Loving the alcoholic

A person will come into your life, steal a piece of your heart and leave. It's those people that we can never seem to fully get over. Memories play like a movie on late nights as you lie awake in bed. You miss them so much that you live for those memories. It is a curse. There are the "what ifs" and you continuously question every angle. It's madness. You cannot stop it because in every quiet moment to yourself...you can't help thinking of what could have been. 

He was a good guy who never felt good enough. It was pointless to tell him any different. Hell bent on destroying anything good...one day he gave up and reached for a bottle. He purposely lied to push others away. Nothing would or could change his self destructive behavior.  It was beyond anything that one could comprehend. He took a few people down with him. All the begging, crying and getting angry could not change it. They asked themselves how could this happen? How did this happen? He couldn't love himself and certainly wasn't capable of loving anyone else. 

Let me tell you this my friends...it's like a loved one dieing. A death. The death of someone you knew, adored, cherished and loved. It's like having the wind knocked out of you...a sucker punch. A devastating hurt that cuts so deep that it NEVER goes away.

Such is the life of an alcoholic...

You try to sabotage what's good because you don't feel worthy of good. You have spent countless hours convincing yourself that you are worthless. When someone sees the good you are quick to deflect and focus on the negative and you go into sabotage mode. You have a lot of unresolved hurt stemming from an event or events in your life. When you feel this hurt you drink it away. Just as a cutter would cut their wrist to release the pain, you use alcohol.  You are unhappy with yourself and you use humor as a mask and to deflect from the real issues. You will avoid talking about your deep seeded issues because the unresolved hurt is too painful to acknowledge and bring to the surface. You get so overwhelmed that you can feel you can barely function and you're running on fumes. You live in a cycle of drinking, avoiding your feelings and negativity. Your pain is slowly destroying your life. 

"Alcoholism is a well documented pathological reaction to unresolved grief."

- DAVID COOK, Psychosocial Issues in the Treatment of Alcoholism