it’s been a rough week. there are so many things that came up that i want to write about. i have a longer post drafted about one element of the shitstorm that was my thought pattern over the past few days, but i don’t have the energy right now to edit it into something good. i am very tired. tired from crying, thinking, justifying, explaining, remembering.
intellectually, i know it’s good to talk about grief and loss, and i know that people care about me and want to hear about it. but at the same time, sometimes a question or a comment can unintentionally rip open a scar.
this weekend, a friend was trying to understand why my ex didn’t change his behavior when he knew it was hurting me. in a griefy daze, i heard myself say, “drugs are stronger than love.” that was one of the biggest lessons i learned from that relationship: love cannot, in fact, fix everything. it is nowhere near as powerful as we are led to believe.
partners who use drugs don’t love their partners any less than they would without the drugs, just like parents who use drugs don’t love their kids any less. sometimes the love gets hidden, though. tucked away. painted over. buried alive.
even if i had known that he was using at the time, i couldn’t just dive into his head and pull out that love and wave it in his face and say, “look!!! hello!!!! remember this!!!! everything you are doing is making me think this was not in here this whole time!!!!” it was up to him to remember where he put it while he was high. and that got more and more difficult. and i don’t blame him and i don’t blame me. i just get very, very sad about it.
i guess that’s all i really wanted to get out tonight. if you’ve lost someone to substance use, it is so easy to blame yourself and to feel frustrated that your love didn’t fix the problem. but the truth is, love can’t fix it. love is wonderful and beautiful and necessary and important, but it is not a panacea.