Becoming PatientMan II - Still En-Route, Post-D

[PatientMan]

Allow me to edit it, I think this would work better:


"In hindsight I realize I battled depression for years. I tried to fill the void in me up with so many things, but by far the most destructive tool I used was alcohol. The point of this letter isn’t to dissect my personal demons, but I was addicted to alcohol and I used it to cope with many things, mainly just to escape myself.

Quitting alcohol was easy. It was nothing.

XW, YOU are the worst thing I’ve ever been addicted to.

I thought I could move on with my life...move forward with my life while having you around, providing you support when you asked for it, being your friend, but I realize now that I’ve just been feeding my addiction all along and not moving on or forward at all.

I WANT a family. I WANT to be IN LOVE. I WANT to be in love WITH YOU. I want to share my life with someone and put that person above everybody else. I WANT that person to be YOU, but if that is something than can never happen then I am just forcing myself to be stuck in a place where I’ll never get what I want, where I’ll never be happy.

You and I have to be either IN or OUT. You have made it very clear that you are OUT. So I have to figure out how to move on, to move forward so that I can kick my addiction of you and be able to be open to someone else who can be open to me. It would not be fair to a new person in my life to maintain the friendship with you at the level we now have.

So, for lack of a better term, I need to detox. I need time and space to detox from you because you are so intoxicating to me.

We keep doing the same thing over and over again and we’re both still in the same spot – at least I know I am. I am still in love with you. I don’t know exactly where you are personally, but I know you are struggling and have been for a while, if not for the entire time frame of the last 18 months that this separation process has been going on.

I agree that we need our independence and that we need to be okay on our own. What we've been doing isn't working for me, so I have decided that I need time to deal with what my life is today, and for the future. And I have found that I cannot do that with you in my life so much when I am so addicted to you. Therefore, unless there are issues concerning the children or the finances, I will not contact you, and I ask that you do the same for me.

Let me leave you with this. Above all else, I love you and am in love with you. But I have to let go. Know that I am letting go out of that love.

There we go. Send THAT message.

It appears that everyone here thinks I should have gone with the short version. Oops! My sister very much liked what I wrote so that's what I went with last night after class when I stopped by XW's house.

We talked for maybe 10 minutes and she took it really hard. She was crying uncontrollably and I stayed for a moment, but then left as I realized this is what I can't give her - the support for how she feels. She reiterated that she had to get her "[shiz]" together and I did say that this space may help her with that.

-PM