They Don’t Tell You

They Don’t Tell You

            Nothing prepares you for what addiction does to a person, or to the people around them. The shows, the movies, the stories…none of them compare to what the real thing will do to a person’s life.

            I met my ex when I was 19. I’d been helping him out at the place I worked at the time, and by the end of our meeting we were laughing, I was blushing, and he asked for my number. The beginning of our story was slow. He told me on our first date that he was living in a halfway house. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, and later had to google what a halfway house even was. He told me he was looking to be better, and one of the ways he was beginning to do that was by having good people in his life that would lead by example. I was a full-time student full-time employee. I was the perfect example of a good role model, but I was also the perfect victim.

            The first six months were better than I could have ever expected. He was charming, funny, handsome, and smart. Something about him drew me in. Even when things began going downhill.

            It started out with a few fights here and there. We would fight over the smallest of things, like how he believed that I would side-eye him, even though I had been looking out the window. He would explode on me, but five minutes later he would ask me why I was still mad at him, that the argument we just had was water under the bridge. Later, I would just sit next to him and stare. The man, who five minutes before had screamed so loud that his face turned red, was now cracking jokes and acting like the man that I loved.

            When it was close to Valentine’s Day, I found a little box tucked away in his car. This was my first Valentine’s Day with someone who wasn’t my dad. My heart soared as I opened it because I thought there would be something for me inside. It wasn’t at all what I expected.

            In the little box was a clear plastic baggy that contained a clear rock-like substance. My fingertips felt cold. I had no clue what it was, but I knew that it wasn’t good. I glanced up to see him making his way out of the gas station. Quickly, I hid the box once more, but I wasn’t fast enough. The guilty look on my face and quick, jerky movements were a dead giveaway that I had gotten into something I wasn’t supposed to.

            He accused me of snooping through his things and through his phone. Then he accused me of accusing him of something he hadn’t done, even though I had not said a word since he sat down in the car. Suddenly, he turned the car off, slammed his fist into the wheel, and said fuck you, fuck your car, and fuck this relationship. In the moment I remember being desperate to rectify the situation. I grabbed the keys from the ignition and jumped from the car. He was walking away, so I called his name. I begged for him to speak to me, I begged him not to go.

            I remember him spinning around on his heel and walking towards me. For the first time in our relationship, I was afraid. His jaw and fists were clenched as he came back toward me. He twisted the keys from my hand, ignored my cry of pain as the key ring jerked my fingers from their sockets. He told me to get my ass in the car quickly because I was causing a scene. I held my hand to my chest, leaned over my lap, and cried.

            When I was finally able to get ahold of myself, I looked at him. He looked back at me with disgust on his face. He told me that the sight of me crying like that made him want to knock my teeth in. The tears stopped. The horror of his words took over the pain and confusion that I was feeling. In the back of my mind, I knew that this was the moment I should have gotten out.

            I should have told him to get out of my car. To lose my number. To never come near me again. But I loved him.

            Because I loved him, I stayed. I would let him talk to me how he wanted. I would accompany him on drug runs because I believed that if I stuck around for him, he would come back. He would realize that he was once again throwing his life away. I thought that my loyalty and love would change the path he was going down.

            I felt that way until a private detective pulled me from class one day to interrogate me about a stolen truck. A truck that my ex had stolen for a different person. I had been home, with an alibi, but they informed me that if I didn’t turn my ex in, that I would go down for his crimes too. My life flashed before my eyes–the way that it does in the movies. I saw orange jump suits, cell blocks, and bars instead of the life that I wanted. The life of being a college graduate, being a wife, being a mom.

            I didn’t turn him in. Instead I blocked his number and hid away until I received the call that he had been locked up. For the first few months, I still saw him with rose-colored glasses. I loved him. I promised him that I would wait until he got out because my loyalty knew no limits. He cried and promised that he would do better, that he would work back to being worthy of my love. I felt as though he would keep that promise.

            That is, until I received his letter. His letter of all the things that he had done to not just me, but my family as well. He stole money from me. He stole jewelry from my mom. He stole pain medicine that was prescribed to my sister after one of her surgeries. He listed all of the girls that he had slept with while we had been together. Girls that he had promised were only contacting him for drugs, but when I confronted him about it, he jokingly said they “had to pay for it somehow.”

            Then the rose glasses came off. They were shattered on the floor at my feet. At first, I wanted him to burn for what he did: the manipulating, the gaslighting, the lying. All of it. I wanted him to hurt like I was hurting. But as time went on, I realized that the man that I had been with, at least for the latter six months of our relationship, was not the man that I had originally been in love with.

            The funny, charismatic man had been tucked away while the drugged narcissist took over. There are some days where I struggle to find it in me to forgive him. When I think about all of the lies and the manipulation, I feel sick to my stomach. Then there are days where I have to forgive him for those things because he is sick with an addiction. I forgive him for living a life as someone who will always be in recovery, and I will never know what that life is like.

 

Author: Chandler Tharp

Editor: Princess Bonsu