Peace by Piece

For the ones who loved them through it.

If you have found your way here, I am both grateful and sorry.

Grateful because it means you are seeking something — understanding, healing, a hand to hold in the dark – and my hope is that you find it here. 

Sorry, because finding yourself here means you know this pain firsthand. You should not have to. But since you do — you are in the right place.

WHY I STARTED

After what I now refer to as my first season with my partner’s addiction, so many people told me I needed to write a book. It was a joke. We laughed. This far down the line, many years later, I have had an overwhelming feeling that I have a story to share — and the way to do this is by starting a blog. I toggled between the ideas for a long time and then decided — why not both. Blog and book – which will come in time. This is my life, my story, to be written in my own thoughts and feelings, in my own time, on my own terms.

I have been shut down — by other people and by myself. The fear of judgment is very real, as is the fear of my addict partner catching wind of this. The judgment – I constantly remind myself – is for God alone. As for my addict partner — were he to find this, he needs to stop and think that had it not been for his actions, these pages would not exist.

I always said once this is over I will start. Well, I have over two decades to write on and there is still no ending — so instead of sitting back and waiting, I am choosing to begin. I will persevere, in the hopes that even if I can help one person in a million, then that is enough. In setting this up, it has further evolved into something of a self help system. I have created sets of tools over all areas that I have experienced. It was never the intention, it was just how it ended up. 

This is raw. It is real. It is unedited, it is pure, and it is my version. This is hours upon hours of banging away tirelessly on a keyboard, doing the best I can when I am emotionally capable of getting my story across and out. I do not always use the correct grammar or punctuation — and I make no apology for that.

A NOTE ON ANONYMITY

I have chosen to remain anonymous. One — this is not a page set up to blame, name and shame my ex. It is for healing. Two — there are stories in here my children and many around me do not know of, and I wish for that to remain just that, and to not impact my children specifically.

On this I want to be clear. Trying to find out who I am — should you succeed — would have an incredibly negative impact on the people closest to me and would make what I am trying to achieve here, which is helping others, no longer possible. I therefore ask that my privacy, and that of my loved ones, is respected.

I will not spend time defending my choices to anyone. Call it what you will — enabler, excuse maker, codependent — whatever label makes you comfortable. Those who need to hear this story will know exactly why I made the choices that I did.

BEFORE YOU READ ON

What you are about to read may trigger you. When this happens —

Stop.

Breathe.

Shut it down.

Process your reaction and recognise where you need to find the healing for yourself that I have. Not only is it okay to step away, it is necessary. This could be days, weeks, maybe even months before you have the strength to pop back on here and continue.

I know this journey.

I know your pain.

I know your heart.

I know your sorrows.

And I know firsthand that there is no magic wand to make it all disappear.

My hope is to help others who have been in similar situations, had similar journeys, find their own way through. A way for you to wake up in the morning and know that not every day is a bad day — and every day is not a good day. In reliving these memories and events, I have cried at the losses and laughed at some of my perceptions.

No one can tell you what the right or wrong way is to handle your own situation. But I can share with you how I handled mine. It was the way I chose. The way that allowed me to stand strong and be proud of my actions. And most importantly, for me to hang on to who I am — even if sometimes by only the tiniest of threads.

WHAT ADDICTION ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

Before we go any further I want to talk about something. Because when most people hear the word addict they have a very specific picture in their mind.

They picture someone sitting in a corner doing drugs. A person sitting at a TAB or in front of a screen, gambling. Someone looking washed out, skinny, pale — a shell of themselves. They picture the obvious. The visible. The kind of destruction that announces itself.

What they do not picture is the invisible addict. The person sitting next to you at dinner. The one who holds down a job, runs meetings, closes deals, makes people laugh, and fills every room they walk into with a warmth that draws people like moths to a flame. The one everyone loves.

They do not picture the man who digs holes in the sand for your pregnant belly and cooks you steak at midnight before a big day. The dad who outwardly expresses love for his partner and his children, who shows up for them in all the ways the world can see, but not at home.

They do not see what happens behind closed doors. They do not see the men and women constantly scouring society for their next hit or their next affirmation, while their partners are at home tending to the kids, the work, the housework — doing life — usually completely alone.

And they do not see the shattered soul within the addict. The person wanting a reprieve from the pain they feel — an escape, if only for a minute, an hour, a day, a year. Sometimes years. Sometimes decades. Some addicts never break free. For some, this is a constant cycle of sabotaging themselves because they do not know how to love themselves. Because the wound driving all of it was never about the substance, or the bet, or the woman. It was always about something much deeper and much older than any of those things.

Addiction is classified as an illness for a reason. And while that classification gives us more compassion, it is ultimately up to the addict whether they want to seek recovery or not. Some will sit in meetings week after week, only to return home and have a drink, take a drug, bet on a horse, or reach out to someone for the affirmation they cannot get from within. Some will celebrate each milestone in one form of recovery — receiving their tokens with pride, sharing in meetings of their success — only to be deep down the rabbit hole in another form of addiction entirely.

For those, the journey is long, painful, treacherous. At any given point they can slide off the precipice and tumble back down into the depths of their chosen way of fixing. For these, I truly believe that more than just recovery is needed. 

For some, they attend meetings or rehab or find God through church, and they do not get it right the first time, or the second, or the third. But when they do — you want to be a part of their lives. You want to be a part of their journey, their love, their joy, their happiness. You have waited so long for this person to come back to you that when they do, even the air feels different.

But even an addict in full recovery is a complicated journey. You sit and wonder and doubt — when will he relapse? And this is the saddest part. Because while your partner needs to work hard to regain your trust, you also need to be present enough to embrace this new person — while still dealing with your own wounds from everything that came before. The addict, so focused on their own recovery, often forgets the wake of destruction they left behind. They expect things to simply resume. They can feel as if their partner is being unfair, unsupportive, ridiculous — forgetting that while they have been focused first on their fix – and then on getting better, their partner has been focused on them the entire time. Through all of it. Without a way forward. Without a single badge to earn.

I found my way into rooms full of people who understood. That alone changed something in me — and I will tell you more about that when we get there.

ON THE LABELS

I find all this psychology talk about how only damaged people can love damaged people to be the biggest load of garbage, and quite honestly, ignorant. We do not meet our partners and get given a looking glass into the next 2, 5, 10, 20 years of our lives. Had we been given that option we would never have chosen that path. Nobody willingly chooses that path.

And – what if you do have issues — every person in the world has something that somewhere along the line has been a traumatic experience for them. This does not make us weak or pathetic. It makes us human.

Few around you will understand it. Most won’t understand you. Some will blame you for where your partner is, the choices they make. Some will say you are codependent, that you enabled them, that you have something wrong with you because you chose to stay. Whatever your reason for staying — it is yours. The who, what, when, where and how has nothing to do with anyone else.

THE SEASONS

Over the years I have come to look at addiction very much as spiritual warfare. I do not want to make this blog about religion, but I do need to say that for me, God has and always will be my salvation. Whatever you believe in — a higher power, manifestation, the universe, even yourself — hold onto it. We need something greater than us to anchor to when the storms come. And they will come. And they will pass. And you will still be standing. And they will come again. And they will pass again. And again, you will find yourself standing.

The journey of being with an addict can be the most rewarding, groundbreaking, loving experience — or it can be one that leaves you spiralling with hurt and pain that has come from the one person you have probably loved most in your life, but who has treated you the worst. You will find yourself in cycles of seasons. Good seasons, bad seasons, okay seasons. These seasons can repeat weekly, monthly, and sometimes yearly. This is what makes the journey of addiction so confusing. It wreaks havoc on you. At times you are so secure in your partner’s love and at times you wonder if they ever really loved you at all. At times you feel like there is no hope and at times you say — this is why I stuck around. This is what I have been waiting for.

Some are lucky. For some, the season they have been waiting for continues for eternity. For some, years. For others it is short lived. But it is those moments that give us the strength to keep going even when we think we cannot take anymore.

Some will say – but you have choices. And that is true. But in it, in the moment, there is so little you can see. You cannot look in on your relationship as the outside world does. Your view is from within and not from above. When you are in the eye of the storm and there is a moment’s reprieve from the insanity of the addict, you pause. You gather yourself. You remind yourself you can get through this — as you have before. So the next time you get hit with a tornado you have experience with it. This is not to say it gets easier. But maybe it becomes almost more manageable. Until it doesn’t.

You will lose friends. You will make friends. When your partner is at their lowest, especially when it comes to drugs, everyone disappears. You will be left drowning in a world where lifeboats are few and far between. You will sit and watch bad choice after bad choice with no regard for your feelings, your wellbeing, or that of your children. You will see a selfishness akin to none.

Once your partner starts their recovery journey, you will meet some of the world’s most amazing human beings. People I am proud to call friends. People who can give constructive advice based on years of experience and hard-won wisdom. People who have fought and are still fighting hard to maintain their sobriety in a world that wants people to fail. People who, while fighting their own battles, give so freely of themselves to help others find meaning in life. To find freedom. To find sobriety.

THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ

What you are about to read is not the whole picture. It was not only bad times. Reading back over what I have written, it strikes me that these pages could paint a picture of decades of unrelenting pain. That would not be the truth. If I am honest, the bad times were a small drop in the ocean — with the impact of a tsunami.

For the most part it was real, it was good, it was love — years of genuine happiness, laughter, adventure and connection that most people would envy. This is the real and raw nature of addiction and how it manifests. It does not consume every moment of every day, and that is precisely what makes it so insidious, so confusing, and so hard to walk away from. It is why so many of us have found ourselves in this place — holding on through the storms because we have seen with our own eyes what the calm looks like.

It is the nature of this story that the darkness demands more words than the light. But never mistake the weight of these pages for the weight of our whole journey. The good was very, very good. And that is exactly why the bad was so hard to leave.

For the longest time I believed my journey of loving an addict began with the drugs. It was only sitting here, reflecting, doing edits for this blog, that I realised it actually started long before that. It started with an addiction to women. One I did not have the language for back then, one I could not have named or identified as a teenager. But sitting here now, with everything I know, I can see it clearly. The drugs came later. The pattern was always there.

I am going to go back to the very beginning, recalling as much as I can in as much detail as I can, doing my best to explain things to the best of my ability and allow you to see into the depths of my mind and my thought processes. Please remember — this is my side of the story. There are always other sides, no matter which way we want to look at it.

I hope somehow sharing my journey brings encouragement and healing to others, as this journey has brought to me.

Some years ago I was diagnosed with a rare illness. There was not much information available on it — never mind personal accounts or lived experiences. Everything I read fit in some ways but not in others. The information was so minimal that even my closest friends and family could not research it, could not glimpse into what I was feeling or living through, or be guided on how to support me through it. I felt alone. Isolated. Like I was navigating something in the dark with no map.

And then I stumbled upon a small community on Facebook of 500 people around the world who shared my same diagnosis.

I remember the moment clearly. Reading their posts. Recognising myself in their words for the first time. Feeling like I had found a family I did not know existed, and did not know I needed. And I sobbed. I sobbed so hard. Because I felt seen. I felt heard. I was not alone anymore — and that changed everything.

That is my intention in sharing my story with you.

No matter your race, your religion, your country of origin, your social status or your circumstances — in this, we are the same. Addiction does not discriminate. It does not care who you are or where you come from or how much you love someone. The impact it has on the people who love an addict is universal — the confusion, the cycles, the hope, the devastation, the getting back up again. We speak the same language even when we have never met.

We are not victims of addiction.

We are survivors of loving an addict — in whichever form that addiction presents itself.

And in that, we are not alone.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. YOU ARE STRONG. YOU ARE COURAGEOUS. YOU ARE LOVED. MOST IMPORTANTLY, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Love, Sloane

Before you begin, please look at how to use these pages.