one.blue.berry ~ true stories with a burst of flavor

This is the first reader story written in response to the new story prompts emails I’m sending out every week. The prompt was “Drugs.” Skaja Wills wrote a powerful and brave story about addiction – to another human being:

‘We still have the bond.’

It was at that moment that things became clear. I couldn’t merely say good-bye. All ties had to be cut.

Four years ago, I was at the lowest point of my life. Divorced. Unemployed. About to move in with my brother. Depression and mental illness raging. Few people accepting how broken I had become. He was there, on the phone with me. In instant messages, often late into the night. Even then, I had inklings that it was toxic. I had other people telling me it was toxic. It didn’t matter.

I was addicted to his attention.

We fought. All the time. Each time, he was always in the right. From his viewpoint, at least. Fights were usually because of some imaginary transgression, or because I rebelled against the carefully constructed false reality. Each time I began to flourish, he would panic and pull me back.

We could never be together, but that didn’t stop him from demanding my time, and me from giving him whatever he wanted.

It was during the aftermath of one of the more epic fights that I met and became involved with my now-husband.

The inevitable happened almost a year and a half ago. Afterward, he said it was all history talking, perhaps in an attempt to rationalize a mistake. He was in a state of blissful oblivion until I scraped together the guts to tell my husband.

What happened after should have shattered the hold he had on me. Funny how it didn’t. I couldn’t let him go, and asked audacious things of my husband.

I began climbing out of this addiction at the beginning of 2011. At the time, he said he didn’t worry about me leaving him because I would always come back.

I realized that had been true. I had always gone back, apologizing and promising to be better. However, by this time, I had confessed my mistakes to my inner circle and asked for their help in kicking the Habit of Him.

I grew to love myself more, and become weary of feeling drained after each interaction. My tolerance for the drama waned.

The very last conversation with him, I asked what he was waiting for. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Cause no matter what – we still have the bond we always had.’

I left that conversation drained and nauseous. The weight of four years of emotional drama and abuse grew heavier. In talking to my husband, I realized that if the bond was going to break, I had to be the one to do it. I wrote him one last letter and said good bye.

I feel light.