Adrift at Sea —Dan’s blog on dankim.com

“If she ever had opened that heart of hers, if she’d found the right man, it wouldn’t have mattered to him how little time they had.”

~Ohlyvya, Midst Toil and Tribulation by David Weber

Fortunately, Gee did open that heart of hers, she did find the right man and it didn’t matter how little time we had together.

It is hard to believe that it was only 23 months and not quite one day that Gee and I had together… in so many ways it was a complete lifetime together… things that we only did once or twice somehow managed to become traditions in my mind.

I just wish all the women I love were as wise and brave as my Gee was.

When I asked Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me on June 22, 2011, I was hoping that would be just the start of many years together as something more than the friends we had been most of her life. I never thought that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would fall to drugs and alcohol and that her addictions would cost us so much.

It is very sad to think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—someone I had known, loved, and cared about for over ten times as long as I knew Gee—would give up all that we had together and all that we could have had together for the things her addictions crave. It is hard to believe that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions made her throw away twenty years of love, caring, devotion, friendship, trust, respect and loyalty.

I have spent the last eighteen months, since Lauren Elizabeth Kelley stopped speaking to me after I confronted her about her drinking on June 29th, 2011, trying to help her see that she has a problem with drugs and alcohol and getting her the help she needs to beat her addictions.

The futile months I spent toiling and trying to get Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to see that she has serious problems with drugs and alcohol that will likely cost Lauren Elizabeth Kelley her health, her mind, her body, her reputation, her integrity, her honor, her dignity and her future is not wasted time in my opinion. It was the least I could do for someone I have loved all of her life—over twenty years. It was my duty and honor to try and help the amazing woman I love, but I have done all I can for her now.

Today is the deadline for me to walk away from my beautiful, strong, feisty, beloved freckled Irish redhead. In many ways, I am relieved that I have made this decision. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions are a horrible thing and unless the strong, brave and honest woman I love has realized that they are a problem and is willing to fight them, there is no reason for me to stay and try and fight them and let her addictions destroy me.

Drug addiction and alcoholism are both progressive diseases that live and thrive in the dark. The light of truth is their enemy. The social stigma and shame associated with both diseases help keep their victims from coming forward and dealing with them. The shame and guilt associated with the changes in behavior and the lies and devastation caused by what an addict’s illness causes them to say and do further make it hard for the addict to admit they have a problem and accept responsibility for what they have done because of their addictions.

Two examples from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s own issues with drugs and alcohol are the eighteen months of lies that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been telling about us—who we are to each other and how we feel about each other—and how she had basically prostituted herself—giving her body to Jarrod for the drugs and alcohol her addictions require—for months last year.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was once one of the most honest people I had known. Yet, because of her addictions she has lied about the years of friendship, love, devotion, loyalty, trust, caring and respect that we have shared all of her life.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has perjured herself and told lies about me to protect her father, John, from being confronted again by me about his own problems with alcoholism. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has done this even though John has emotionally abused her for years and treated her and her mother so poorly that his employees would confront him and risk losing their jobs about it. I know how badly John has treated Lauren Elizabeth Kelley because I have witnessed it so many times over the past twenty years.

Likewise, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was once a devout Catholic with honor, integrity and morals that would have prevented her from the promiscuous sexual behavior that has happened because of her addictions. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has tried to convince herself that she was in love with Jarrod, but from his own posts, it was pretty clear that he was sleeping with at least four or five other women while he and Lauren Elizabeth Kelley were together. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, at least the woman I love, would never have accepted that kind of situation and she kicked her previous boyfriend, Ian, to the curb for cheating on her and sleeping with another woman once—much less four or five of them for months.

Some of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s other social media posts, like the one from last January when she and her friend Michelle went into Boston to drink and watch the AFC finals last January where Lauren Elizabeth Kelley stated she wasn’t responsible for anything that happened in the last twelve hours. Now, she had also posted that she was on the train heading home and had pretty obviously spent the night in Boston. Considering that neither she nor Michelle had an apartment in Boston and the dormitories at Emmanuel College were closed for the winter break, one has to wonder where she spent the night and with whom. Obviously, she was ashamed of what she had done, or why would she have denied being responsible for the last twelve hours.

These are things that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never allowed to happen or done if she were healthy. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was a woman who believed in right and wrong and was a feminist that believed her body was worth something and would not have given it away for drugs and alcohol as the drug-addicted alcoholic has done.

Alcoholism and drug addiction are evil diseases that affect so many more people than the drug-addict or alcoholic themselves. They are diseases of the family and affect all the people that love and care about the drug-addict or alcoholic.

In hindsight, I am really not surprised that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley stopped speaking to me on the day I confronted her about her drinking, though I didn’t know at the time she was a drug addict or an alcoholic. Given that we had spent most of the previous week talking about having children, what she wanted to name our children, when we would get married, where we would get married and all the other things that had to do with us starting a life together after I asked Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me on June 22, 2011—it really isn’t a surprise that she pushed me away either.

Pushing away the people that they love most is a common reaction for many drug addicts and alcoholics, even if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley doesn’t realize it. In fact, I think it says quite a bit that I am the only person that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley saw fit to push away since she has fallen to drugs and alcohol.

But, over the past eighteen months, I realized that her addictions are hurting me and affecting me. Her addictions and the horrific things that they make Lauren Elizabeth Kelley do and say and the pain they cause me are affecting me and that is the real reason I had to walk away from someone I love so much.

In fact, it is because I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley so much that I walked away. I did it to remain the person that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, at least the person she is when she isn’t a drug-addicted alcoholic, loves and talked about raising a family with. I did it to remain healthy and strong enough to be able to keep my promise to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that if she needs me to accompany her on her long road to recovery, I will be strong enough to do it.

I doubt that will ever happen though. I think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, much like her father John, will be too successful as an alcoholic and drug-addict to ever really hit the rock bottom that most drug addicts and alcoholics need to hit to realize that their addictions are a serious problem and need to be dealt with.

So, I doubt that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will ever realize what her addictions to drugs and alcohol are costing her—at least not before I am long gone from her life. I haven’t been a part of her life by her own choice and by the coercion her father has subjected her to for eighteen months, and I doubt I will ever be a part of her life again.

A few recent tweets that were directed to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley clearly show her problems with marijuana.

The drug-addicted alcoholic.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wasn’t strong enough, wise enough and smart enough to see that all I have done for the past eighteen months was done out of a deep and abiding love I have had for her all of her life then she really is no longer the woman I love. It really seems that the pathetic, weak, stupid, cowardly, dishonest and selfish drug-addicted alcoholic is all that is left and I have no commitment to that wretched thing.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s own family is deeply in denial about all of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s problems, even though everything I warned her mother Sue about in August of 2011 has come to pass as I said it would. Of course, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s father and brother are both alcoholics in denial and Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s sister and mother are both too terrified of her father John, a cowardly bully that has emotionally abused his own family for decades.

Fighting for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and trying to get her the help she needs has cost me financially, socially, psychologically, spiritually and physically. Yet, I do not regret it. Doing everything that was within my power, regardless of the cost to me, to try and help the woman I love is just who I am. This is something Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, her mother Sue and her sister Bridget should know because of all I went through with Gee and Su.

So, I am finally closing the door on this chapter of my life, even though I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman Gee asked me to seek out after she was gone. I know that like my love for Gee, my love for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is too strong for us to be kept apart by her illness—whether it will be in this life or our next lives, eventually, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I will be together as Gee predicted.

I wish my fiery, feisty-spirited, stubborn, smart and beautiful freckled, redhaired, much beloved Irish rose well and I hope God grants her the peace and serenity that she will need to learn to love herself, trust herself and believe in herself again. I hope that God grants her the wisdom to see the truth of what her addictions are doing to her, what they have cost her and who she and I were to each other and how we really felt about each other.

I doubt that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have told me “I love you” and “Sarangheyo” the dozens of times she did that week we were talking about marriage, having children and such unless she really did love me. I doubt she would have asked to see the claddagh ring I had bought her as an engagement ring unless she was planning on accepting it and my proposal of marriage. But, we will never know because the amazing and funny and beautiful woman I love has fallen to her addiction to drugs and alcohol.

I hope that one day Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will recover enough to read the post I titled “My Gift to Lauren Elizabeth” and realize that those vingettes I wrote are the truths of who we were and how much we loved each other.

I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will find the grace to forgive herself for what she has said and done because of her addictions. I always thought that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was one of the only people I have ever met that might be capable of the kind of grace that my late wife Gee was blessed with. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is capable of so much more than the drug-addicted alcoholic she has become will ever know. I know this because I have known Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and had the honor and pleasure of watching her grow from an adorable toddler, through a horrifically selfish and rotten child into a woman that was so beautiful, smart, strong, funny, confident and lovable that I asked her to marry me.

I have done all I can for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and am finally walking away from the one person I never thought this would happen with. It is up to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley now. I have not burned the bridges between us, though Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions have tried to do just that.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever returns to being the amazing woman I love so much—the woman that loves me and wanted the future with Asians with freckles—then she can choose to seek me out. But, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to prove that she is once again the woman that loves me and more than the drug-addicted alcoholic.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to show me that she has made a place for me in her life beside her and that she will fight to keep me there—that she is as committed to our relationship and to me as I have always been to her. Finally, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to tell the truth about the lies her addictions and her father made her tell and make amends for all the devastation and destruction caused by what her addictions made her say and do.

These are non-negotiable and the smart, beautiful, strong, capable woman I love would agree that they are the least the man she loves deserves for his loyalty, faith and commitment to her—when Lauren Elizabeth Kelley did not deserve it. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is honorable and has the honesty and integrity to understand that these are the minimum of what she has to do. But, they are not things the drug-addicted alcoholic will ever understand or be capable of doing.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley does not know how deep and strong the love I have for her is, then she is more blind and stupid than I could ever imagine. If the things I have written and done and the months I have been steadfast and loyal to her—even when she has done nothing to deserve such love and devotion–are not proof enough then nothing ever will be.

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.