May 20, 2024
December 31, 2021
Goodbye Booze,
It is official – we are no longer a couple! I first kicked you out of my life exactly nine years past, but you came pestering me again when you found me in a time of exceptional loneliness and frustration about 6 months ago. In that moment of desperation, you rekindled those old memories of how you promised to offer comfort and soothe pain. In my mental state of weakness and confusion, you fooled me into believing that this time our relationship could be different. Oh, you were so persistent! Always inserting yourself in my thoughts and plans – making me feel joyful about the prospect of getting together again. But the next day you always left me feeling beaten and regretting my decision to see you again.
You told me that you would comfort me and protect me from my fears. Instead, you lulled me into a false sense of comfort while you were increasingly cutting me off from the world and myself. Soon I found myself regretting the whole thing when I saw how you failed to deliver what you promised. Eventually I could soon see all the familiar patterns of your abusive control and worse. Despite promising to soothe my loneliness, you actually increased it by making me feel estranged from reality. Soon I began to think about you all the time, planning on when we would get together and fantasizing about how enjoyable it would be. So complete was your hold over me that I began to hide our trysts from others who might threaten to break up our relationship. There will be no more secret rendezvous between us!
I am so grateful that I had a renewed moment of clarity about 3 months ago and decided to leave you. I found some new people who know you well and they helped convince me that you are truly a miserable partner, that you have never cared for anyone and that you never will. The first time we broke up, I hated myself for falling deeper and deeper to your deceptive charms. This time I have learned to hate YOU because of your true and unchanging nature – being thoroughly toxic to everything you touch.
When we first met many years ago, you offered me good times and a sense of belonging with my peers. I felt a sense of adulthood when I was with you, and I believed your lies about improving my romantic and sex life. I can now see that the times we spent together resulted in too many human relationships that did not reach their potential. In hindsight, I can now see that being with you dulled my memories of the actual events and distorted my mind to make things seem more fun than they actually were. Furthermore, you dimmed my senses so that I could not fully enjoy the unadulterated beauty of the natural world. Even worse – you often did not allow me to form any genuine memories of those experiences – so complete was your selfishness.
You seduced me by promising to show me a good time and keep me safe. Instead, you frequently made me unaware of how I was making a fool of myself under your influence. Too often, you cut me off from truly getting to know others and myself. You kept me from learning how to love myself and insisted on making yourself a part of my other romantic and socialrelationships. You destroyed a few of those relationships while fooling me into thinking you were caring for my happiness. You almost even destroyed my marriage a few times. You seduced me into caring more about being with you than enjoying my own company or the company of people who truly cared for me. I was misled by those romantic stories from your other deluded lovers, but I wish we had never been introduced. Now that I am able to think clearly, I find it hard to fathom how you ever gained such a great reputation as a desirable lover. Oh, I was fooled when I was young and inexperienced and when I was too busy to think about it. Now I can see you for what you really are – a mendacious and deceitful lover who is completely unworthy of my time and attention – your selfishness is complete and never satisfied.
As our relationship grew, you promised to soothe me whenever I felt discouraged or oppressed, anxious or depressed, angry, bored, lonely, tired, or lacking in self-esteem. However, your “soothing” was always temporary and those negative feelings always returned and usually stronger. In short, you always betrayed me with your false promises. You held me captive against my best interests, separated me from my true feelings, distracted me from my highest goals, and prevented me from becoming close to the people who really care for me.
Most horrifyingly, you nearly killed me a few times and made me risk not only my own life but the lives of many other innocent people – especially when we drove a car together. You sent me to the emergency room once and you may have caused bodily harms of which I am still unaware. There is no telling the physical and psychological toll you have taken on me, but enough is enough, I can’t take anymore punishment from you.
Many people have been suckered into thinking of you as a glamorous and desirable lover, and I was also flattered to have your attention. Although you sometimes caused me physical pain, I kept letting you back into my life a few days later (sometimes the very next day despite feeling unwell from the beating you gave me the night before). Thinking back on those times, I can’t believe how completely dependent I became on being with you and seduced by your manipulative abilities to convince me that you could soothe my pain or make good times seem even better. Even though you offered me solace, your demands always increased until I eventually found myself alone with you and beaten down. You eventually made me feel afraid to leave you, but you were wrong – I am much better off without you!
Under your spell, I was blinded to the realities of what was actually happening to me. You degraded my health because of bad diet and poor sleep as well as the actual damage you did to my body. Without you, I am recovering and becoming healthy again, but I will never forget about the harms you did to me. My memory became blurred and confused and I felt increasingly fearful, helpless, hopeless, anxious, and depressed. At first, when I left you, I felt shameful because I could see how much I depended on you, but now I feel powerful because I have taken control of this relationship and decided to kick you to the curb forever.
I will not let you take advantage of me again. You prevented me from loving myself and from experiencing the authentic expression of my feelings. You forced me to hide behind false bravado and insincere feelings of joy and comfort. Although you promised that I could “have it all,” you actually took much away from me by making me incapable of achieving my full potential and producing much more sorrow than joy in my life. Worse than that, you frequently eroded the highest expressions of my core values and beliefs. What kind of partner are you? You weakened me when I needed strength. You made me feel sorrowful when I needed joy. You confused me when I needed clarity. You made me anxious when I needed calm. You stole time from me when I needed more of it. You dulled my senses when I needed them sharpened. You made me inebriated when I needed sobriety. You promised me relief but heightened my pain.
We have been apart again for nearly 3 months now. Oh, I have seen you in my neighborhood, hanging around in stores and shops, at restaurants, and at a few parties and events I attended. But we will not be getting together again because you are dead to me. After all, you are literally an inanimate and toxic and powerless substance while I am a living and breathing and empowered human being who wants to love his authentic and unadulterated self. I really don’t know what I ever saw in you or what others might still see in you, but that doesn’t matter now. As far as I am concerned (and that is the only thing that matters), you and I are finished forever!
Goodbye Booze!
