Keeping On Without You

My biggest regret was not telling my girlfriend that I was an alcoholic.

Was it obvious? Yes.

Did anyone ever pick up on it? No. Well, maybe. But no one ever did anything about it, least of all me.

Walking out of a hospital, in pieces, after losing someone you love with your entire heart is not an easy thing. Knowing that you’re walking out without telling her your deepest secret makes putting one foot in front of the other that much harder. It makes breathing that much harder, because I know that I lied to her. I confessed everything else I could, except for that. I just couldn’t do it.

And now she’ll never know.

There are reasons why I did hold it back though. In the moments I knew were to be my final moments with Addie, I could not expel those words from my mouth and watch her crumble to even more pieces. I would not be able to ruin those precious moments by admitting that I was slowly killing myself when I was away from her. Would she even know what to say? Part of me was scared that upon hearing those words she would close her eyes right then and never open them again.

It happened anyways, but at least I have a memory of a beautiful moment of something close to complete honesty with her. It’s something we’ve never had, because the two of us were apparently prone to keeping secrets, and being even more ashamed of the things no one else knew.

Some days I can’t even begin to explain how ashamed I am of being addicted to the thing that drove me so far apart from Addie. It wrecked our entire relationship. And it was slowly wrecking me.

Maybe if I told her that morning she would have told me to get help, that she would be there for me when I was alone, that she would always be there for me. I know she would have wanted me to fix this and get better. Not only for myself, but for everyone else. She would have wanted me to get better for the rest of the people in my life. The thing about Addie was that even if she wasn’t going to be a part of my life anymore, she would have wanted me to get better for everyone else, even if I had never bettered myself for her.

But I didn’t tell her. I was stuck pretending and dreaming of all the things she would have told me should I have decided to admit I was addicted.

She told me not to ever come after her before she left. Some days it had never sounded like such a great idea. Some days all I wanted was to chase after her, to find her again because she left me, and I couldn’t handle it. Those were the days when I truly was close to coming after her, passed out on the floor with not a thought in my mind but how much I wished things were how they used to be. My eyes blurry and any hopes of walking straight gone out the window, I wanted to come after her.

Lo and behold, the same thing that drove me apart from Addie was what was driving me closer to her every night I missed her.

I missed her every night.