Someone I use to love

I fell in love with a man I believed was the one, he said all the right things, treated me so well and got along with my family. It happened fast, we started out as friends. The first date was easy, we talked as if we were old friends. It felt right, we facetime every night and texted all day. He was close with my family always joking and making them laugh. I helped him get his first apartment, and even bought him his first puppy. But throughout the relationship I learned he had a dark past, but since he was working on it and going through the steps I stuck by him and loved him for him. I did judge, but I did what I could provide support. I met him when he was just a baseball coach for youth baseball, and living in a halfway house.

Months later I moved into the apartment with him, things were going great he was a year clean going on 2. We celebrated his 2 years of sobriety by attending an NBA game. At that point he believed he didn't need meetings anymore and could handle a drink here and there. I didn't think much of it, but after that first drink it spiraled. We started fighting and slamming doors, he decided to go back to meetings and not bring liquor into the house anymore. Things started to get better, he was getting his CDL license we were planning on moving to new York. But just a few months before on my birthday, he decided to get high and disappeared for hours, I woke up in the middle of the night to an empty apartment.

I called him and he lied to me to as to where he was, he finally came home, hours later around 4 in the morning. Saying how sorry he was that he fucked up, I was pissed he had ruined my birthday and I had to leave to get my car serviced. I told him to go to sleep and that I would talk to him later after I calmed down. While I was gone, he sent me a long apology letter saying how sorry he was and begging me for another chance. I loved him and I stupidly gave in and gave him another chance. Within two months we moved to New York City to start over.

When we got there everything was great, he was working a lot making good money, we were going to baseball games. Going out, then we met with his friends and he got high again. Yet again I gave him another chance, for months this occurred. I had his dad to confide in, but it never got easier. Eventually he admitted to both his parents that he had been using coke and he started to go to meetings and working again. But his job was not an annual position, he only worked for 6 months during the summer and fall season but once winter started he was without work.

It went on for 6 months, he was unemployed. He ended up getting into percs and I became this angry, nagging person. I fell into this persona of being the person who snooped on him and it made me feel so shitty. But I loved him and I would give him chance after chance, ultimatum after ultimatum. In that moment I thought I could help him I could be the one, but I knew that would never happen, he would lie to me about debts he owed and took thousands from me. In the end we had a massive fight where I told him I didn't want him in my life anymore. He spit on me and I knew that was it for me.

That same weekend, his parents and I got together and he agreed to go to rehap in Ft Lauderdale. I fell back into this hopeful mindset thinking, this is it. This is the moment where everything is finally going to better. I wrote him weekly, we spoke the first week in and I even wrote a letter for his therapist to read in a meeting. 3 weeks have gone by I hadn't heard a work. Then one morning while at work, he called me. He called to end things, and told me I had 30 days to leave the apartment because his parents had to rent it out to pay for his bills in Florida.

I called my dad and I started packing, I was devastated. All this time I spent being a punching bag, being lied to, sticking by him to be his support. I was thrown away as if I didn't matter, like a random piece of paper that wasn't needed anymore. I moved back to Florida and just felt like nothing. I had given him 3 years of my life, that included talk of marriage & children. I had nightmares and numerous thoughts of suicide. But I have the most amazing family that helped me and the most amazing friends. Its been 8 months, and its still difficult to open myself up again but I am still working on learning to trust someone new.

But everyday I'm making small goals and I'm slowly reaching them, I found an amazing job and I'm moving into my own apartment. I write letter sometimes thanking him for breaking my heart because if he didn't I wouldn't be able to push myself into taking care of me. Putting myself first, and today I can say I am happier than I was the last 3 years of my life. It will take time but I will get there eventually, I just want to be stronger and happier on my own first.