“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mr. Emerson is right. A person can’t be angry and happy at the same time. Likewise, a person can’t be happy and oblivious at the same time. The beautiful woman I love, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, has been hiding in the oblivion of alcohol and drugs for the past seventeen months. I have to wonder what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is trying to hide from.
I am pretty sure that if Lauren was going to find happiness or fulfillment in the bottom of a bottle of alcohol or the bowl of a marijuana pipe, she would have found it by now. My guess is that Lauren hasn’t found what she thought she was looking for yet.
I would ask Lauren Elizabeth Kelley if she would consider whether whatever has happened to her is really worth being oblivious for seventeen months. Is Ian’s betrayal of her really worth giving up seventeen months of her life? Does Lauren Elizabeth Kelley really want to waste any more time of her life on being the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been for the past seventeen months.
If being a drug-addicted alcoholic isn’t working for Lauren, she might want to consider that she needs to fight her addictions. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley needs to trust her heart and do what I think her heart has been telling her for seventeen months and be with the man she said she loves. I think her fears and insecurities make her feel unworthy or undeserving of being loved or being happy.
I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can trust herself, love herself and believe in herself enough to ignore her fears, doubts and insecurities and take a chance on fighting her addictions. I hope she will make amends for the damage and lies her addictions have caused her to do and say. I hope she will realize that I love her and am here for her and ask for my help in getting healthy again. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will take a chance on loving me and accepting the love I have for her.
Every minute and every day that Lauren spends as a drug-addicted alcoholic is one less that she and I can spend together. Every minute and every day that Lauren spends in a drug or alcohol induced haze is one less that she can spend happy.
Lauren Elizabeth Kelley doesn’t seem to realize that her addictions have hurt people other than her. Her addictions have made her—the woman that loves me—hurt me through the horrific things and lies that she has done and said.
Her addictions have also hurt me in less direct ways—like causing the loss of her family to me—five people I have considered a part of my own family for 30 years. Bridget, her sister, has been hurt because Bridget has lost one of the few people that she trusted and took advice from—me—the same person who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley trusted and took advice from herself. In fact, today, I am missing Bridget’s birthday because of Lauren’s addictions.
Time is running out for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I have taken enough abuse and heard enough lies. If the amazing woman that loves me doesn’t act soon to show me that she still exists, still loves me, still wants my love, still wants the future we talked about starting together—then I will have to move on.
If Lauren doesn’t understand that I have no commitment to the drug-addicted alcoholic that appears to be all that is left of the amazing and incredible woman I asked to marry me, then she is truly lost.
I don’t want to have to move on, but it is something I must do—not only for me, but also because I know it is what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have wanted me to do if she is gone to her addictions because she loves me.
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.