Nobody said this was going to be easy. Or pleasant. Or fun. Or anything less than heart-wrenching.

When is it too much? When I met TD, I was a HOT MESS. HOT. MESS. and I know that. He told me to come stay because he would take care of me, and he did. For a long, long time. Picked me up and put food in my mouth and pushed me toward a degree and put aspirin in my hand and loved my broken little heart back into fractured pieces. That I keep trying to put together.

When I first quit drinking, I told him that if I had hurt him too much, he could tell me and that I would walk away. Or let him walk away. And I honestly meant that. I don’t know that I would have had the mental fortitude to stand by a wholly selfish person who was trying to drink herself into happiness.

And now?

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know that either of us can honestly let go of enough of the past with BOTH HANDS to move on. When we argue (which has been more often that not, unfortunately) past incidences fly up to smack one or both of us in the face. They hang there in the air, clearly unforgotten and unforgiven.

I remember that I asked him, “Is this working for you?” out of desperation and he said, “No.” And it isn’t working for me either.

But he also told me that you have to want it.

And I can’t say what I want, because I don’t know.

I did say that I knew something was going to have to give, and that if I didn’t find out what that something was, soon, it was going to be me.