As many of you know I lost my significant other last week. It is funny how our brain works. All I find myself focusing on is the good parts of our relationship. My honey was a hopeless alcoholic and prescription drug abuser. She put me through hell for most of 22 years, financially she nearly ruined me and drained the better part of my retirement savings. She was a wrecking ball.
She had movie star looks when we first met and was socially at ease in any group, never the life of the party type but always engaging and bright and sought after at parties and other social events as she seem to brighten and bring to life any group she became involved in. She seemed to never forget a name even after only one brief introduction. Our welcome as a couple however would soon be worn out as the drinking never failed to take over and she would inevitably do something way past the bounds of acceptability.
In the months leading up to her death her drinking and pill abuse escalated if that is even possible and she got to the point she was no longer eating. I saw death coming and made many attempts to intervene but not nearly as forcefully as I should have. This is what is eating me up right now. Not one minute goes by where I don't feel I should have done more. I just can't seem to forgive myself. All my mind seems to recall is the sweet moments, the cheating and lying all seem so small right now. In all honesty I wish I could just get mad at her, it would make this so much easier.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m sorry for your loss. As someone who has had great difficulty finding a relationship, I sometimes get upset when I read about people who have severe issues of one kind or another, and yet still manage to find someone to love them. I think, why would that person choose to be with someone who is so much trouble, when they could be with someone like me who is hard working, responsible and doesn’t have a substance abuse problem. But the bottom line is that we are more than the sum of our parts, our addictions and our flaws. Clearly your SO had good, lovable qualities that attracted you, and that are worth remembering and celebrating.
There is no value in you being mad at her. But there is also no value in you feeling guilty. As much as we want to, we can’t change other people. No matter how much you loved her, you couldn’t save her if she didn’t want to be saved. Everyone processes grief differently, but I think you should appreciate the path you are on, one that involves loving and forgiving her. Ultimately, I think that is the path to loving and forgiving yourself.
You cannot save someone who is dedicated to destroying themselves, but the guilt and regret at not having done “something” is entirely normal and unfortunately not really amenable to just reasoning yourself out of the emotional conflict.
Please talk to someone; it doesn’t need to be a therapist, but it should be someone who can understand and have empathy with your conflict, and reinforce the idea that you did what you could, as best you were able, in a situation that was ultimately beyond your control.
I’m very sorry you are going through this. I agree with other posters that have said talk to someone and that someone doesn’t need to be a therapist. I know that would’ves and should’ves don’t help to ease the pain and they don’t change the situation. Is there something positive you could do in her memory? Make a donation to a local rehab center? Volunteer with kids that are at risk or going through rehab? Don’t get sucked into the past, look to the possibility of the future.
In the past 22 years you may made numerous attempts with no success to get her to change. There is no possibility anything you could have done in the last few months would have had an effect.
You will get mad. There are definate stages in grief processing. Just go with them, they are there for a purpose. At the end (there’s no set timeline) you will be better. But…do talk to a professional. Grief counselors are a chosen people.
Having lost one of my sons a month ago to alcoholism, I know what you are going through. In some cases, intervention is just not enough, particularly if there is little will on the part of the person to actively try to get better. You couldn’t have fixed it no matter what you did, believe me. In the end stages, the depression and the addiction are the drivers, and your loved one is on a suicidal mission to just end it all, regardless of the hurt, anger and guilt that is inflicted on everyone around him/her. Despite the love surrounding him, my son simply was unable to deal with whatever demons ate at him in his darker moods. We all just looked on, helpless, as he destroyed his life.
You have my sincere sympathies; I hope we both can manage to cope with this awful turn in our lives in the future. For now, rest assured that you did what you could.
I am so sorry for both you and Chefguy! I lost a 28-year-old nephew, and then his father, to alcoholism a few years ago. NOTHING you could have done differently could have fixed her.
Addiction is a horrible disease/condition that relies on putting responsibility on others for the addict’s using, and you’re still feeling the after-effects of years of that co-depency that the addiction demands.
Please take it easy upon yourself. You have suffered too much already.
Chefguy, we’ve all followed the story of your son, and I feel like I lost someone I knew. My deepest condolences.
Yes. I am not concerned with your religion or if you have one. It’s times like this when you learn that sainthood is in the person, not their religion.
I genuinely appreciate all the responses. Today is one week. One minute I want to talk about it and the next I don’t. At times like this I am grateful for this place, sharing with strangers seems to allow me to be a bot more honest than sharing with close family or friends. I was caught a bit off guard by this whole thing, I thought I had prepared myself for this long ago as I knew it was inevitable.
Chefguy, my heart goes out to you, my brother lost his son to the disease and I know his family has never been quite the same since.
Death by addiction is so hard to watch, especially in the end stages. From the outside looking in, it seems like healing would be so easy. The heartache and pain seem so unnecessary. But the addiction is only the tip of the iceberg, and the using exacerbates the problem below.
The disease grows quietly, out of sight, and the addict knows how awful it would be to try and quit. Some have the steel to face it all sober and chip away at the problem, others just don’t. “It’s not their fault, they seem to have been born that way.”
You kept her fed when she would eat, warm when she would sleep, loved when she would feel. You did everything you could have done for her and as the burden increased slowly through the years you strengthened and adjusted it to carry her further. The demons won this round, (they often do) but not because you didn’t give enough.
You are only just beginning to see how much you did, how hard you fought, and how much you have given up to the fight through the years. As the realizations hit they may become overwhelming, and the anger will be gargantuan. I strongly endorse the above advice to find a grief counselor. Don’t wait until you are sinking, find someone to talk to now. That way when the tidal wave hits you’ll already have the relationship in place.
If you can’t go to a counselor for whatever reason, then go to a few Al-Anon meetings. Look for the people you respect and relate to, and get their phone numbers. Raise your hand and let people know who you are, and what you have lost. Talk as much as you can about what you are going through, especially the isolation her addiction imposed upon you. There will be sick people in the room, but also recovered ones who can support you through this process. Love the former, cling to the latter, get what you need.
I hope this is helpful. Please discard anything that isn’t.
I’ll say what I say to anyone grieving: how you feel is how you feel, and it’s not wrong.
There was a time in your posting when the anger you felt was very apparent. Now, you seem to be mourning all the good times you had with the bad. Both are how you feel/felt at the time. As much trouble as the relationship brought you, you clearly had some genuine fun and good times with her. That’s as much truth as her addiction and death. You have lost the whole of her, the good along with the bad.
With more time your grief will change again.
I’m sorry for your loss, and the pain you are enduring.
You know, it might sound odd but I am finding some comfort in my pain. It makes me feel her life was not so in vain that she was truly appreciated and loved for her attributes. It also reminds me that I haven’t turned into a callous heartless robot that I often feel like. Thanks again for all the replies they are greatly appreciated.
My condolences. I’ve suffered loss but not a self-destructive run-up to it. I can’t imagine how that bit feels.
I lost my parents far too young and my kids ask about them from time to time.
I talk about them freely and how sad I was and how I miss them but the one thing that I try to impress upon them more then anything else (in preparation for my own demise as much as anything) is that loss is the price we pay for the time we get to spend with them. The only way to avoid it is to not have them around in the first place or to inflict our own loss on them first.
Neither is very palatable.
So that may be of no immediate use to you now but it may be a nugget of comfort at some point in the future. It certainly helped me to put things into perspective.
One of the things that most annoyed me just after my husband died were the people who seemed to want to pretend nothing had happened. I found myself wanting at least a “I’m sorry for your loss” rather than complete silence on the subject. Sure, being reminded of my loss could hurt, but I’d rather have that hurt than silence. I wanted acknowledgement that I had suffered a loss. It hurts because that person was important.
Not sure if that’s directly relevant to you or not, but I get the notion that accepting the pain is part of accepting the loss.
There is also the battle that goes on within the family and circle of those close to the addict. The lines are drawn between those who are co-dependent and those who draw the lines. I was a line-drawer and took some abuse from family members who were co-dependent. Their belief was that you do whatever it takes to help, even at risk of destroying your own financial and emotional well-being: two of the heavy hitters in the definition of co-dependency. My stance was always that without personal investment from my son in the form of therapy and other treatment, he would never stop circling the drain. I feel badly for one of my other kids and my ex-wife, who will, at some point, realize that what they were doing was not helpful. That said, I can’t fault them for doing what they thought was “the right thing”. My daughter is a pile of emotional wreckage and my ex will never recoup from the financial disaster.
I am so sorry for your loss. I know how much it must hurt.
It is healthy to remember the positive attributes of your SO. Who would want to remember only the bad things?
As far as blaming yourself goes, please get some help. A clergyperson, a psychologist, even just a close friend. Whatever you are feeling in that regard is just not true. We can do everything in our power to help others, but the decisions they make are their decisions, not ours. I went through something similar when my sister committed suicide and I can state this unequivocally. No matter how much I might or might not have reached out to her, it was her decision.
After my husband died, and he presented to the doctor as terminal. meaning there never was any hope, a friend dragged me to a grief class. I was consumed with huge guilt about my caretaking at the end.
As I sat crying and spilling my guts about the times I became impatient or was unable to do something, another woman in the group, who I didn’t know, looked dead at me and said “What, did you think you could have saved him?”
Now, I was at 4 mos. then, not as fresh as you, but it helped a lot, and I would ask myself that frequently.