Page 104 of A Love Letter to Whiskey
Sighing, I planted my feet on the floor and ran a hand through my curls. “Please, Jenna.”
She must have heard it, the desperation in my voice. It came back sometimes, drowning out the anger for a bit, and that night it was winning.
So Jenna checked on him, and it turned out to be the worst thing I could have asked her to do.
“I saw him,” she told me the next night.
“And?”
She was quiet, and my stomach rolled.
“And… he looks fine. He was out at lunch with some work buddies. I saw him on his phone a few times… no girls or anything but, he looks okay. He looks… good.”
The pain that tore through my chest with her words was a strange one. It felt like hot water, growing more intense in temperature as it leaked down deeper and deeper. I couldn’t move away from it, couldn’t cool it down, and it hurt as much as it fueled the anger that had been just below the surface.
I tried calling him one last time, on a night after I’d drowned myself in half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I’d been stalking his social media, not finding anything new at all. He’d been tagged in a few random posts, funny memes and videos, but he hadn’t posted a single photo, a single status, not even a single word. I wasn’t sure if that made it worse or better.
He didn’t answer when I called, just like I knew he wouldn’t, and I thought really hard about leaving him the nastiest voicemail I could muster. I even let it click me over to voicemail, and I breathed into the receiver like a dragon, trying to tame myself yet falling short.
But I ended the call, staring down at my phone for all of four seconds before heaving it across my apartment. It hit the edge of my kitchen counter and splintered across the floor, and I cried.
He’d changed his mind.
Whiskey had made me promise I’d wait, and then he’d never come, stringing me along knowing my addiction was too strong for me to let him go. I’d fallen from the highest high to the lowest low, and now here I was, crumpled in a ball on the floor. I curled in on myself, rocking slightly, and let the tears come freely down my face.
I’d hit all the stages of grief before that night, touching on everything from denial to anger to depression. Now, I was rounding that base, heading home to acceptance. And I knew what had to happen once my feet hit the plate.
I let myself be broken for nearly another month before I started on my own twelve-step program. Step one was admitting that I was powerless over Whiskey — that my life had become unmanageable. He’d completely taken over, and maybe he’d had that hold on me for longer than I’d realized. Every time I thought I was okay without him, he’d show me I wasn’t, and every time I thought I’d be better with him, he proved me wrong. It was a dangerous roller coaster ride and I was done. I wanted off. I wanted solid ground.
So I redefined everything about myself.
I’d checked into rehab once before, but it was a half-assed attempt. My heart hadn’t been in it, I hadn’t wanted to let him go. This time, I did. This time, I had a plan. This time, I’d given myself an intervention.
I was ready to grow up, tired of the games Jamie and I played. I wanted a real love, a real life, and I had to paint the way to get there. It killed me to let him go, and if I’m being honest — I knew I would never let him go completely. A part of him would always live in me, but I wanted that part of me subdued, buried beneath a brighter version of myself who could move on and live her life.
I looked back on all the damage we’d done — to ourselves, to those around us — and I mourned the time I’d lost fighting for someone who would never be mine. I’d been a fool, and now I was standing in the rubble of the life I’d wasted, drowning in both sorrow and a drive to build a new one.
I’d waited too long for Whiskey, and I refused to let him hold that power over me any longer.
And you know what? It actually worked. For the first time in my life, and with more pain and time than I’d hoped or even thought I could survive, I finally let him go. I deleted him off every social media network, wiped his number from my phone, packed all our pictures and memories away and started over fresh. I was clean. I’d moved on. I was happy. I was free.
