I have kissed honey lips, felt the healing in her fingertips

I’m sitting at work with a little time to kill.

That rarely happens as this is a well established shop. I’m in my hometown and I already have customers scheduled for the future. Word has gotten around that I’m working in town and this may be the busiest and most successful I’ve ever been in my 35 year career.

It’s also the most money I’ve ever made. 

I should feel happy and successful and I do, but I wish I had my lover to talk to at the end of the day. To share it with. To spoil.

I don’t think I’m ever going to stop missing him. Why do I have this giant empty space in my heart and why did he reside there for so long that now I can hardly live without him?

Why does it feel like I can’t make it through the rest of my life alone?

When he called me from the rehab hospital, I was in shock and I struggled to process the news that he was finally somewhere safe, and that he was no longer in the hands of Vickie or her associates or Lori. Once it sunk in, what he was telling me, I cried racking sobs of fear, uncertainty, and worry. I cried tears of hopeful relief. I sobbed out an apology for all the hurtful things I had ever said.

And I haven’t stopped crying since.

After we said goodbye that night, everything changed. He’s gone. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. I have no way of contacting him and this is the worst I’ve struggled through this whole ordeal.

It feels agonizing to be in the dark and worrying incessantly about his well being.

I am on the outside.

And I’m not even looking in.

The windows to his soul are covered with heavy paper and I can’t see inside.

Every day I educate myself about recovery from methamphetamine. I am so scared that he is damaged forever and what if I never see him again? I can’t shake the fear and pain and worry.

But mostly, I can’t escape the crash, the depression. I’m struggling with disordered sleeping and my appetite is back with a vengeance. I want to eat sugar and salt and everything in between. I’m exhausted and sad. My moods are up and down and I cry so many times throughout the day that my nose is plugged most of my waking hours. I feel scared and alone and helpless. And Angry, but it is not directed at him anymore. 

I miss him so bad. I’m so scared for the future. It can’t get any worse than the present. We are so far at the bottom that there is literally NO way to get any lower.

It’s like the horror and shock of the past year have finally caught up to me and I can’t recover emotionally this time. It’s like I can breathe for the first time but at the same time I’m gasping for air, for any word from him.

He’s no more gone than he was before, it just feels like it because I want him to recover so badly. To come back to me and to be free from pain and suffering and addiction.

But the information I’ve read online about recovery frightens me beyond what I thought possible. I can hardly stand the thought of the suffering he is enduring. It takes a full 30 days to shake the intense cravings for the drug and the crippling depression that withdrawal brings. When I learn about what he is most likely feeling at this stage in recovery, it makes me cry to think he feels bad and I can’t hold him. I cry and worry and I want to touch him and hold him and tell him it’s ok.

He would most likely be irritated with me or too sad to talk. Both those symptoms hang on until your brain starts to build up the stores of dopamine that meth demanded and depleted. It takes a month. Maybe more. The older you are the longer and harder you struggle and I just want to die knowing he’s hurting and I’m powerless.

I’ve been powerless for so long now.

I have an intense need to nurture and hold my lover. My need to comfort him is so strong it’s nearly tearing me apart.

I know this is silly and superstitious and I don’t really believe this stuff, but, I think I’m feeling the things that Roger is going through. I have no reason to feel withdrawal symptoms. I have absolutely no idea what would make my body mimic what he may be experiencing besides empathy.

I think I’m so emotionally tied to him that I am feeling his suffering.

If I could end it for him, I would. I’d gladly do what you do for love and trade places with him.

That’s what you do when the other half of what makes you whole is faltering. You are their strength. You lift them up and you carry them when they can no longer do it for themselves.

Even after all he’s done, I still love him.

And I believe he loves me, although it is hard to believe that because it flies in the face of how he has treated me lately. But he does. Because I felt it for so many years and because even when he was at his sickest, avoidant and addicted, he still reached out to me.

He didn’t completely abandon me until Vickie outed him, at which point he made the decision to be with her and to turn his back on me.

But something keeps making him turn around and look behind him. Maybe it’s to see if I’m still there.

Or maybe he looks back…

With the hope that I’m finally gone.