Story

They say to heal you should try to write your story. I don’t know where to start. Maybe at the end. Me on the floor, book covers ripped from their backing, sobbing, broken, weary. Not the bottom, but not the top. Maybe the lower quarter if you want to get mathy. That’s where I’m at.

I married an addict. I did not know this when we dated, when we got engaged, when we were married, when we had our 5 year anniversary, when we went to Paris, or the night I told him I was leaving.

But I loved an addict for 10 years. I did not know he was an addict, though I lived with the repercussions of his addiction every. Single. Day. And wondered why I felt so lonely and crazy and unsafe. I’m still unwrapping my last 10 years: tenderly, slowly and sometimes all at once in a puddle on the floor.

Only a spouse of an addict could understand the loneliness and confusion perpetuated by The Addiction. He is a good person. Anyone would tell you that. He grew up with difficulties children shouldn’t have to deal with. His addiction goes back to his father and to his father’s father and who knows how far beyond him. But he had convinced me he did not have his father and grandfather’s issues. He was different. He was unaffected from his trials as a child. And I knew he was telling the truth; I never thought twice. Why would I? I knew him from 13 years old. Dated him when we turned 16. Marrried him at 20. I knew everything there was to know about this person except his deepest, darkest secret, which would shape my childhood, young adulthood, and now my future in ways I never imagined.

I am the recovering ex-wife of a sex addict. It is the most silent, the most emotive smothering, most invisible addiction out there. It breaks hearts, dreams, and families. But I don’t want it to break me.

Don’t look back.

Run like mad.

And I don’t want to be a pillar of salt,

So don’t look back.

Run from babies never imagined,

Run from bunnies in yards

Who made it, even when we couldn’t.

Run from those broken dreams

Run from those realities that weren’t realities that were realities you didn’t even know were existing

While you woke up every morning

And ran like mad.

So, child, don’t look back.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”