I hurt so many people when I was hurting. I never saw the pain I caused until it was too late. The people who will never understand addiction fled, while my fellow addicts could relate and only left to feed their own pain. When my addiction started I had an amazing man in my life, recently celebrated 6 years of our story together. He is an amazing man, I loved him more than I loved myself. I don't know that he will ever truly understand that there was nothing he could have done to not lose me. I cried out to him and he couldn't fix me. I was unhappy, I didn't know who I was, my insecurities destroyed us. He is everything I ever wanted in a man, he will always be the man all the rest have to compare to. He helped start my journey and helped start the path to a better future. I will always love him and I will always be his biggest cheerleader. He will always be my Captain, I pray he eventually understands that I never meant to hurt him. Without him, I wouldn't have started seeing my worth.
Then came the man who introduced me to the drug. I met him when he was sober and I was sober. We instantly were attracted towards each other, but sober us didn't even make it a matter of weeks, blink of an eye and we were in the madness together. My life started spinning out of control and we were toxic using together. Every sober friend and family member blames him for what I became; he blames himself a lot too. I am an adult and I make my own choices. He never forced me, pressured me, or waved it in my face; I asked to try it, if it wasn't with him it would have just been a matter of time til I did use. He was suffering too, neither one of us could kill ourselves fast enough. He's also sober now, I never knew his pain was so deep til he asked me 'how many times did you find me dead'. Too many to count honestly, I never knew if I could revive him. I can't count how many times I cried over his lifeless body hoping I could wake him again. He explained 'I didn't care if I died, it didn't matter to me'. I remember trying to hold him up in the bathroom after he did too much. He was too heavy for me, I woke up on the bathroom floor three hours later with a huge knot on the back of my head. I cried out for him, when he woke just as confused as me, his first reaction was to comfort me. I cried in his arms the rest of the night, the next day we went to treatment together. He OD'ed and I was knocked out trying to save him; we may not have loved ourselves, but we loved each other enough to try sobriety. Today we are both sober, like when we were first attracted to each other. I love getting to know him more and more everyday.
Friends I have had for close to 20 years have been hurt, my family has removed me from their lives, and people I knew less than a year have been hurt by me. I can only blame myself, I'm no good to others when I am no good to myself. If anyone I hurt isn't eventually able to forgive me, I can only blame myself. I never meant to hurt anyone when I was hurting, I just hope they know I am sorry. For those that can forgive me, I hope they can love the new me and understand I am still a work in progress.
I still have no regrets, without the wreckage of my past I would never have learned who I truly am and how to grow as a person. I don't aim to be perfect, I never will be. As my journey continues I may still hurt people, I am only human. If I do hurt anyone in the future, I just want to know my intentions were never malicious. I still have so much grieving, pain, anger, and trauma to accept; my journey of self growth is far from over. Hopefully it never ends. I aim to be a person who is kind and fair. In a world that is full of unexplained and unfair treatment, I want to always strive to be the small glitter of hope left.
No comments:
Post a Comment