Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—
I’d point out that I never stopped caring about, being your friend, or loving you. I never walked away from you. I am still here for you as I have always been all of your life. Even if you can not recognize the truth of what I have just said, that doesn’t change the truth.
Your addictions forced you to push me away. You chose to walk away from the man you said you love dozens of times in two different languages—the same man you were talking to about raising a family, having children with, getting married to, and sharing a life together. Those same addictions made you lie about who we have been to each other and how we feel about each other. That is all on you and your addictions—not me.
I have been steadfast and abided and loved you—even despite the horrific things and lies your addictions have made you do and say. I have been loyal beyond measure and devoted beyond anything the drug-addicted alcoholic you have been for seventeen months has ever deserved.
I have never lied to you or about you. I have never betrayed you like Ian did. I never threw you away like Jarrod did. I didn’t throw you under the bus to protect myself like your cowardly, emotionally abusive father did or forced you to perjure yourself.
If you don’t like what you are hearing, then maybe it is because you are uncomfortable with the truth. The woman I asked to marry me was honest, caring, devout, compassionate, gracious, and kind. Why else would she care what a woman she had never met, never known, and who had been dead ten years would feel if we got married. Why would Lauren Elizabeth Kelley care whether Gee would be angry or upset if she wasn’t the kind, compassionate, gracious and sweet person I asked to marry me.
This should be food for thought for you.
If you love me… it is time to step up and show it.
Fight for yourself. Make your amends. Come show me you love me and are sorry for the things your addictions have made you say and do. Come show me that you care more about me and our future together than you do about the past and the people who hurt you there—like your father, Ian and Jarrod.
I love you. I always have. I always will love you, but that doesn’t mean I will wait forever. It isn’t right. Life goes on, even if you are ill and your addictions are running rampant. I deserve to be loved as you once loved me and deserve so much more than the pathetic, weak, dishonest and selfish drug-addicted alcoholic that is all I have seen for the past seventeen months.
The incredible woman that loves me knows this and would want me to move on… so either she—you, my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—still exists, or she does not and it is time for me to leave.
If I leave, I will not turn back. My life is too important to waste doing that.
You can trust your heart and take a chance on us—on the future we talked about—knowing that you have twenty years of proof that we do care about each other, love each other and that you know who I am—and how much I have always cared for you and loved you.
Or, you can remain the drug-addicted alcoholic that you have been and waste your life without knowing the love that you and I could have had—do have but for your addictions.
I pity you because all you have to judge what love is was what you saw between your mother and father. What your father has for your mother is not truly love—at least not in any healthy or real way. He abuses her emotionally so badly that even his own employees have confronted him about it repeatedly, even at the risk of losing their jobs.
That is one reason I wish you could have seen Gee and I together. You would know that when you truly love someone the way I love you and I believe you love me, you become so much greater as a couple than you could ever be apart.
Show me a clear and obvious sign you still care. Come back to me for Thanksgiving or my birthday if you have the courage and will to do so—come seek me out or risk losing what we could have had together forever.
It is your choice. Remain the drug-addicted alcoholic that you have been for most of the past year-and-a-half or be brave enough to fight your addictions and return to being the amazing woman that God has always intended for you to be
If your addictions are too much for you, and you are truly lost to them, it will soon be time for me to mourn the amazing woman I love and move on. I do not want to do this, but I will if I must.
God Bless you Lauren Elizabeth.
May God watch over you and protect you from all harm—even that you cause yourself.
I hope God gives you the strength to fight your addictions and the wisdom to see the truth about what the alcohol and drugs are doing to you.
I pray that God grants you the serenity and peace you will need to love yourself once again and to forgive yourself for the things your addictions have made you do.
I ask that God helps you find your way back to being the amazing, beautiful, intelligent, feisty, stubborn, strong, and devout woman He wants you to be.
Finally, may He grant you the ability to see yourself as I do and let you remember who we are to each other; let you remember the years of friendship, love and devotion we once shared; and give you the strength to make amends so we can start the future together we talked about last June.
All this in Jesus’s name I pray.
Amen.