Down the Rabbit Hole

Saying goodbye to Grasshoper

30 Days Blogging Challenge
PROMPT November 14th
Think back to a moment in your life when you were faced with making a difficult choice. (Which city to move to, which college to attend, what to ask Santa for, etc) How might your life be different if you had made a different choice than the one you did?

Feeling especially mentally taxed today. I feel like the field of difficult choices I've had to make is pretty vast actually. I'd had to make so many of those in my life it seems. If I had to rank the hard choices as most life altering...one in particular rises to the top of the heap.

Over ten years ago, I was in a relationship with someone. He was my best friend and the person I had envisioned building a future with. He was a live-out-loud, kind-hearted, giant of guy and I was madly in love with him. He was the kind of guy everyone loved; jovial and fun, generous and goofy. It had also became painfully clear fairly early on that he was an alcoholic. He had become adept at managing it though, holding down a successful career for over ten years and living a relatively stable life.

Nevertheless, three years into our relationship, his illness had begun to become less and less manageable. His control over his disease began to slip. He was in and out of programs and bounced from one period of shaky sobriety to another with an alarming irregularity. With each failed attempt, I saw more and more of my dreams die away. With every broken promise, I felt more and more of my spirit breaking along with them. He had wonderfully supportive family who worked tirelessly to get him into the best programs. None of us could bear the thought of this amazing, fun-loving, generous soul being lost to his demons. There was so much waiting for him on the other side of true and lasting sobriety. He wanted that life so badly, but none of us could have imagined how powerful his disease was or that he was fighting a losing battle.

To make a long and tragic story short, he was suddenly hospitalized after what we all believed was a solid year of continuous sobriety. Apparently, he had been drinking all along and his liver was failing. Three weeks in a medically induced coma, and one, Hail-Mary-8-hour-life-saving surgery later, he was released back to us. The teams of doctors who had worked to save his life rejoiced with their successes. I remember the head pulmonary doctor clapped him on the back and told him to, "go make your life, marry this girl and make beautiful babies." He also had given him an dire warning. He told him if he never took another drink, his liver would repair itself completely and he could live a full and normal life....but if he drank again, even once, he would be dead within a year.

It deeply saddens me that the doctor's warning had not been an exaggeration. Less than six months into recovery, he relapsed. My heart had at last given out, all my last hopes had been dashed. The last five years had been such a trying, heartbreaking ordeal and it had taken such a terrible toll on my spirit and my faith. I was in a very dark place and one night I realized it had simply had come to the point when it was going to be him or me. If I did not move on, he was surely to take me down with him.

So, the hardest choice I ever had to make was to leave someone that I still loved deeply. The hardest choice I had to make, was to choose me. I broke off the relationship. I pulled away and focused on my life. His siblings kept in contact. We had grown close over the years and they knew I how much I cared and wanted to be kept updated. They checked in with me but also encouraged me not to look back, not to hold out hope. I think they must have known by then that the miracle he needed to turn things around was somehow just beyond his reach.

After some time, I started to date. It was miserable and painful but it was also necessary. Slowly I began to fill my life with normal pursuits and routines. As love sometimes does, it came back into my life when I wasn't looking. I met a man who seemed to be able to heal all the raw places in my soul. He was patient with my wounded heart, and with the drunken messages left on my machine that we would sometimes come back to after a night out.

By this time, my ex was in full and rapid decline. Word soon came that he was in the hospital again, and this time he would not be leaving. He was dying and his tormented body was giving in to his disease finally and horrifically.

So much about my life with him shaped me in such permanent ways, good and bad...but none more so then that visit with him before he died. I remember every moment of our last moments together with heartbreaking clarity. There is too much to unpack there and this blog is already far, far too long. Suffice to say, amends were made and best wishes bestowed. He released me from the burden of my grief and guilt. He told me, "Life your life young Cricket, the one you are supposed to have, and I will look down on you and be so happy for you."

I was able to say goodbye to my dearest friend and walk into the light of my new life with his blessing and it meant the world to me. He died less than two weeks later and the world was somehow forever dimmed by his passing.

I have no way of knowing what my life would have been like had I not left him when I did, but I know I would not have met my husband. I would never have known the joy and challenges of marriage and of building a life with a committed partner. I would never had known the amazing wonder of my daughter and the sweet and awesome honor it is to be her mother. So, sometimes it is the hardest, most painful choices that put us on the road to our best decisions, to our best life.

Incidentally, sometimes hitting "save" on an entry is a hard decision, especially when I' feel as if I've left so much on display in electronic ink. I've pushed myself to be candid and accepting of whatever comes out when I write so I don't have a choice, but I'd by lying if I didn't admit some blog entries leave me feeling more vulnerable and exposed then others and it gives me pause to put them out there sometimes. But I respect that level of openness and honesty in my fellow bloggers and appreciate that all of us here regularly take such risks for the sake of being authentic and real.