despise myself for you being the father my children are left with. I despise myself for wondering if I could have done something different, or if I should have just taken one more chance to get the happy ending you seem to now have with someone else. I was the one who sacrificed everything, who lost everything. How dare you then even contemplate having a lovely happy life when you stole mine. You stole mine and drank it. You stole mine and sniffed it. You stole mine. You don’t deserve to be happy, because you took all my chances and poured them down the drain.
I followed the rules. You lived a life completely without consequence or remorse. Yet, you won. I lost. And you don’t deserve it.
I’m going to hold on to this pain and not let it go. Because I saw you. I see you still. I live through all those years, while you skipped chapters lost in a hole of addiction. I clung on. I got us through. And my god. I deserved better.
You may battle with this addiction for the rest of your life, but so will I. The difference is, it wasn’t my fault.
From an ex partner of a former addict. Saying the things out loud that I just can’t anywhere else.