This reply has really hit a chord in me. I hoped until there was no more hope in me, so when I was faced with the prospect of choosing to give one more chance, I walked away. I didn’t have anything left in me to have the strength I needed to hope for a better day. I had to take back control of my days, of my life, of my sanity and let go of the future that would justify the past. I think that’s the hardest thing as a partner of an addict, letting go of the hope.
Your reply also highlighted something else. My partner left rehab and has remained sober for 18 months. He stopped drinking and no longer takes drugs. He’s held down a job, formed a new relationship very quickly and today my young children are meeting the woman who feels like took my happily ever after. I often question whether or not it was the right choice to leave, but I remind myself. It was not the drink or the drugs I hated. It was the way his addiction made me feel, lied, cheated on, stolen from, manipulated and abused. The substances may have turned him into a person that he may not have liked either, and I’m sure than when is actually honest with himself, he feels shame. The problem came though, that his new, sober, spiritual form of himself, could not accept that it was still his responsibility that he did those things to me. I received a text last year saying he was at a certain step and wanted to arrange for a brief meeting to make ammends. It was insulting, offensive and still curdles my stomach. How could I live through what I survived and accept a simple apology? I needed actions, not words. I didn’t need to hear that it was the drugs or the booze that made him do that, so it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t need to hear that the substances turned him into a person he didn’t like. I needed to hear some acceptance and responsibility took the one life that I had been given, abused it in a very way possible, and then shrugged it off as though it was someone entirely apart from himself. I don’t know if anyone may stumble across this thread in the future, but I would like them to hear my voice, as he never will-
You caused harm. You may have been controlled by something else, but you made that choice every single time you took or drank something. It wasn’t an easy option to say no, and I recognise that your sobriety is a battle that had to be hard won. But it was still your choice to take something knowing it would affect me. You gambled me with every pint, with every shot, with every bottle. You risked our lives, our home, our future, our children everytime you picked up that phone to get more cocaine. Every single time you did either it felt as though you were betraying me, the children and everything we had ever worked for, wanted and achieved. That was still you. You were that person. The person you became, was still you. Regret, shame and recovery does not magically separate the two people. If you can become a better person, then that is incredible. But please don’t tell the people who you used as a life raft during that time that its not your fault that they are now adrfit at sea, while you sit happily on your boat of recovery and sobriety. They once lived on the boat too. You cast both of you overboard. If you both made it back to the boat, please don’t ever take for granted how much your partner had to do to survive. Never stop apologising and making sure that loyalty, devotion for you in your darkest hour is recognised. They sacrificed their own life for yours. Please don’t come out the other side and tell them it wasn’t your fault. It was your fault. They loved you. They almost drowned for you. The you then, and the you now. You are one person to them.
To the rest of us still listing out in the ocean, still feeling robbed, abandoned, betrayed. Please take a fraction of the kindness, the sympathy, the empathy, the resilience, the love that you had for them, and use it to save yourselves. Whether you saved them or not, whether you saved them and then found yourself cast off, or whether you are sitting back on the boat feeling uneasy. Swim for yourselves. Because if after everything they do not realise it was you as the life raft- it wasn’t the drugs, the alcohol or the pills, it was them and still is.
Getting clean and sober, and staying so is an amazing achievement that I won’t diminish in anyway. Actually facing the waves you caused and the destruction they wrought, it may be hard for you, but the people you hurt need it. They need you to not just be medically better, but actually for you to take steps and fix the damage that you caused. Sorry is not a word, its an action. Sorry takes effort, time, patience and self sacrifice. Sorry takes commitment.