I need to talk to someone.

[Fairlight]

While I understand that to you, the reader, who chances upon this thread will ultimately judge my post to be something along the lines of beating the dead horse - please bear with me as I simply have no one else to talk to regarding my issue.

Long story short, in late 2011 I met a girl who was and remained my everything until 2013. We were both emotionally invested in each other, but I would say now that I perhaps loved her too much. A few things happened during the later years of our relationship, namely, some cheating, dishonesty and just a general lack of trust. 

After a rocky last few months, I nominated that a perhaps a few months' break would do us good by giving us space and clearing our minds. This went all and well, except for the fact that she never came back. However I don't blame her at that point, we were both hurting and a lot of what we were doing was not beneficial towards the relationship nor was it healthy what we were both going through.

When she left, I didn't cope well. Mainly because I always knew that this day was coming, however I never made the effort to figure out what to do if it ever happened. I have friends but unfortunately I find it difficult to talk to them in regards to these topics as generally, we are just a bunch of cool dudes and nobody really wants to ruin the cool air by bringing up something that puts and elephant in the room.

I used drugs to help me cope, and that lead me down a very destructive path in which I won't go through here, but least to say, it damaged me in a lot of ways, and in more ways, it set me back even further in the recovery process of forgetting her. Eventually I smartened up and got clean for a few months after the culmination of desperation, realisation, loathing and general unproductiveness started to set in. For a few weeks, I had a certain clarity which I had sorely missed from being constantly drugged up and miserable. This clarity allowed me to pull myself back together somewhat and to start on a, at least semi productive routine on my way to recovery.

While I still maintain this sense of clarity, and while I have been clean for the most part of my recovery, there are always nights when my mind overwhelms me with thoughts that

hurt me, and lately this has been happening more and more. Especially since I found out my ex has recently gotten with a guy.. with the same name as me. 

I am generally a smart guy, but when it comes to my ex, I am always hurting myself. I just needed to tell someone before this all conglomerated in my mind and ultimately causes me to end my sad excuse of an existence. 

I am also back on drugs and I while I know this is not helping with my recovery, it is helping me avoid the demons which haunt me. Ignorance never felt better in your veins.

[geoff]

dear Fairlight, thanks for posting this letter to us, and it was a very brave move to want to reach out for help, and there are several issues that you are struggling with.

There will be no criticism from any of us, because if we did then you wouldn't reply back to us, and what this means is that we would be another list of people who have avoided any contact with you, but that won't happen here, because so many trust us when they post, and maybe we are the only people they feel comfortable talking with, but that's enough of this, so let's see if we can offer any help to you.

There maybe some questions that we may ask of you, but whether you want to answer them is entirely up to you.

The break up of this relationship was because of ' some cheating, dishonesty and just a general lack of trust', and I'm not sure who was the one doing all of this you or her, or maybe both of you, and that drug were involved while all of this was happening.

I can't tell you to stop taking the drugs, because I used alcohol as my back stop, and the more people told me to stop drinking, the more I would, because I never believed that they understood the pain of what I was going through, and the same would apply to you.

I finally decided that drinking from sunrise to sunset wasn't achieving anything, and that I was avoiding the problem, which basically was depression, and with this there was so much more going on, and that I couldn't keep running away, because the pain was there again every morning, and by drinking sure it made me numb, but I was going nowhere, except deeper and deeper into the hole.

The same applies with taking drugs, and alcohol is also a drug, but it is legalised, but both do exactly the same.

Now I'm not sure whether you are still in denial, maybe yes, maybe sort of, or maybe no, but I believe that it's one of the first two, and I say this because your back taking the drugs.

You have to decide on whether you want to seek some help from a doctor and then a drug counsellor, and if your answer is no, then you are in denial, but eventually you will accept the fact that you do need professional help, but I would like to hear back from you on your thoughts about all of this. Geoff.