If nothing ever changes, then nothing ever changes

Are you all ready for some raw, painful, honesty? I am WICKED tired from vacationing, sprinting across the mountains, giving a long presentation, laundry, packing, and then sprinting back across the mountains for a business trip. Not to mention a long day at work out here today and some deep and difficult feelings. So, I don't know if I can be moderate tonight. You've been warned.

I have been engaged twice. (Though I estimate I have been proposed to over 500 times. But that is a funny story, and I'm not in a funny mood tonight. So, another time) And I have called both betrothals off. In the first case, I was young, but ready for the challenges of combining our young lives and moving forward. He was lovely, and funny, and smart, but perhaps not as ready to deal with reality and responsibility as I had estimated. Looking back, he was an interesting choice for me. I felt very connected to him, until I didn't. 20/20 hindsight - what I see is someone who was my friend, maybe my best friend for a long time, and who I felt fortunate to also have romantic feelings for . . . but kind of in that order. When it ended, and during the time leading up to it ending, I was desperate to seek ways to make things better. But once it ended, I felt . . . peaceful. We broke up, and about 20 minutes later went to Target and saw a movie. He went back to being my friend, and although our lives took different paths, we are still friendLY today. So, I am now, and was then, ok with letting go of that hope for something more that had existed when we made those promises because in it's place, I got to stop fighting with my friend and nurture that friendship again.

I then dated a handful of people (one at a time, not all at once! I am most def a serial monogamist) who took up various space in my heart. Some of them were people I felt very close to, while there were others who impressed or intrigued me but who I didn't feel as attached to. All of them were interesting learning experiences.

Right around the time I was thinking that having these learning experiences was getting a bit draining and that I should probably focus energy on me instead of on people who might or might not be worth the trouble, I met someone. (In the movie version this is accompanied by a sigh and a swoon) He was a difficult personality, he probably still is. But, we connected very easily and quickly. It felt . . . well, it felt like it was supposed to be. And so, when we discovered we both wanted to go somewhere with this feeling despite the logistics of me being in NJ and him going abroad for a year, we just went for it. Looking back, there were a lot of warning signs. For instance, the fact that he proposed to two women who were bad for him, stole from him, took advantage of him, but couldn't commit to me fully and couldn't understand how asking me to do more, be more, and give more to the relationship was unfair in the face of his hesitation. Warning signs? Umm, more like neon signs.

But at the time, I just loved him and decided that, "love is patient, love is kind," blah, blah etc. Of course I realize that a real love, a true, mature, lasting love, is one that may not always be kind, but that when it is, it is about both people being patient and giving and kind. And he . . . well he did it on an as-needed basis. Talking about him usually takes me several minutes because the story of how our relationship died a terrible death is also the story of how we got engaged, how I ended up in CO, and how unfortunate it was to lose a parent and come home to losing a fiance. I have resentments about how I was taken advantage of, and how he attempts to continue to use me and pawn his life off on other people, but I am not longer bitter about the loss of the relationship. Mostly, I'm grateful that we didn't get married and have kids. Because . . . it got baaaaaaaaaaaaad. And looking back, he was someone who I had strong romantic feelings for and strong attraction to, but who I only sometimes felt was a good friend. When he was, he WAS but when he wasn't everything was awry. So, it's not a surprise that we were so out of synch that he would choose the worst possible moment in the recorded history-of-Christie to punk out.

In the wake of these failed engagements, and two other eye-opening non-engaged relationships  I became tough. It takes work to crack this pistachio, and it's unclear to me if the nut inside is what others consider worth it. (Not everyone likes the pistachio, after all.) I was wary, picky, and had some pretty high standards. I wanted someone who would be nice to my mother, even when I was frustrated with her. Someone who didn't scorn religion, but wasn't fanatical either. Someone who was equally comfortable with fun of different varieties like cooking dinner at home, a live baseball game, the symphony, game night with my friends, perusing a book store. Someone who would find my bad habit of kicking my shoes off in weird corners of the house endearing, someone who would happily let me swipe their tee-shirt to sleep in. Someone who would challenge me, but support me. Someone smart but also wise. Someone who would make me laugh. Someone who would forgive my faults and be honest about theirs. Someone who would be my friend AND romantic partner, in equal measure.

I found it in an unlikely candidate. And between having been burned so badly before leaving me scarred and wary, and being unsure that this person was the fit I had been looking for, well it took me quite awhile to admit that I felt as much as I did. I hung back for awhile. And right when I thought, "Well, maybe . . . " he freaked out. Not auspicious, huh? I know.

What followed was several months of two steps forward, three steps back. And because I understood the desire to not jump in too quickly, I hung in there. Also, it was unclear exactly what the issues and concerns were for a while. Despite being a pretty good scientist, there seemed to be so many pre-correlated variables that it took a long time to see the pattern of difficulty for what it was. By then, I had begun to respond badly to his destructive cycle, and, I was tired. We broke up and I was at peace with it because we were friends. I lost my lover, but not my friend and I was content with that.

He most definitely was NOT satisfied with that and waged a serious campaign to get back together. Gradually, he won my trust back. I had concerns, but I thought, "No one is perfect. Certainly not me. And in all of my friends' relationships, they faced serious shit at different points in their relationships and then got to where they are today. So I'm not going to close myself off from what this could be just because it was a wobbly start. "

Things were great for maybe 3 months. And then the old issues returned. I doubted myself at first when I started to feel tat things weren't right, but in the end I had to face that his issues were not under his control.

He is an addict. He is a destructive, throw-it-all-out-the-window-for-his-fix addict. He is someone for whom an hour of escape is worth almost any consequences. He is far more comfortable with apology and contrition than giving up his means to numbing out.

Now, I have dated someone who was diagnosed with mental illness while we were together, someone who I suspected of having a borderline personality, a recovering alcoholic with 9 years of sobriety, and someone who was hospitalized for manic-depressive disorder. I know from issues! And I also know that the chinks in someone's armor don't have to be downfalls and dealbreakers, they can be beautiful and part of what makes someone who they are.

And I know I have my own issues . . . Ahem! Popcorn! Cheezits! I can't really pretend to be on a high-horse, eh?

If I'm being really searching in how I dig up the truth here, I have a lot of people in my life who are addicts. I'm not going to name them, because their stories aren't mine to tell. I think it's enough for my story to say that I have seen addiction up close. It's not some mysterious species that I need help identifying; I've seen it often. I think I know the difference between flirting with dangerous or deviant behavior for the hell of it and the tail-spin addiction. I know what it looks like to medicate or escape and how that can lead to but isn't always the same as being out of control.  I have seen what it does to people to stop driving their habit, and to start being driven by it, and I've seen what it can do to the people who love them. It isn't addiction as-seen-on-TV where there is foreshadowing, and then a conflict, and then a denouement where everyone cries, realizes their flaws, makes up and gets healthy.

It's secrecy, and lies, and broken promises, and boundaries that aren't respected and are then abandoned as too hard to maintain and conversations that are avoided. It's things falling apart in darkly quiet non-communications that are insidiously violent and rip trust and happiness and options to shreds. It's bone-crushing denial. It's people getting sicker and sicker in how they cope and understand and make decisions, and not just the addict, but the people who love the addict also.

So, it shocked me to discover that my friend, my partner, my boyfriend was an addict too, and worse, I had been drawn into it without thinking twice. I had never experienced being loved for just exactly who I was so I didn't want to see anything else but the grace and wonder of that. It was intoxicating. And to be fair to both of us, his addiction isn't what is depicted on TV and one that is often not recognized or talked about. It was easy to not see it, and hard to discern the pattern. When it became clear that this person was deeply, darkly, desperately out of control, I fought back and fought back HARD. Kind of like when you feel a light tickling on your leg, and think nothing of it, push it to the back of your mind, and then when you look down and see a spider, jump up, sweep it to the floor, and kill it viciously. I sprang into this kind of response, and, you know, in hindsight it probably wasn't very gentle or compassionate to him or to our relationship. But that's what I did.

I pointed it out, I intervened, I asked for help, I got help, I asked him to get help, I understood when that was difficult to go out and do right away, I offered counseling as an option for him/us, I had long talks, I went to my own meetings, I gave him space, I helped him find some resources for a meeting for him, I told him I didn't care what option he picked but that a commitment to getting help was a pre-req for spending time with me, I cooked dinners so that we could talk about how that was going for him. I, I, I. Y'all are smart and will say, "well, what did HE do? "

He agreed he was out of control. He agreed he needed help. He agreed to get it. He went to three meetings in ten weeks and skipped the rest. He agreed to go back or try other meetings. He agreed to look at other options. He agreed to do things to restore my trust in them and then promptly didn't do them.

I asked for us to not be together but to be friends, then to take a break from seeing each other. I believed him over and over.

And over.

And finally when he had shirked getting help for yet another week, when he had made a promise and then in three swift hours broken it, and when he had lied to me again all in the same week I said, "You are stubborn and have a strong will. If you wanted to address this you would."

He said many things but what it boiled down to was that he felt he should be able to do it without help (even though he hadn't been able to so far . . . ), he felt that the discomfort and dissatisfaction of the three meetings he attended entitled him to quit going, and in that decision he hadn't considered at all the promise he made to me to get help. He expressed ambivalence about changing his life saying on the one hand he sees he has become a less good person than he liked to think of himself as and wants to correct that course, and on the other hand he wants to not have to. He said he feels he has failed. I sympathized but said, "I don't know any addicts who decided to get better who found it easy or who did it alone. It's not that you have failed. It's that you haven't truly tried yet." I said it without yelling or crying.

What came next was a vague and resentful nod towards doing what I was asking as a way of making things better and "sucking it up" so that it would be possible for us to see each other. And I don't want to be anyone's crappy obligation. It became clear that he couldn't report any changes he had made or was willing to make, when it was clear that he wasn't prepared to make any kind of comittment or action plan to try anything on his own behalf, much less mine, I had to STOP.

I'll say it again because it's important. I don't want to be anyone's crappy obligation. I don't want to be a chore. I want to be someone's everything. And maybe even more relevant to this situation, I don't want my needs and the needs of the relationship to be confused with his need for recovery. I don't want my feelings to become his motivation. He has to want to get better. And if he wants to be with me, he has to want our relationship be a part of his life. Those are two separate things, but easy to confuse.

So, I took a deep breath and said, "If nothing ever changes, then nothing ever changes. This will keep being the same unless we make changes. " I said other things too, but you get the gist. "You are completely untrustworthy. So, I can't talk to you unless you are getting help of some kind. I can't be your friend or your girlfriend. I can't have you be a person in my life unless and until that happens. I love you, but I can't do it anymore. "

I am so, so, so scared that he's reading this. I'm scared he's not. I'm scared that cutting off contact will be his excuse to not get help. I lose my breath a little when I think he could feel I gave up on him and then give up on me. I'm sad when I think that this means I could just never hear from him again. What if he never gets help? What if he does but doesn't call me? What if I found someone who was both my friend and my partner but too broken to be either? What if I'm the one who is broken and some large part of this is my fault?

I don't know the answers to any of that. I know that I couldn't keep signing up to be sick with him. I know that it's hard that it happened over the phone after two weeks of not seeing him. I know that in my heart of hearts I am hoping, hoping, hoping (praying) that in just a few days he will call me and say, "I'm getting help and I want to talk to you now." I know that, above all, I had to change because I couldn't keep being a part of what he was spiraling into and I know that if I hadn't changed, it would have stayed the same. I know I deserve to be more than someone's crappy obligation and he deserves a chance to get better. And I hope he knows that too.

I miss my boyfriend, but I miss my friend too.

So. Yes. Heavy. don't be surprised if there are lots of musings on addiction in the weeks to come. I was having those thoughts anyways, but now they are percolating to the front of the line.