I met him when I was just 21 in…a bar of course. He was 30. He was pretty handsome I thought. We didn’t start an affair right away. But a couple of months after meeting him things happened and as time went on we became closer. He used to drive a great distance at night after work to come see me and it was 3 days a week then 4, and pretty soon it was every night. One day I looked around my studio apartment and noticed so much of his stuff lying around and asked do you live here? He said yes. Soon his son came to live with us, and we moved into a really nice apartment together and so it went for 13 years.
For 13 years I wished that this man loved me the way I loved him. For 13 years I put my all into him and his son. For 13 years I put up with being somewhere on his list of things that mattered. For 13 years I watched him drink every night until he fell asleep and there was nothing I could do about it. I finally left because there was nothing I could do and he tried to get me back by quitting. I knew he could only stay sober as long as I wasn’t enabling him. So I did a really hard thing and I quit him so that he could be sober and healthy without me. He was sober for quite awhile.
Now I don’t know how he is, and it’s not my business. I am in love with someone who truly loves me back and I know now what I was missing all those years. Hard lesson to learn. But providence brought me here and I wouldn’t want it any other way. And I won’t be in a position where alcohol dictates my life ever again. And I hate alcohol.
