Happiness Is…

Posted on Tuesday 11 December 2012

I read the following post on the web…

Stop waiting…

We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren’t old enough and we’ll be more content when they are.

After that, we’re frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. The truth is, there’s no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when?

Your life will always be filled with challenges. It’s best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway.

One of my favourite quotes comes from Alfred D. Souse. He said:


“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life”.

This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness.

Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have and treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time… and remember that time waits for no one.

So, stop waiting…

  • until you finish school,
  • until you go back to school,
  • until you lose ten pounds,
  • until you gain ten pounds,
  • until you have kids,
  • until your kids leave the house,
  • until you start work,
  • until you retire,
  • until you get married,
  • until you get divorced,
  • until Friday night,
  • until Sunday morning,
  • until you get a new car/home,
  • until your car or home is paid off,
  • until spring, until summer,
  • until fall, until winter,
  • until you are off welfare,
  • until the first or fifteenth,
  • until your song comes on,
  • until you’ve had a drink,
  • until you’ve sobered up,
  • until you die,
  • until you are born again…

…to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy.

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has a choice to make.

Choice 1) Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can choose happiness right now—she can choose to be with the man her heart says she loves—the man who truly loves her and is committed to her—me.

Choice 2) Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can remain the drug-addicted alcoholic that has been searching for happiness and fulfillment in the bottom of a bottle and the bowl of a bong.

I would challenge Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to look at vignettes of our life together and the photos I posted in the post I wrote as My Gift to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and see if she can remember any time that she was happier in the last eighteen months she has been a drug addicted alcoholic than the times we were together in those times I mention.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can find such a time, then she should just walk away and I will move on. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can not, I hope she would tell the truth and make her amends and let me help the amazing woman I love so that we can start on the future we talked about together.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley looks closely—she will see the truth of who she and I are to each other. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will see that I have loved her all of her life. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will see that I have cared for her all of her life.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will see the twenty years of love, caring, devotion, friendship, loyalty, respect and laughter that we have shared. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will see the good friends that we were and the close confidantes that shared all of our hopes, dreams, goals and fears with each other. This is what her addictions have made her throw away.

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hated being used and then thrown away by Jarrod. I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was hurt when Ian betrayed her. I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has suffered from the years of emotional abuse by her father John. I have never used her or thrown her away because I know what a priceless treasure Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is. I have never betrayed Lauren Elizabeth Kelley because I know how to keep a commitment. I have never made Lauren Elizabeth Kelley suffer because I love her far too much to ever do that.

I am the only person in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s life that is telling her the truth. That is what I had promised Lauren Elizabeth Kelley years ago—that I would tell her the truth and never lie to her. I am the only one who is telling Lauren Elizabeth Kelley what her addictions are doing to her. I am the only one that is trying to warn Lauren Elizabeth Kelley about the high cost that her addictions will take on her, her health, her body, her mind and her future.

I am the only one who loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and cared enough about her to see what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was doing to herself when she fell to her addictions last summer and to try and get her the help she needed. I am the only person Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loved enough and cared enough about to push away when she fell to her addictions.

The drugs and alcohol that her addictions require can not heal her wounded heart—only love can do that.

The fears and insecurities that are founded in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s father’s emotional abuse of her and Ian’s betrayal of her can only be healed by someone who loves Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, cares about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, and knows who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is.

Much as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s love for me has helped heal the scars left behind by Gee’s death and other events in my past—I think my love for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the joy, the laughter, and the happiness we have always had whenever we are together are the only things that will heal Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s wounded heart and soul.

I know who my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is so much more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been pretending to be for the past eighteen months.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is strong, beautiful, intelligent, good, honest, devout, moral, gracious, compassionate, caring, loving, lovable, sweet, feisty, stubborn, capable and so much more. These are all integral traits of the woman that loves me and are all reasons I love and adore the feisty-spirited, often mischievous, stubborn and freckled redhead that is truly Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the most amazing and incredible woman I have ever met in my life and the woman I love most of all—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with and have be the mother of our children. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman I want to wake up with every morning. I want to have Lauren Elizabeth Kelley be the last person I see every night when I go to sleep.

I want to kiss and count every freckle that I can find on my beautiful and lovable fierce Irish rose. I want to hold Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in my arms and rest my chin on her shoulder and hug her until she knows that she is loved beyond all measure and treasured for the precious gift that she has always been to me. I want to have those Asians with freckles that our children would be—born of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s freckled Irish heritage and my Korean ancestry.

I love you Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I have loved you all of your life and I always will. It is just that simple. Even if you never recover from your addictions, I hope you know this.

I know that we will be together because a love as strong and true as the one you and I have grown between us over the past twenty years is something that can not be denied.

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.

Dan @ 8:12 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
To Have Integrity

Posted on Tuesday 11 December 2012

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, at least the woman I love, is a woman of honor, integrity, honesty, compassion, grace and beauty. Right now, her addictions have made Lauren Elizabeth Kelley forget who she truly is. I think that is why Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can not be happy right now.

Of course, integrity is something that is very important, especially if my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wants to accomplish some of her dreams and goals—like attending law school and becoming a lawyer. But until Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can remember who she really is and that she is actually an honest and honorable woman of integrity, I doubt she will ever be able to be happy.

There’s a good post about integrity and how important it is to live with integrity if you want to be happy. From the article:

What Does It Mean To Have Integrity?

By Dr. Margaret Paul
February 13, 2008

Are you living in integrity with your own soul, or are you operating from “bad faith”? Do you think that you can go against yourself and still find joy? Discover how this is not true.

When I was in school training to be a psychotherapist, one of my professors introduced me to a concept that I find very valuable: “bad faith.”

We are in bad faith with ourselves and others when we are out of alignment with what is true for “who we really are.”

Who we really are – who is this?

Let’s talk about who you really are in terms of your essential Self – the soul within that is a spark of the Divine.

All of us have an essence that is an individualized expression of the Divine. Our essence is love, kindness, peace, joy, and truth. We are in bad faith – not in integrity – whenever we go against our true Self, our essence.

The problem is that most people do not operate from their essence. In fact, they may not even know they HAVE an essence. Many people think they are their ego – their wounded self. However, the ego wounded self has no sense of integrity. This aspect of us is all about control. And controlling behavior is the opposite of behaving with integrity. When we want to have control over others and outcomes, we may behave in bad faith – against the love, kindness, and truth of our essence.

Being in integrity means that we do not behave in ways that go against our essence. This means that we behave with honesty, reliability, and caring – with ourselves and with others.

How do we know when we are out of integrity – when we are operating in bad faith? We know by paying attention to our feelings. Our feelings are our inner guidance system, letting us know when we are thinking and behaving in ways that are in alignment with our essence, and when we are not.

The reason that so many people can behave in ways that are not in integrity is that they have chosen to ignore their feelings, or numb out their feelings with various addictions. When we choose to avoid our inner guidance system, then we can operate from our wounded self, behaving in ways that may harm ourselves and harm others.

Your wounded self thinks that you can get away with trying to control rather than acting with integrity. The problem is that when you ignore your feelings – your inner guidance system – you are harming your own soul without knowing it. If you numbed your hand with Novocain and then cut into your finger while slicing bread, you would be harming yourself without knowing it. When you numb or ignore your feelings, you can do deep harm to your own soul without knowing it.

You might think that getting what you want, even if you are in bad faith, will make you happy. But there is no true joy when you are harming yourself and others to get what you want. You will experience joy only when you are behaving in alignment with the love, kindness, and truth of your soul essence.

I think the key essence of this article, at least as it applies to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, is where Dr. Paul says:

The reason that so many people can behave in ways that are not in integrity is that they have chosen to ignore their feelings, or numb out their feelings with various addictions. When we choose to avoid our inner guidance system, then we can operate from our wounded self, behaving in ways that may harm ourselves and harm others.

Your wounded self thinks that you can get away with trying to control rather than acting with integrity. The problem is that when you ignore your feelings – your inner guidance system – you are harming your own soul without knowing it. If you numbed your hand with Novocain and then cut into your finger while slicing bread, you would be harming yourself without knowing it. When you numb or ignore your feelings, you can do deep harm to your own soul without knowing it.

You might think that getting what you want, even if you are in bad faith, will make you happy. But there is no true joy when you are harming yourself and others to get what you want. You will experience joy only when you are behaving in alignment with the love, kindness, and truth of your soul essence.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been trying to find happiness and to heal the pain and hurt of the years of emotional abuse her father put her through and the wounds left by Ian’s betrayal of her. But all her drinking and drug use has done is prevent her from realizing the love that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have shared for years. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions have caused her to throw away two decades of love, caring, devotion, friendship, trust, loyalty and respect.

The drugs and alcohol that her addictions require can not heal her wounded heart—only love can do that. The fears and insecurities that are founded in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s father’s emotional abuse of her and Ian’s betrayal of her can only be healed by someone who loves Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, cares about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, and knows who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is.

Much as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s love for me has helped heal the scars left behind by Gee’s death and other events in my pastI think my love for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the joy, the laughter, and the happiness we have always had whenever we are together are the only things that will heal Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s wounded heart and soul.

I know who my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is so much more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been pretending to be for the past eighteen months.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is strong, beautiful, intelligent, good, honest, devout, moral, gracious, compassionate, caring, loving, lovable, sweet, feisty, stubborn, capable and so much more. These are all integral traits of the woman that loves me and are all reasons I love and adore the feisty-spirited, often mischievous, stubborn and freckled redhead that is truly Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the most amazing and incredible woman I have ever met in my life and the woman I love most of all—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with and have be the mother of our children. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman I want to wake up with every morning. I want to have Lauren Elizabeth Kelley be the last person I see every night when I go to sleep.

I want to kiss and count every freckle that I can find on my beautiful and lovable fierce Irish rose. I want to hold Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in my arms and rest my chin on her shoulder and hug her until she knows that she is loved beyond all measure and treasured for the precious gift that she has always been to me. I want to have those Asians with freckles that our children would be—born of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s freckled Irish heritage and my Korean ancestry.

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.

Dan @ 8:47 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Love and Grief

Posted on Monday 10 December 2012

I have spent much of this past weekend grieving for the beautiful, smart, feisty-spirited, freckled, red-haired Irish woman I love. From everything I have seen for the past seventeen months, there is nothing left of the amazing woman I asked to marry me on June 22, 2011 but the pathetic, weak and cowardly drug-addicted alcoholic that is all I have seen since she stopped speaking to me on June 29, 2011—right after I confronted her about her drinking.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is someone I have known all of her life. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the eldest daughter and second child of two people I had considered family for over a decade by the time she was born. I have known John and Sue Kelley for over 30 years, since before they were even married and considered them good friends and part of my family for almost all of that time.

I remember Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as the adorable infant and toddler with curly red-hair. I watched Lauren Elizabeth Kelley grow from an adorable toddler into a very strong-willed, stubborn, and tempermental child that was often selfish and could throw a temper tantrum like no other I’ve ever seen. I remember how that child became an adolescent that had grown so much emotionally and spiritually and became my friend in her own right.

Even though Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had been subjected to years of emotional abuse by her father John, somehow, she grew into a compassionate, generous, gracious and beautiful young woman. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley managed to become something far greater than one would have guessed possible, given how spoiled and selfish a child she had once been.

Of course, I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life. At first, it was as the adorable daughter of two of my close friends. Then, as she became a teenager, I loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as my friend in her own right. When her parents checked out of her life about seven years ago, I was the person who checked in as her friend, mentor, guide, and protector. It was a role that I was asked to take on by her mother and I became the liaison between John and Sue and their two oldest children—Lauren Elizabeth and her brother Johnny Jr.

Finally, last summer, I realized how much my love for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had grown and changed—much as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley herself had over the years—and the beautiful young woman she had become had become the woman I love most of all and I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is not the person I would have expected to love at this point in my life. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is a lot younger than me and I did not expect to find her in my heart, but when I looked in my heart last summer, there she was.

In some ways, I am not surprised that I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have been very close friends and confidantes for years. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have trusted each other implicitly for years and shared all of our secrets, dreams, hopes, goals and fears with each other. I’ve spent many nights talking through until the sun arose behind us with her. I have been her greatest supporter and number one fan—always helping her achieve her goals and helping to make her dreams come true. I have always been there for her—steadfast and unwavering—even when her own family was not.

Last summer, I was told by a mutual friend of Lauren’s mother Sue, that Sue had said that she would not be surprised if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I became more than the close friends we were a couple of years earlier. When I spoke to Sue about asking Lauren to marry me, she did not seem surprised at all, nor did she treat me any differently than before. I think that Sue knows what kind of person I am and that I will keep my commitments to her eldest daughter—because she has known me for 30 years and knows what I have been through with Su, Gee, and Yoon. Sue’s last text message to me was, “Dan, I know you will always be there for us.”

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has grown into a truly remarkable young woman. When I asked Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me, I was expecting one of three responses—either a yes, a no, or possibly a “No, you’re crazy” and her running away from me. Instead, what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley did was first ask me if Gee would be angry at us, at her or at me if we got married—if I got re-married. I explained the last promise I had made to Gee just before her death was a promise to not “close my heart to the world” after she was gone and that I promised Gee I would re-marry if I met someone I loved enough. I told Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that I knew she was the woman that Gee had asked me to seek out after she died. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley then told me she wished she had had a chance to meet Gee and that she really regretted never having had a chance to meet Gee. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley then told me she loved me with a simple declaration of “I love you.”

We then spent most of a week talking about everything that was involved in starting a life together. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told me what she wanted to name our first two children—Kelley and Cadence were the names she had told me and she said that the were suitable for either boys or girls. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told me she adored Asians with freckles—which given my Korean heritage and her red-haired, freckled Irish background, our children would most likely be. We talked about religion, when we’d get married, where we’d get married and almost every other subject that would be necessary for us to start a life together.

On the night of June 28, 2011, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley asked to see the claddagh ring I had bought her. Earlier in the week, we had discussed the plain gold claddagh ring I had bought for her and how it would only serve as her engagement ring until we were actually married. I had been designing a custom, platinum claddagh band that would have a heart-shaped diamond as the stone for her wedding/engagement band for her wedding/engagement band for when we were married. We agreed that her gold claddagh ring would be held in trust for our first daughter to have on her 16th birthday. I told Lauren Elizabeth Kelley I would bring the claddagh ring with me when I was going to see her next, in a few days, after she was back from a weekend down at her family’s Cape house.

The next day, I confronted Lauren Elizabeth Kelley about her drinking, not realizing at the time that she was a drug-addict and an alcoholic, who had been falling to her addictions for over a month. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley pushed me away and we haven’t spoken since that day. She has refused to acknowledge me or speak to me since that afternoon—when she also started to tell the vicious lies about who we are to each other and how we feel about each other.

I understand that pushing away the people they love most is fairly common behavior for drug addicts or alcoholics that are confronted about their addictions by their loved ones. I also understand that lying about their loved ones to push them away is also pretty common among drug addicts and alcoholics. I doubt that it is a coincidence that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley stopped speaking to me and started lying about me on the same afternoon I confronted her about her drinking.

I have spent the past seventeen months trying to help my beautiful and much beloved freckled, red-haired Irish rose get the help she needs to no avail. I have finally come to the conclusion that if nothing is left but the drug-addicted alcoholic that is all I have seen for the past seventeen months and that there is nothing more of the beautiful, feisty, smart, strong, stubborn and honest woman I love, then it is time for me to move on.

I have come to the realization that I can not stand by and watch the stupid, craven, cowardly and dishonest drug-addicted alcoholic destroy everything I love about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I can not take the abuse and lies that her addictions make the pathetic, weak, drug-addicted alcoholic do and say any longer. I can not stay and still remain the person that loves Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—or stay the person that the real Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loves. I do not want to become a bitter, angry, and hateful person that despises and loathes what my beautiful Irish lass has become because of her addictions. I do not want to become someone that I would despise as much as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would despise and loathe the drug-addicted alcoholic she has become if she were healthy.

It isn’t that I stopped loving Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and always will. I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley more than anyone else I have ever known and I have loved her longer than I knew Shelley, Su, Gee and Yoon combined. I do not want to walk away from my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—but if all that is left of her is the drug-addicted alcoholic that has done nothing but lie about who we are to each other and how we feel about each other for seventeen months, then I have no reason to stay.

So, this January, I am moving on and letting Lauren Elizabeth Kelley go. If all she is now is the drug-addicted alcoholic, then we have nothing to talk about and no reason to care about each other. A drug-addicted alcoholic can not care about anyone or anything except her next drink or blunt. Until Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finds the courage, strength and will to fight her addictions—she will not be able to love anyone—even herself. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will not be able to accept anyone’s love for her—even one as strong and true as the one we have shared for twenty years.

I will mourn for my beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and grieve for the beautiful future she and I had talked about that week in June—the one with Asians with freckles…and I will move on and not look back. Darcie Sims, the keynote speaker at this past summer’s Twinless Twins’s conference said that “Grief is the price we pay for love.” I have never loved anyone as much or as long as I have Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—and I know I will never grieve for someone as much as I will for my beautiful beloved fierce and feisty Irish lass.

I choose to remember Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as the beautiful, confident, strong, smart and honest woman that I love rather than the pale, weak, craven and dishonest drug-addicted alcoholic shadow that she has been for seventeen months.

I am only abiding by the woman I love because Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was once a devout Catholic and we both believed in Christmas as a time of miracles and a season of love and hope. I keep praying for my beloved and hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finds the serenity and grace to love herself, trust herself and believe in herself once again. I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will love herself enough to face her fears and fight her addictions and return to being the amazing woman I know God has always meant for her to be. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will do this before January, so that she and I can start on the future we once talked about.

Even if none of this comes to pass, I will always wish the best for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley because she is someone I love. I hope that she finds success, long-life, health, happiness and most of all love. I doubt that she will find any of that until she realizes she has a problem with drugs and alcohol and chooses to fight her addictions.

If my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley chooses to fight her addictions and wants my help on her long to road to recovery, she should seek me out and make her amends. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can prove to me that she is again herself—the woman that I love—the woman that loves me and show me that she has made a place for me in her life beside her and is willing to fight to keep me there, I will help her as I have promised her mother Sue and her sister Bridget. That is my vow to the woman I love, my promise to my friend, and my duty to the woman the woman that 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.

Dan @ 6:41 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andMy Life andpv
Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s Fears

Posted on Friday 7 December 2012

“The sins of the father are the shackles worn by their children.

I just hope the children are strong enough and smart enough to break their shackles.”

In many ways, I think this is true for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. The years of emotional abuse she has suffered at the hands of her father John are what I believe is the root cause for her insecurities, self-doubts and fears. These same fears, insecurities and self-doubts—doubts about how pretty she is; fears about not being good enough, smart enough; insecurities about whether she does anything right, whether she is lovable or worthy of being loved—are what give her addictions the iron grip they have over her.

Somewhere along the way, at one point in time, for a few years, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was able to overcome the years of abuse. When she was younger—from the age of 16 to about 18—before Ian betrayed her—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knew she was lovable, beautiful, smart, strong, funny, and capable. Her confidence in herself and in whom she was is pretty clear in the photos of her from this time. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was comfortable in who she was and knew she was loved and lovable. I know this because I am one of the people that has always loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I don’t believe that it is mere coincidence that these were the years Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I spent so much time together.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in cool, confident and beautiful mode, out for dinner with me, her family and the Garcias.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in cool, confident and beautiful mode, out for dinner with me, her family and the Garcias.Ellie at Texas Roadhouse for dinner with me and her family.

I think the triggering event that brought back all of her fears, insecurities and self-doubts was when she caught Ian Murphy cheating on her back in January 2011. Somehow, that event brought all of her fears, insecurities and self-doubts back to life with a vengeance. From what I understand—from what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told me and the photos I’ve seen of Ian and the young woman he cheated on Lauren Elizabeth Kelley with—I can see how Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s self-esteem took such a hit. The other woman was not as pretty, nor from what I understand, not as smart as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—who is one of the most beautiful, prettiest and smartest women I have ever met.

I think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s pain and confusion at how Ian could cheat on her is what caused all the doubts and fears lying dormant from her father’s years of emotional abuse to awaken. Ian’s fundamental betrayal of their relationship and of the trust Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had for him triggered the fears, insecurities and self-doubts—that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley must have done something wrong for Ian to betray her like he had—that she must not be pretty enough, smart enough or good enough if Ian could cheat on her.

 Lauren Elizabeth Kelley Facebook profile photo from shortly after she stopped speaking to me in July 2011. Her father said she was happy about the changes in her life. She doesn’t look happy or confident to me in this photo.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley Facebook profile photo from shortly after she stopped speaking to me in July 2011. Her father said she was happy about the changes in her life. She doesn’t look happy or confident to me in this photo.

What Lauren Elizabeth Kelley doesn’t realize is that none of what happened is her fault. If Ian was too stupid and immature to realize what he had with her—what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was truly worth and what a priceless treasure her love and trust were, then Ian is a fool and an idiot. It says a lot about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that when I offered to deal with Ian, she asked me not to bother. Someone less gracious, less forgiving and less wise than my beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have wanted vengeance or retribution—but not Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

I just wish that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was strong enough to trust her heart and to trust herself and love herself. I wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had the strength to take a chance on us and on the future we had talked about. I wish my love for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—a love she has known all of her life and one that has grown stronger and evolved much as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley herself has over her lifetime—was strong enough to protect her and shield her from her fears and insecurities.

In some ways, it may have been my fault that the rift between Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I has occurred. After all, it was my confronting Lauren Elizabeth Kelley on June 29, 2011 that caused this rift. I did not know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was a drug-addict or an alcoholic at the time I confronted her. The love we had growing between us as something more than the friends we had been for years was new and fragile—at least for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

If I had known Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was a drug-addict and an alcoholic, I probably would have done things differently—I wouldn’t have confronted her so strongly and so adamantly. If I had known how Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had fallen to alcohol, I would have tried to approach her in a way that wouldn’t have triggered her fears of her drinking being a reason for me to abandon her—because it never was. I could no more abandon Lauren Elizabeth Kelley because of her addictions than I could have walked away from Gee because of her cancer.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was still getting over Ian’s betrayal of her and had never really known what pure love and commitment like the one I have for her is truly like or how strong it can be. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had never really seen how strong and empowering the love between two people could really be. The only examples of love she really had to judge by were all flawed and weak—like that between her and Ian or that between her father and mother. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I had talked about love and commitment many times over the years, but she had never seen it herself. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has never seen how truly loving someone and being loved back by them can make two people so much greater than they could ever be apart.

Maybe, if we had been more than friends for longer the week we had together, I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley might have been able to trust her love for me and my love for her, but we had only been exploring being more than friends for a week—a week where Lauren Elizabeth Kelley talked about what she wanted to name our children, getting married, and starting a life together.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I had only started exploring the reality that we could be more than the friends we had been for years when I confronted her about her drinking. I think her fears were compounded by how strongly I felt about her drinking. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knew my twin brother had been killed by a drunk driver and that my feelings on the subject of drinking and driving were strong.

I think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley did not understand how much I truly love her and did not realize that her drinking and drug-addictions alone are not sufficient reason for me to abandon her. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley does not realize that if she is willing to fight her addictions and fight for us and the future we talked about, I would never abandon her.

In fact, the only reason I am walking away this January is because she is not there fighting for us and all that is left is the pathetic, dishonest, weak and cowardly drug-addicted alcoholic. If I saw even a single sign that the amazing woman that loves me still was there—still fighting to beat her addictions and still loves me and wants my help in fighting her addictions—nothing could make me abandon my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I am walking away because it is the only way to honor the love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I share and to protect the man she loves from being destroyed by her addictions.

I hope my beautiful, sexy, lovable, feisty-spirited, freckled, red-haired Lauren Elizabeth Kelley learns to trust herself, love herself and believe in herself again soon. I hope that she can face her fears and fight the addictions they have given rise to soon. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can give me a clear and obvious sign before year’s end that she is still the incredible woman I love and want to marry and that she still loves me and wants me to help her—I will stay.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is still the woman I love most of all and still want to marry and spend the rest of my life with—even if it means I accompany Lauren Elizabeth Kelley on her long road to recovery the rest of my days. I love her that much.

This song, ‘We Could Be Forever’ by the Eli Young Band, really says a lot about how I feel about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and what my hopes are for us. In any case, I believe that a love as strong as the one Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I share can not be broken or denied. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman Gee asked me to seek out and that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I will be together in the next lifetime if we are not in this one.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever recovers enough to make her amends for the devastation her addictions have wrought, I hope she will seek me out. I will always love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley once again becomes herself—more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been for the past eighteen months—I would love to have her back in my life. I will not seek her out any longer—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knows where to find me and if she wants to be a part of my life it is now her job to earn her place back. I have done all I can for her.

I will always wish her well and hope that she finds the peace and serenity she will need to love herself, trust herself and believe in herself once more. I hope that my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finds happiness, success, long-life, health and most of all, love. I doubt Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will find any of those things until she finds the courage, strength and will to face her fears and fight her addictions.

We Could Be Forever by the Eli Young Band

I may never fly you to Heaven with a kiss on your lips
And I may never break your heart or to get to make up for it
I may never see the stars in your eyes from a lover’s point of view
Or get lost in the days gone by ’cause I’m so wrapped up in you…

If you could love me and only see the possibility that we could be forever
And could you trust me to forget the consequences that would keep us from being together?

You may never think about me ’cause you’d find somebody new
And he would say all those things that I wanted to
And my heart would be broken, but I can’t give up yet
I won’t live with what might have been ’cause I never said……

Could you love me and only see the possibility that we could be forever?
And could you trust me to forget the consequences that would keep us from being together?

Would you agree if I said we could be forever?
Forever etched in stone forever and eternity
You would never be alone…forever, forever you and me
Oh, Oh, Oh….. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah….Oh, Oh, Oh….

Could you love me and only see the possibility that we could be forever?

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.

Dan @ 10:53 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Healing Her Past

Posted on Wednesday 5 December 2012

Too often, we carry around those things from our past that hurt us the most.

Don’t let past pain rob you of your present happiness.

You had to live through it in the past, and that cannot be changed, but if the only place it lives today is in your mind, then

Forgive, Let go, and Be free.

~Doe Zantamata

Doe goes on to write:

Move on from the past, let it go, easier said than done, right?

Many of the quotes about life have to do with letting go of past pain, because

  1. We all hold on to it
  2. We all need to let it go in order to be happy.

So the big three questions after that, are,

  1. How?
  2. How?
  3. How?

Just trying to forget it all, especially through alcohol or drugs, is a very bad idea. It doesn’t go away unless it’s dissolved. It lives in your cellular memory, and unless you’ve made peace with it, those memories can be triggered at any time, by anything.

Pain, once understood, can be let go. A few of the biggest sources of pain and how to understand them are:

1. Anger

Anger is usually felt when we feel wronged by, robbed by, or cheated out of happiness by someone else. The cure for anger is compassion and forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean everything’s OK, it just means you’ve found a way to let go of the resentment toward that person.

How do you find compassion for a mean person?

Think of it from their perspective, as difficult as that may be. How were they raised? Were they, themselves completely insecure? Most people lie out of insecurity, because they’re terrified of the truth. They don’t accept themselves, so they can’t accept anyone else. If you happen to try to love a person like this, you’re in for a lot of misdirected mistreatment.

The compassion is to be found in just understanding a bit where they were coming from. Most likely, they were scared at an emotional level and trying to protect themselves. This comes across as lying, controlling, even manipulative. They feel emotionally out of control when they are vulnerable, and so out of fear, they must try to keep control over the people in their life. What a sad place to be. They can never experience happiness as long as they live this way.

They’re not people to be best friends with, and if someone like this was your parent, you really had no choice. But you do have a choice now to live freely. Understand that their treatment of you was the only way they knew how to survive emotionally, even though it was abusive towards you and anyone else who happened to be in their life. Free yourself from the anger, and focus on your life today, and how free you really are.

2. Regret

Regret is usually felt when we beat ourselves up for not knowing then what we know now. We may have acted in ways, or said things that we look back on and cringe. We may have stayed in places or around people who treated us like nothing, and regret sticking around so long.

But to punish yourself for not knowing better before you knew better is just completely unfair.

You had to live through those things in order to become the wiser person who you are today. You learned about self-worth, about being kind, about the power of words. Those lessons, you keep with you, and you are a better person today because of them. Lessons in life can come directly through joy, or indirectly through pain. To become just lessons, we have to let go of the pain, and find the joy in the present and future because of that past pain. Once a lesson is learned, you never have to go through it again. You already know. You just have to release your mind from the painful memory of it.

3. Shame

Similar to regret, shame is held because of past words or actions. If you were mean, or acted like a person who you don’t want to be, then don’t be that person today, tomorrow, or ever again.

Make amends if you can. Apologize, no matter how long it’s been. You may be holding on to shame that the other person or people have totally forgotten about. Or, they may still be holding on to the pain, too, and your apology will help to release them from it as well as you.

Once you’ve tried to make amends, realize that’s all you can do.

Let it go, but if someone ever seems the same way as you once were, don’t judge them. Know that one day, they, too will see it, and they will regret it as well. They’re not bad people, and you weren’t a bad person, you were just acting in a bad way, because of whatever reason.

You can’t move forward in life and have happy relationships or success if you can’t stand yourself. By forgiving yourself, you’re also going to become a happier, more accepting person. You’re going to be a better person to every person in your life today and in the future. It’s a gift not only for you, but for everyone you know or will ever meet.

4. Mistrust

Trust is natural. Mistrust only comes after trust has been broken. Trusting people get hurt a lot, because it’s so easy to lie to them. Mistrusting people think they’re ahead of the game by not trusting anyone, but they actually hurt all the time. They push good people away, because no innocent person wants to be accused of awful things, and they can never be at peace in relationships. They’re constantly questioning others’ actions and motives and creating dramas in their minds about the worst case scenarios. Choose to trust. Realize that yes, sometimes you will get hurt, but that’s so much better than the alternative.

5. Doubt

The opposite of doubt is faith. Faith is believing without proof. Doubt is not believing, whether there’s proof or not. If you have faith in yourself, you go further in life. Your relationships are stronger. If you have faith in others, you inspire them to be more than they could be on their own. If you have faith in the world, in the Universe, in God, or one of the three, then even without any proof whatsoever that things will get better when they’re bad, you’ll just know they will. You’ll be able to make it through the darkest days, and discover strength. You’ll have a whole new appreciation for things and people when things do get better. You’ll realize the value of those tough times.

6. Fear

One of the main concepts of religion and spirituality is to act out of love, not fear. Any actions based in fear will lead to more fear. They have their foundations built in sand, and can crumble at any moment. Any actions based in love will lead to more love, and will have their foundations set in stone. Think of someone who gets into a relationship only because they have a fear of being alone. There’s no room for love there. Think instead of a person who does not act on that fear, but waits until they love themselves and meet someone who they are open and free to give love to. Fear is frantic, panicked, pain-producing, and bipolar. Love is calm, safe, steady, and secure. Love for self is #1 because we can’t always read people or know what they’re thinking. If a person we think loves us decides that he or she does not, and up and leaves, we need to have the love for ourselves to keep from falling apart. Realizing that it’s good they left, because the last thing we want is someone around who doesn’t want to be around. Realizing that with them gone, the space has been opened for someone who is both willing and able to return the love we have to give, and in the meantime, we’re safe, loved, and protected while single.

7. Pain

Once all those things are sorted out, the pain falls away. If you ever do get reminded of an event like that, there’s a detachment to it. It becomes almost as if telling a story about someone else. It’s still awful, and always will be, but it just doesn’t hurt anymore like it once did. A thought is just a thought until emotion is attached to it. Then it becomes very painful, joyful, or neither. When a thought arises about past pain, do not allow that painful emotion to attach to it. Consciously think of something good that came out of it, or consciously feel gratitude for the fact that today, at present, you don’t have to live through it. It’s done. Be grateful for the freedom. It may be tough at first to separate these feelings, but it gets easier.

“Easier said than done,” just means, “not instant.” And becoming whole again is never an instant process. It takes time. But each thought adjustment isn’t hard at all. Just be very aware of your thoughts and emotions, and respond to them when the bad ones try to arise. Don’t let your thoughts run amok. Direct them when they start to go to places that you know you don’t want them to. There’s no reward in staying a victim besides more pain. Directing thoughts becomes a habit with diligent, committed practice. The reward is happiness. Not an “ignorance is bliss” happiness, but a true, bliss is bliss, wise, appreciative happiness that has made it through struggle and emerged whole. This is an amazing and worthwhile place to be. This is the meaning of inner peace.

I am pretty sure that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s past is the reason she has turned to drugs and alcohol. I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is self-medicating because of the pain and hurt that her past has left with her, much as her brother Johnny Jr. was doing when he flunked out of Bentley College four years ago. Johnny Jr. was self-medicating because of his chronic depression. I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is self-medicating because of severe self-esteem and anxiety issues instead of depression.

Anger:

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is angry at what has happened to her. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been angry at the way your father has treated her for years—angry about the way he has emotionally abused her for years. Yet, instead of standing up to him as the strong, capable, stubborn and feisty woman I love would do, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has become his accomplice in his cowardice and bullying. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has allowed her father John to use her to hurt the man she loves.

I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s father John is the root cause of all of this. He has emotionally abused her for years—something I know because I have witnessed it too many times first hand. I have been there while John has screamed at Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and told her how worthless and how stupid she was and how she was never going to be good enough. I think that is why Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was such a perfectionist in high school.

Regret:

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley must have regrets about being with Jarrod. I know that what Jarrod did hurt her. I also know that the woman I love would be horrified at debasing herself the way she did with Jarrod just to get the drugs and alcohol her addictions require.

But, in many ways, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, since Jarrod did not love her and had no commitment to her. He was only using Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for sex and as soon as he tired of her, he threw her away like yesterday’s newspaper. Jarrod never loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and had nothing in common with her and no commitment to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

Jarrod is a misogynistic bastard that calls women hos, bitches and skeezas—so why did she expect anything better? He was likely also sleeping with at least four or five other women at the time Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and he were “dating”.

The only reason I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley said she loved him is because she is still basically the same person she was before she fell to her addictions and she couldn’t justify prostituting herself to someone for drugs and alcohol so she thinks she must have loved him to have had sex with him. However, given how short a time had passed between when Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I were talking about marriage and when she met Jarrod, it is unlikely that she actually loved Jarrod.

I am pretty sure it was her addictions driving her to have sex with him for the drugs and alcohol they require. Rather than admit Lauren Elizabeth Kelley debased herself so grossly, she has lied to herself about how she feels about Jarrod.

Jarrod, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s drug-dealer 'boyfriend'.

Jarrod, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s drug-dealer ‘boyfriend’.

After all, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley posted that she was going to have sex with him in early August…and I have to wonder how long she had known Jarrod when she made that decision. Considering that we had been talking about getting married in the very last week of June—it means that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley broke things off with me on June 29th and had sex with Jarrod only about a five weeks later. I don’t see that as being like something the moral, good, devout Catholic woman I love would do.

Shame:

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley must be ashamed of the way she has treated me. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—at least the woman that loved me—would be ashamed of most, if not all, of the things she has done because of her addictions. The amazing woman I love is proud, moral, good, devout and honest. The drug-addicted alcoholic she has become is ashamed, weak, corrupt, immoral and dishonest.

My beautiful and honest Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never have lied about us, who we are to each other or how we feel about each other.

The drug-addicted alcoholic has lied about us—about who we are to each other—about how we feel about each other.

The proud and devout Catholic woman that I asked to marry me would never have debased herself for drugs and alcohol—she believed that sex was something that was only to be shared between two people who loved each other.

The drug-addicted alcoholic has prostituted herself—trading her body and sex for the drugs and alcohol her addictions require.

The woman I love is proud of her intelligence and of being a good student—as proven by the fact that she made Dean’s List her freshman year while taking five courses a semester and dealing with the problems of a lying, cheating boyfriend and a drug-dealing roommate. Yet, in spite of Ian’s betrayal and her problems with her roommate, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley still managed to have a 3.634 GPA.

The drug-addicted alcoholic didn’t make Dean’s List either semester of her sophomore year, despite taking only four courses a semester. In fact, her grades were so bad her fall semester of her sophomore year that she tweeted:

Why ask what my grades are if you have nothing to say? Thanks asshole, stop being jealous your kids more educated than you ever will be.

when she was asked how she did by her father at her brother’s birthday dinner in early January 2012.

The incredible woman that loves me knows right from wrong and is one of the most honest people I have ever known. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never let people attack or hurt the people she loves without trying to defend them. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never lie or defame anyone, much less the people who love her.

Yet, the drug-addicted alcoholic has allowed her father to use her to hurt the man she loves because she isn’t strong enough to take a stand for herself or for her beloved. She has perjured herself and defamed the man she loves because of her father’s fear of being confronted about his own drinking problems again.

The incredible woman that loves me told me she would never drive drunk because she knows my identical twin brother was killed by a drunk driver. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s maternal uncle was also killed in a self-caused, alcohol-and-drug-fueled car crash a few years ago.

Yet, the weak and cowardly drug-addicted alcoholic has likely been driving drunk and/or high regularly for the past eighteen months. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was also in a car crash back in January that was likely caused by her being high and/or drunk at the time it occurred. Lauren’s own social media posts have her drunk and/or high much of the week that the accident likely occurred.

I would point out that the longer Lauren Elizabeth Kelley stays a drug-addicted alcoholic, the more things she will have done that she will be ashamed of and the more difficult she will find it to forgive herself and to make amends for the pain, horror and devastation her addictions have caused.

Mistrust:

I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has a hard time trusting anyone after the way Ian betrayed her. I know that Ian cheating on Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hurt her. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s fault, but Ian’s. If Ian was too stupid and immature to realize what he had when he was with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and what she is truly worth, then that is his problem and his fault.

Yet, her mistrust of Ian has caused her to mistrust me—a person she has known and trusted all of her life—one who has never given her any reason to distrust them.

I have always been here for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—even when her own family was not—I have never lied to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—I have never betrayed or hurt Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. Yet, her addictions have made her do all that to me—the man Lauren Elizabeth Kelley said she loves.

I have stood by Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life. I have always been one of her greatest supporters and always done my best to help her achieve her goals and make her dreams come true. I have never betrayed her like Ian did—because I believe in my commitments, especially those to the woman I love most of all.

I have never used her like Jarrod did, much less thrown her away like Jarrod did. I never stopped loving Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I never stopped caring about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I never stopped being Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friend.

Those are all things her addictions, fears, and self-doubts made her do. I have been steadfast and loyal to the woman I love for over seventeen months—when she really hasn’t done anything to deserve such loyalty or faith.

I have never hurt her like her father—because I know what an amazing and beautiful woman she is. I have seen who she was and what she has been through and am so proud of the incredible woman she has grown into that I asked her to marry me and share our lives together.

Doubt

In spite of everything my beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been through, somehow, she grew up in to a strong, beautiful, compassionate, gracious and confident woman. I know because I have known her all of her life and watched it as it happened.

Once, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knew she was beautiful, strong, confident, smart and capable and her confidence in herself shows in the photos I have of her. In these photos Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s strength, confidence, and the love and trust she had for herself are clearly visible. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was happy and comfortable in who she was. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knew she was loved and lovable.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in cool, confident and beautiful mode, at Texas Roadhouse for dinner with me and her family.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in cool, confident and beautiful mode, at Texas Roadhouse for dinner with me and her family.

In most of these photos, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is also smiling and laughing—probably because she and I were together—she was with someone she knew loved her and that she loved.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

Even though Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has plenty of proof of how beautiful, smart, strong, confident and lovable she really is, she doesn’t believe it. Even though Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has seen how much I love her and how much she loves me, her doubts don’t let her believe it any more. Even though we have been good friends, close confidantes and trusted each other implicitly for years, her doubts have destroyed all that.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and me kayaking on the Bass River with her family and Carmen’s.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has the courage to look at the truth, she will see what I am saying is true. This is what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions have taken from us. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has punished herself for what Ian, Jarrod and her father have done to her.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has punished me for what Ian, Jarrod and her father have done to her. Yet, I have done nothing wrong.

Fear

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is scared of being betrayed again. I know what Ian did to her hurt her and made her feel worthless and unlovable.

But, I have never betrayed Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I have always stood by Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—even when she didn’t really deserve it—even when her own family wasn’t there for her. I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and that love has only grown stronger over the years.

The decisions Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has made the past eighteen months are all decisions made of fear. I think my confronting her about her drinking is what triggered her to start reacting out of fear rather than out of the love she and I have between us.

I am sure that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loves me because she is far too honest a person to have told me “I love you” and “Sarangheyo” the dozens of times she did the week we were talking about getting married, having children and starting a life together. I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wants to marry me and to start on that future we talked about because she asked to see the claddagh ring the night before I confronted her about her drinking.

A woman as honest as my Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would not have asked to see the ring after talking about what she wanted to name our children, about us getting married and about everything that had to do with starting a life together unless she wanted to accept the ring and start on that future we talked about.

I think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is afraid I will betray her as Ian did. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley should know far better than that, but fears are irrational—and coupled with doubt, even all the evidence that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has from her 20 years of knowing me can still be questioned and result in such strong fears.

Lauren and her family have seen me through several committed relationships, including the very difficult one with Gee and her cancer. They know that I keep my vows and commitments. Lauren also has experience personally with how committed I am to the people I love—since she has been one of them all of her life.

Pain

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has to learn to separate the pain of what happened to her in the past from her present. That pain is doing her great harm and is destroying the relationship, the love, the friendship, trust and devotion that she and I have shared for years.

Pain can be useful as a teaching aid, but in the long run, unnecessary pain prevents people from healing. The emotional pain that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley carries from her years of emotional abuse by her father, from Ian’s betrayal of her and from Jarrod’s abuse of her are all things that prevent her from realizing the love she and I share and from starting on the future that she and I had talked about. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s pain is what creates her self-doubt, insecurities and fears. Those fears, insecurities and self-doubts are what give her addictions the strength and powerful grip that they have over her.

Moving On

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wants to truly be able to move on from what her father, Ian and Jarrod have done to her, she needs to let go of the pain and forgive herself and do the other things that Doe talks about and that I’ve written about above. If the beautiful, strong, capable, smart and lovable Lauren Elizabeth Kelley asks me for my help, I would give it to her.

However, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have to make her amends to me for the horrible things that she has said and done because of her addictions. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have to prove to me that she is once again the woman that loves me—the woman that I love, adore and cherish—and more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that has wounded me and lied about me for seventeen months. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have to show me that she has made a place for her beside her in her life and that she will fight to keep me there. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to prove that she is as committed to our relationship as I have always been and that she will do the hard work a good relationship needs to thrive.

I know the woman that loves me would understand why I require her to do these things and that they are non-negotiable. My beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would understand that they are only what is right and no less than the man she loves deserves for the loyalty and deep abiding love I have shown her over the very difficult seventeen months her addictions have been dominant.

I wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would trust me—someone who has never given her reason not to trust me—and let my love for her help heal her of her wounds as her love for me has healed me of mine. On June 22, 2011, just after I asked Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me, I made a vow to the woman that loves me to be there for her.

Even despite what her addictions have made Lauren Elizabeth Kelley do and say over the past seventeen months, I still want to marry Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and spend the rest of my life with her, even if it means that I spend the rest of my days walking beside her on her long road to recovery. I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that much. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley means that much to me—she is the woman I love most of all and have loved the longest.

I hope that my beautiful, strong, stubborn, compassionate, feisty, gracious, good, devout, smart and lovable freckled, red-haired beloved and missed Irish rose reads this post and realizes the truth of it. I am here for her, as I have always been here for her all of her life. I have been here waiting for eighteen months—despite all the pain and suffering her addictions have caused me—despite the horrific things her addictions have made her say and do—because I love her and I believe in her.

I will abide a bit longer, but I can not wait forever. If all that is left of the amazing, funny, sweet, strong, mischievous, and adorable woman that loves me is the drug-addicted alcoholic, then I have no reason to stay. And, I must be moving on come the New Year because it is the only way I can truly honor the woman that loves me.

I know that my Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to move on if all that is left is the pathetic, drug-addled, drunken wretch—since she loves me and wants me to be happy and loved and Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knows I deserve far better than the pale cruel, weak, selfish shadow of her could ever give 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.

Dan @ 7:06 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Back to December

Posted on Monday 3 December 2012

In some ways, this December, I’ll be saying goodbye to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, unless she gives me a clear and obvious sign that she still survives, still loves me, and that she wants my help fighting her addictions as I had promised her, her mother Sue, and her sister Bridget. I am finally walking away and moving on because I know that is what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the incredible woman who loves me—would want me to do if she had died or was lost to her addictions as certainly appears to be the case.

I know that the only real way to honor the love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I share for each other is to walk away from the pathetic, lying, craven, and weak drug-addicted alcoholic that is all that remains of my beautiful, strong, capable, honest, brave and smart beloved Irish rose. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to move on and find love and happiness because she loves me, just as Gee did. I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would agree that I deserve better than the debased wretch she has become is capable of giving me.

I want Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to know that I do not hold what her addictions have made her do and say against her. I forgive my beautiful, much beloved, strong, feisty, sweet, and lovable red-headed, freckled Irish lass for the horrific things her addictions have made her say and do. I know that the woman that loves me would not have done them if she had any choice in the matter and that they were the result of her addictions.

I can no more hold Lauren Elizabeth Kelley responsible for the actions of the drug-addicted alcoholic than I could blame Gee for the complications caused by her cancer. I know these actions are part and parcel of the horrible and progressive affliction that besets my smart, honest and capable beloved.

The drug-addicted alcoholic that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has become is incapable of loving anyone or anything other than the drugs and alcohol her addictions require. This is just the truth about addicts and alcoholics—until they are in recovery, nothing else but their drugs or alcohol matter to them. They simply can not care about anything else until they have hit rock bottom and realized they are an addict and an alcoholic and actively work to fight their addictions.

Even though Lauren Elizabeth Kelley doesn’t much like Taylor Swift, I think this song is probably fitting for her—if she should ever find the courage, strength and will to face her fears, insecurities and self-doubts and fight the addictions they give such power over her.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever recovers from her addictions far enough to admit the truth—she would see who she and I really were to each other—two people who loved each other deeply enough to talk about having children, getting married and starting a life together—who have been close friends and confidantes for years.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can face the reality that her addictions have cost her the possible future together that she and I had talked about for a week in June 2011.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley might finally admit that her addictions are what caused her to throw away twenty years of love, caring, devotion, friendship and trust that we had between us—she might regret what she has done, much as Taylor Swift does in the song. In Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s case, it won’t be December, but June.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever has the courage, honesty and integrity to make her amends to the man she said she loves, then much of what Taylor wrote will apply to her. I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have much the same regrets that Taylor wrote about in this song and would wish she could go back and change what she did on June 29, 2011 if she had the chance.

Unfortunately, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley probably won’t realize what her addictions have cost her until long after I have moved on and walked away from the future we could have had together—the future with the Asians with freckles my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley said she adored. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will not be able to step back in time and change the course of the events that have cost me Lauren and her family— five of the people I love most in this worldincluding Lauren Elizabeth Kelley herself—the woman I love most of all and still, despite all her addictions have made her say and do, still want to marry.

I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the amazing woman that I love—does survive and eventually recovers to the point that she will realize the full cost of her addictions. I have spent almost eighteen months trying to help the woman I adore realize she has a problem with drugs and alcohol and trying to get her the help I believe she was asking for when she wrote the horrific social media posts that described her fall into a world of drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex. My devotion and steadfast loyalty to the incredible woman that told me she loved me has cost me financially, socially, physically, and spiritually.

The main reason I am moving on and walking away from the drug-addicted alcoholic wretch that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has become is because staying will cost me my health, my heart and my sanity. The pain and sorrow of watching the beautiful, sweet, smart, caring, gracious, strong and devout Catholic woman I asked to marry me—my Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the one I have known all of her life and watched grow and mature into a woman so beautiful, smart and strong that I asked her to marry me—become an apathetic, uncaring, weak, cowardly, dishonest, immoral, debased shadow of her true self because of her addiction to drugs and alcohol is too much for me to bear.

Seeing my feisty-spirited, fiery, fierce and strong freckled red-haired Irish rose become someone lost in a drug-and-alcohol induced stupor to the point where she no longer cares about the things that were once most important to her is horrifying and tragic beyond belief.

To realize that the once proud and stubborn Lauren Elizabeth Kelley who prided herself on how intelligent she was and what a good student she was has failed to make Dean’s List because of her addictions is heart-breaking.

To know that the woman that loves me and cares about me has broken her promise not to drive drunk, even knowing that my identical twin was killed by a drunk driver, wounds and saddens me.

While Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has not yet lied to me—she has lied about me and broken faith and trust with me in so many ways I can not count them all. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has gone from someone I trusted implicitly to a stranger that lies pathologically.

To see that the proud, moral and devout Catholic woman I asked to marry me would give her body to near strangers to get the alcohol and drugs her addictions require is tragic and heart breaking. I doubt it ever was God’s Plan for his beautiful Irish daughter to prostitute herself for the drugs and alcohol her addictions require as she has.

These are among the reasons that I can not stay and remain the person that my Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loves. I no longer have the warmth and healing balm of her love to heal the wounds her addictions are tearing in my heart and spirit. I have lost my beloved and mi querencia and mo chuisle mo chroi.

I will not stay and let her betrayal of me and our love turn me into a bitter, angry, and wounded person that despises what is left of the woman I loved more than anyone else I have ever known.

I have to leave before I become something as hateful and loathsome as the drug-addicted alcoholic, who prostituted herself to Jarrod for months to get the drugs and alcohol her addictions required, would be to my beloved if she were healthy.

I have known Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life—she was born the daughter of two people I had considered family for over a decade, and I have loved her in some fashion all of her life.

I have cared for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life. I have been her friend, confidante, protector, guide, and mentor for many years, partly at the request of her mother, but mostly because I have always adored her. I do not know how to not love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley; I do not know how to not care about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley; loving and caring for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley are things I have done for 20 years.

I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for longer than Gee, Su, Shelley and Yoon combined. I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley more than anyone else I have ever known.

The truth of who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have been to each other is my last gift to her. I have written about it here and hope that she will read it some day, when she is clean and sober and capable of recognizing the truth of what I have written.

I never stopped loving Lauren Elizabeth Kelley

I never stopped caring about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

I never stopped being Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friend.

Those were all things that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions made her forget. Her addictions made her throw away two decades of love, caring, devotion, friendship and trust. Her addictions made her throw away the one person her heart said “I love you” and “Sarangheyo” to dozens of times during the week we talked about marriage, having children, and starting our future together. Her addictions made her push away the one person that has always been there for her, all of her life, even when her own blood-family was not.

This is the truth. It isn’t pretty, but alcoholism and drug addiction rarely are.

If the beautiful, strong, smart, capable and lovable woman somehow manages to survive and fight her addictions enough to want to make amends for the devastation her addictions have caused, I would love her to seek me out and let me know she is recovering.

I will always love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, and my walking away and moving on does not change how much I love her or care about her. I am just doing what I need to do to protect the man Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loves from her addictions. Addictions are not a disease that affects only the addict, but are a family illness that damages everyone who loves and cares for the addict.

In so many ways, losing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to her addictions is a fate worse than death. Losing Gee to cancer was horrible, but it was also final—there was no question of whether Gee still survived, trapped beneath the horrors of her addictions—still struggling to fight her way back to her true self and to me, her beloved. With Gee’s death to cancer and the death of my twin at the hands of a drunk driver—there was closure and no question that I was abandoning someone I loved to a horrible fate and breaking the vows I had made to them.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions have not changed who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is fundamentally. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley still knows right from wrong and she still has the same morals and beliefs that she did before she became an alcoholic and drug-addict. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley still loves and cares about the same people she always has.

What her addictions make her do is behave in ways that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never consider had she been healthy. The lies that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been telling for the past seventeen months about who she and I are to each other are a good example of that. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never have lied about me or how we feel about each other if she were healthy. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never have driven drunk if she were healthy.

However, if someone tells a lie long enough, it often becomes their reality, and I fear that is what has happened to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the lies she has been telling have become so ingrained in her mind that she can not see the truth any longer—even if the photos of us together belie the fabricated reality her addictions have been forcing her to live in for the past seventeen months.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever hits rock bottom, I am fairly certain that it will require that she end up in the hospital—much like her brother did when he flunked out of Bentley College nearly four years ago—in jail, flunking out of Emmanuel College, or living on the street.

If the horrors and obvious problems that drugs and alcohol have caused for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley the past eighteen months are not enough to show her that she has a serious problem with drugs and alcohol, she won’t be able to see her addictions for what they are without hitting the hard, ugly, brutal rock bottom that most addicts have to hit before they can recognize the truth.

I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is not seriously injured or killed and that she does not seriously injure or kill someone else in the process of her hitting rock bottom. Even if she is not seriously injured or killed, it is likely that much of the bright future Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had ahead of her will be destroyed by her addictions.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is an adult now and her choices and her actions have consequences that can haunt her for the rest of her life—something she does not seem to really understand. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s dreams of going to law school are unlikely if she is ever convicted of a felony, like using one of her fake IDs to buy alcohol. Getting convicted of drunk driving or driving under the influence of drugs will likely destroy her chances of practicing law.

Given that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has likely been driving drunk and/or high regularly for the past eighteen months and that she has been practicing risky behaviors—including being sexually promiscuous with known drug users—there is a strong chance of her getting seriously hurt, pregnant or catching a sexually transmitted disease like syphilis or even HIV/AIDS.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has put herself at risk of being raped, assaulted, robbed or murdered repeatedly over the past 18 months. Alcohol is one of the biggest factors that increase the risk of being the victim of a violent crime. In fact, in one study, 60-70% of homicides, 75% of stabbings, 70% of beatings, and 50% of fights and domestic assaults involved alcohol. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has just been very lucky so far that she hasn’t been mugged, assaulted, raped or killed.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hits rock bottom and decides to fight her addictions, I doubt that she will get much help from her friends or family.

Her father John and her brother Johnny Jr. are both alcoholics in denial. Her father has emotionally abused Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and her mother for years. I know this from witnessing it first-hand. John has also shown that he is a coward and a bully by coercing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley into perjuring herself for the past eighteen months and putting her future at risk just to protect himself after I confronted him about his own problems with alcohol.

Johnny Walker Kelley Jr., her big brother, is likely also a drug-addict in denial. I know this because Sue, Lauren’s mother, asked me to speak with Johnny Jr. after he flunked out of Bentley College nearly four years ago and ended up in the hospital after nearly being arrested several times. Sue wanted me to talk to Johnny Jr. about his problems with drugs, alcohol and chronic depression.

Johnny Jr.’s problems with drugs and alcohol suddenly disappeared after we got him into counseling and treatment for his depression. However, he seems to believe he isn’t a drug-addict or an alcoholic, because his problems with both are currently under control. I am fairly certain that if Johnny Jr. ever lets his depression go uncontrolled again, he will start using drugs and alcohol with a vengeance.

Bridget, Lauren’s sister and their mother Sue are too frightened of John, Lauren’s father, to do anything to help Lauren currently. However, I believe that if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ends up in the hospital or jail or flunking out of Emmanuel College, it is likely that Sue’s maternal instincts may override her fear of her husband and allow her to help her daughter, but this is not necessarily true.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s current friends are all fellow alcoholics and drug-addicts. Lauren has been pushing away anyone that doesn’t enable her addictions from what I can see. I doubt that any of them have a serious connection or commitment to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I am fairly certain that if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley becomes seriously ill, injured or otherwise a burden to them, they will dump her much as her “boyfriend” Jarrod did. Of course, Jarrod, like her current friends, had no love or commitment to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley beyond being fellow addicts and alcoholics. As soon as she is more of an inconvenience to them than their addictions will tolerate, they’ll dump her.

The only person that cared enough about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to even notice what she had been doing to herself and to try and get her the help she needs was me. Even though I have promised to stand by my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and walk beside her on her long road to recovery if she should ask me to, I can not keep that promise unless Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the woman I love and made the promise to—is here to keep it to.

I have no commitment to the drug-addicted alcoholic that has done nothing but lie about me, about who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I are to each other, and about how Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I feel about each other. I have made no vows to the wretched and pathetic, lying, craven dross that her addictions have left. Without the beautiful, smart, strong, capable and lovable woman I asked to marry me—the woman that loves me—I have no reason to stay.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley should ever recover enough to fight her addictions and she wants me to walk beside her on her long road to recovery as I have promised her sister Bridget and her mother Sue, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to make her amends to me—for all the damage her addictions have caused.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to prove to me that she is more than the pathetic drug-addled drunk that she has been for the past eighteen months and once again the woman that loves me—that I love.

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—because I will not settle for being second to anyone in her life or anything less than I deserve.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to show me that she is as committed to us and our relationship as I have always been—and that she is willing to put in the hard work that a strong relationship requires.

These terms are not negotiable. They are things that the woman that loves me knows I deserve. They are the right thing to do and the woman I love has the integrity and strength to want to do the right thing for the man she loves.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can do that, I would be honored to walk beside her on her long road to recovery as I have promised. I will support her when she stumbles or falls, guide her when she gets lost or feels confused, protect her when she is frightened or feels scared, and, most of all, love her more each and every day.

That is the promise I have made to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, her sister Bridget and mother Sue. It is my honor to the woman I love and have been friends with for years. It is part of my to pledge to protect, guide, love and support her that I made to her mother years ago.

I will abide a short while longer because Christmas is a time of miracles and I believe in the strong, capable, smart and stubborn woman I asked to marry me. I hope that she still survives and will read this post and show me a clear and obvious sign that she is still there and that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley still wants the future with Asians with freckles that she and I had talked about for a week in June 2011. If I have not seen any sign of my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley by year’s end, I will move on as I know she would want for the man she loves.

I do not want to do this, but life goes on, even as her addictions seem to deepen their hold on her. I fear that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will not realize the cost of her addictions or how dangerous they are to her, her health, her mind, her body or her future until she hits rock bottom. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will likely end up in jail, the hospital like her brother did, flunking out of Emmanuel College, living on the street, or dead before she hits rock bottom and realizes how serious her problems with drugs and alcohol are. This may never happen—as is the case with her father.

But, I doubt I will be here to see that happen. I have fought for my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for seventeen months, to no avail and with no sign that anything of the woman I love even exists any more. I still hope and pray that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will see what her addictions are costing her before I walk away in January.

I still hope and pray that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is strong enough to fight her addictions, make her amends and give me a clear and obvious sign that she still loves me and still wants my help before New Year’s.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the woman that loves me—does that, there is nothing that could make me leave her. If there is nothing left but the drug-addicted alcoholic, then it is clearly time for me to be moving on.

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.

Back to December by Taylor Swift

I’m so glad you made time to see me
How’s life? Tell me, how’s your family?
I haven’t seen them in a while
You’ve been good, busier than ever
We small talk, work and the weather
Your guard is up, and I know why
Because the last time you saw me
Is still burned in the back of your mind
You gave me roses, and I left them there to die

[Chorus]
So this is me swallowing my pride
Standing in front of you, saying I’m sorry for that night
And I go back to December all the time
It turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missing you
Wishing I’d realized what I had when you were mine
I go back to December, turn around and make it alright
I go back to December all the time

These days, I haven’t been sleeping
Staying up, playing back myself leaving
When your birthday passed, and I didn’t call
Then I think about summer, all the beautiful times
I watched you laughing from the passenger side
And realized I loved you in the fall
And then the cold came, the dark days
When fear crept into my mind
You gave me all your love, and all I gave you was goodbye

[Chorus]
So this is me swallowing my pride
Standing in front of you, saying I’m sorry for that night
And I go back to December all the time
It turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missing you
Wishing I’d realized what I had when you were mine
I go back to December, turn around and change my own mind
I go back to December all the time

I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile
So good to me, so right
And how you held me in your arms that September night
The first time you ever saw me cry
Maybe this is wishful thinking
Probably mindless dreaming
But if we loved again, I swear I’d love you right
I’d go back in time and change it, but I can’t
So if the chain is on your door, I understand

This is me swallowing my pride
Standing in front of you, saying I’m sorry for that night
And I go back to December
It turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missing you
Wishing I’d realized what I had when you were mine
I go back to December, turn around and make it alright
I go back to December, turn around and change my own mind
I go back to December all the time, all the time

Dan @ 10:57 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Why Move On

Posted on Saturday 1 December 2012

One of the reasons I have decided that I need to move on is that I really don’t think there is anything left of the amazing woman I love besides the drug-addicted alcoholic. If all that is left is the dishonest, weak, stupid, drug-addicted alcoholic that has been occupying Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s body for the past eighteen months, then it is time to move on.

I know I need to move on for many reasons. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, the amazing woman that I love and want to marry would expect me to move on if she had died. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to move on if all that is left of her is the lying, pathetic, uncaring, stupid drug-addicted alcoholic. I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to move on because she loves me, much as Gee does, and would want me to be happy and loved in return—something the drug-addled, drunken wretch can just not do.

One reason I think there is nothing more than the drug addicted alcoholic left is because Lauren Elizabeth Kelley gets tweets like these on a regular basis.

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

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

Lauren and her friends used to have a weekly Friday night Sushi and blunts session, which has now apparently become Friday night brownies, likely heavily laced with marijuana. When Lauren was involved with Jarrod, the man she prostituted herself to for much of the summer and fall of 2011 to get the drugs and alcohol that her addictions required, Lauren was often baking marijuana or hash brownies according to the social media posts by Jarrod, his “wolfpack” and Lauren herself. From my experience, the effects of marijuana or hash-laced brownies are often far stronger and longer lasting than smoking marijuana. Doing them on a weekly basis is generally not the providence of recreational users of marijuana but more seriously addicted stoners.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the beautiful, smart, strong, capable and lovable woman that loves me—doesn’t think she has a problem with drugs and alcohol after all that has happened in the last eighteen months, then she is truly gone. I know the woman I spoke to about getting married, raising a family with and sharing my life with is too honest to deny the truth of what has happened over the last year and a half, since she fell to her addictions at the end of May 2011.

In case Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is still reading this blog, I want her to see what I have seen over the past eighteen months, since she started drinking and doing drugs heavily.

First, there are the changes in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s behavior.

Does Lauren Elizabeth Kelley really think it is normal to have to hide what she is doing from her own family? By her own admission in her social media posts, Lauren was sneaking out at night after her parents would go to bed to go drinking and doing drugs. Lauren would leave around 2200 or so and sneak back into the house after four or five hours of drinking, doing drugs and having risky sex by her own admission.

This is why her family knew nothing about her drug and alcohol problems when I first mentioned them in July 2011, a little over a month after I asked Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me and a month after Lauren Elizabeth Kelley pushed me away after I confronted her about her drinking—not knowing she was a drug addicted alcoholic at the time.

Lauren also started using heavy perfumed scents in her then new-to-her car and her bedroom. Considering how meticulous the incredible woman I love is, there was no need to use such scents unless she was trying to cover up the smell of the marijuana or alcohol she was using in secret.

Then, there is the fact that Lauren and almost a dozen of her friends bought very high-quality fake IDs from China. They each bought two fake IDs—one from Maryland and one from Rhode Island. They were shipped to Lauren, hidden in a pair of shoes that didn’t fit her. When I spoke to Lauren’s mother about it, she even remembered the package and was curious why Lauren wasn’t angry the shoes didn’t fit properly. I only know about the fake IDs that Lauren, Anna McFadden, Michelle Surette and several others bought is because Lauren showed them to me on June 28, 2011 to ask me what I thought of them. From what I understand, these were not inexpensive—some $300 for the pair of fake IDs that each woman bought.

On the same day Lauren showed me the fake IDs, she asked me to buy her two bottles of Barcardi 151. Lauren had wanted me to just buy the alcohol and give it to her. I refused to do it. I stand by my reasons, which were:

  1. It was illegal to do. Lauren wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol herself and knew that buying it with a fake ID was both illegal and risky.
  2. It was a betrayal of the trust her parents had placed in me as their friend when they asked me to watch out for, guide, protect and mentor their two oldest children.
  3. It would have been irresponsible of me as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friend.
  4. I didn’t think it was good for her. I guess, subconsciously, I suspected Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was an alcoholic, but didn’t know it consciously at the time.

A few hours later, when Lauren had returned to her house, she asked me about buying her the alcohol again and basically offered herself to me as an incentive. Again, I refused her. Lauren was pretty angry about this and probably couldn’t understand how I could refuse her—after all she knew I loved her as I had asked her to marry me almost a week earlier and we spent most of that week talking about everything having to do with starting a life together, getting married and having children.

Lauren also knew I desired her physically, as we had been pretty physically intimate during the previous few days. So, I can understand how upset and confused Lauren must have been that someone who loved her and wanted her wouldn’t take advantage of her and do her the favor she was asking. But, I wouldn’t take advantage of Lauren because I love her and respect her far to much too let her debase herself in such a manner. Also, my previous reasons for refusing were still true.

I’d point out that Lauren had been using the fact that she is a beautiful and sexually desirable young woman to get young men, like Jarrod and others, to provide her with the alcohol and drugs her addictions required, as she clearly writes about in some of her social media posts as I discovered later in the summer. I think this is one reason she was so angry and confused by my refusal to buy her alcohol.

I guess Lauren Elizabeth Kelley doesn’t yet understand that just because you love someone doesn’t mean that you do everything they ask you to blindly—without regard to the consequences and whether doing what they ask is good for the person you love or not. That if you love, cherish and treasure a person as much as I do Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, you would never take advantage of her like Jarrod did.

Lauren also pushed away anyone that did not support or enable her addictions. In many ways, I was the last person she pushed away, and I think it is because I was the person she loved and cared most about and that she couldn’t push me away until I had confronted her about her drinking on June 29, 2011.

The Confrontation:

On the morning of June 29, I had sent Lauren Elizabeth Kelley a text message telling her I was going to drop some things off for the car safety kit I had put together for her. The text message ended with virtual hugs and kisses from me to LEK. This was around 1100 or so.

The kit was still missing a few critical fuses and such, and I wanted her to have the safety kit because she had just bought her first car. The kit contained a flashlight, a first-aid kit, jumper cables, a blanket, spare fuses, and other such emergency items that are nice to have with an older, possibly less reliable car like her 1998 Stratus. One thing in the kit that shows how much I treasure and love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, at least before she fell to her addictions is the tire pressure gauge I gave her—it originally belonged to my identical twin brother David, and I had owned it for the nearly 25 years since he was killed by a drunk driver.

Later that day, about 1330 or so, Lauren posted on Facebook that she was:

“Headed down to the Cape to go chillin’ and by chillin’ I mean drinking”

I replied to her via PM on Facebook and by text message my concerns about her drinking, her possibly driving drunk, and her using her fake IDs and what they could end up costing the woman I love. Lauren got angry because I was concerned and had confronted her about her drinking. Lauren went from accepting virtual hugs and kisses from me earlier that morning to telling me to “Fuck off and lose her number” in less than four hours without us ever having spoken or seeing each other. She stopped speaking to me that afternoon, and the only thing of significance that happened was my confronting the woman I love about her drinking—showing concern and worry about the woman I love and telling her I was worried.

We had been talking about having children, getting married and starting a life together the day before. Less than 12 hours earlier, she had asked to see the claddagh ring I had bought for her and I believe she meant to accept it and my proposal to her when I promised to bring it in a couple of days, when I was going to see her next.

For a couple of weeks, I had no idea what had caused the rift between us. During the month of July I realized that Lauren had become a drug-addicted alcoholic unbeknowst to me or her family. I also realized that her violent and unexpected reaction to my concerns about her drinking is pretty typical for how any addict acts when confronted by the person they love most.

The Lies

It was after this confrontation that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley stopped speaking to me. Lauren also started telling her family lies to try and separate me from her family. I have known her parents since before they were married and had been considered family by her parents for 30 years by the time I confronted Lauren about her drinking. I considered Lauren and her two siblings part of my family for all of their lives.

The lies Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told were necessary because I was probably the person her parents trusted most out of all their friends and relatives. I base this on the fact that for many years, I have acted as the liaison between Lauren and Johnny Jr. and their parents John and Sue. John and Sue checked out of their two older children’s lives years ago and I know because that was when I was asked to become their friend and to watch over them, protect them, and mentor them.

This is why, when Lauren Elizabeth Kelley chose to become a vegetarian when she was 12 or so, I was the person asked to advise her on her nutrition to make sure she wouldn’t become malnourished as is often the case with people converting to a vegetarian diet.

This is why I was asked to talk to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley about her decision to become a vegan a few years later in the hopes I could discourage the growing teen from a risky dietary change. I convinced Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to stop her plans to become a vegan by arguing not about nutrition, which would have been a losing cause with the stubborn and feisty young woman she was rapidly becoming, but by using the argument that vegans couldn’t own nice shoes or Coach purses since they didn’t use animal products like leather. The highly-fashion conscious 15-year-old decided that becoming a vegan was crazy because there was no way she was giving up her fashionable attire to do it.

This is why I was asked to teach both Johnny Jr. and Lauren Elizabeth Kelley how to drive when they were old enough. I was the person Sue trusted to speak to Johnny Jr. about his problems with drugs, alcohol and chronic depression when he flunked out of Bentley College three-and-a-half years ago.

This is why John and Sue came to me for advice in April of 2011 when Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was being stalked by a Randolph police officer she had met through her work at the cinema. This is when I advised Lauren Elizabeth Kelley about harassment orders, using good anti-stalker precautions on social media, and other such things.

I doubt that Sue and John would have trusted me with so much of their children’s lives if they didn’t know me and trust me implicitly from our 30 years of friendship, love and trust. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s parents know the kind of man I am, since they have seen me grow up and watch how I dealt with the death of my twin brother and the loss of Gee to her cancer. John actually introduced me to Su Yeon Kim, the woman I was engaged to before Gee and who saved my life after my twin brother was killed 25 years ago. John and Sue were at my wedding to Gee and Gee’s funeral. They both know how seriously I take my commitments to the women I love through their first-hand experience with seeing me over the years.

In fact, when I told Sue I wanted to marry Lauren, she wasn’t surprised and didn’t change how she treated me in any way, even after Lauren stopped speaking to me and lying about me initially. I think the only reason Sue has stopped speaking to me and being friends with me is her fear of her husband John, who is an emotionally abusive and violent bully. When I tried to get the documentation of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s illness to Sue, he overheard Jan and Sue talking about it and stormed into the room and violently ripped the package I had given Jan to pass to Sue out of their hands and destroyed it. I think John threatened Sue if she talked to me after that, since she never opened or read the e-mailed copies of the documentation I had sent her subsequently. It is telling that Sue’s last text message to me was:

Dan, I know you will always be there for us.

The preposterous lies that Lauren told are clearly belied by the history I have with her family and by the photos of us together. I won’t repeat them here because Lauren and her father have defamed me enough without my repeating the lies they have both been telling since I confronted her about her drinking so long ago.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s own words

Then there are Lauren’s own social media posts. After Lauren pushed me away, I checked on her social media posts—Facebook, Twitter, Formspring, etc., to try and find out what had happened and why she was acting so differently from the beautiful woman I love. When her mother asked me for the evidence as to why I believed the amazing woman I love was a drug-addicted alcoholic, I put together an analysis of what Lauren has since admitted were social media posts that were true and written only by her under oath.

While most of these posts start on May 29, 2011, when I believe that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley started drinking and doing drugs heavily, there was a post from April 15, 2011 that points to some underlying self-esteem or anxiety-related issue as the likely root cause of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s drug and alcohol problems. I know she had been drinking and probably doing drugs when she was younger, but as far as I know did not have the serious problems with them that she developed in late May 2011, probably as a result of her breakup with Ian after she caught Ian cheating on her.

I believe that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, like her elder brother Johnny Jr., is using alcohol and drugs to self-medicate. Johnny Jr.’s root cause was his chronic depression, which has since been treated, resulting in his drug and alcohol problems coming under control. However, Johnny Jr. believes he is not a drug-addict or alcoholic, even though it is very likely that if he ever lets his depression go unchecked again, he will start using drugs—cocaine and marijuana in his case—and drinking heavily again.

Here are Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s own posts and my interpretation of them, based on knowing, loving and caring about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for all of her life, as assembled for Lauren’s mother Sue last summer. I went back to the beginning of Lauren’s social media account in some cases to see if there were clear changes in her behavior and what she was posting, and while the posts I will relate here continue up to early August 2011, her subsequent posts are just as bad, if not worse.

Again, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has admitted that the words that she posted were true and posted only by her under oath. The frequency of the posts increases as the summer progresses. While these are not all of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s social media posts, they are the ones that pretty clearly reference her addictions to marijuana and alcohol as well as other risky behavior that is indicative of being an addict, such as promiscuous and unsafe sex and driving dangerously.

April 15- ever feel like you;ll never e a whole person again?

This sounds like a person who isn’t very comfortable with herself and has the self-esteem/anxiety issues that I think are the underlying cause of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions. I’d point out that the years of emotional abuse at her father John’s hands over her lifetime, much of which I had the unfortunate experience of seeing firsthand, is probably the basis for her low-self-esteem and anxiety issues. I think that Ian’s betrayal of her in January of 2011 triggered their recurrence, because Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was a pretty confident, self-assured young woman previously, as seen in the photos of her in 2008 and 2010.

May 29- Birthday shoutout to @Caroline91, we chilin this week girl have fun down the cape!

This is probably a reference to going drinking down on Cape Cod, as Lauren generally refers to drinking as “chilling”. In fact, the confrontation between myself and Lauren was caused by a Facebook post of Lauren’s where she clearly stated that she was planning on going down to her family’s house on Cape Cod to go drinking. Her words were something to the effect of:

“Headed down to the Cape to go chillin’ and by chillin’ I mean drinking”

May 30- Oh sangria, I love you.

Pretty self-explanatory, she was drinking sangria

May 31- home from work, sippin smokin sleeping.

Also pretty self-explanatory, and she probably wasn’t sipping water or smoking cigarettes.

June 7- My new aps include “liquor run mobile” and “mixology drink recipes”

“Liquor run mobile” is an android phone app that gives you the location of the nearest liquor store, which is not something that a 19-year old girl should need to know. Mixology drink recipes is a bartending guide, also not something she needs to have on her phone. Her obsession with alcohol and if the local package store is open becomes apparent in her later posts.

June 15- “@y0ung_h0ttness: Should I drink back to back nights” the obvious answer is hell yea of course.

She is telling her friend Chris that they should drink back to back nights.

June 18- I’m a mess, Not even a hot mess either, just a mess.

Again, something that people with self-esteem issues often feel and say and clarified by the tweets from the next day.

June 19- soo much to drink last night! Tequila makes me invinceible I feel amazing today

It is pretty clear that she felt a mess when drinking the tequila more likely than not… Addicts tend to remember the good parts of their addictive experiences and forget the hard/bad parts.

June 19- Soo bored at work, is the liq store open today?
June 19- To answer my q earlier, yes the packies open

What is a 19-year-old girl doing wondering about package stores being open. A strong preoccupation with alcohol and its availability is fairly typical alcoholic behavior.

June 19- You know how I put it down, put it down anytime I come around

Probably a reference to her drinking habit

June 19- Cherry Svedka Cokes, with the boys heading into the bean

Seems fairly obvious that she’s drinking vodka spiked cherry coke and then heading into Boston with the boys who supplied Lauren with the alcohol. It is also pretty clear that Lauren’s now drinking in public without any real concern about getting caught.

June 23- Heading to scituate to celebrate nicky’s bday with my boys

Probably the same boys that she’s been drinking with up in Scituate.

June 24- Drunk Poool shot 4 shot and I won #justsayin

Lauren is bragging about winning at playing pool for drinks is my guess.

June 24- Ahh #drunktweet

Why would Lauren Elizabeth Kelley say this unless she was DRUNK?

June 24- Racksonrackonracks of rolling rock

Some one is supplying her with access to a lot of beer—ROLLING ROCK

June 29- Felony speeds on york st #oldhaunts #newwhip

Probably saying she was driving way too fast, more evidence of reckless behavior, which is typical of addicts. This was likely during or just after when I confronted Lauren Elizabeth Kelley about her drinking.

June 30- And on another note mikes hard might be the only thing that’s better in a can

Obviously a reference to Mike’s Hard Lemonade. How does Lauren Elizabeth Kelley know how it tastes better in a can than a bottle?

July 1- #alcoholicstatus

Why would someone who isn’t an alcoholic post this?

July 2- Phones alive again yay, about to try something hope I don’t get pinched…

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is obviously talking about doing something illegal and hoping not to get “pinched” or arrested. I believe this is the first time she used her fake Ids. She has TWO of them, one from Maryland and one from Rhode Island. This is clarified in her next post.

July 2- successful packie wooooo I can’t wait for fireworks

Obviously, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley used her fake ID to buy alcohol and wasn’t caught.

July 2- watermelon alcohol marinade
July 2- How clever

I believe this is a reference to spiking a watermelon with alcohol. Somehow, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley seems to think this is a clever and good idea.

July 3- Red, White and Booze

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley retweets a post about alcohol… obvious what is on her mind.

July 7- just chilling around the cape house, beach was phenom

Likely Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was drinking at the Cape house, as chilling is her code for drinking, confirmed in her next tweet during the same day.

July 7- Mango parrot bay + mango pineapple mcd’s slushie

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is likely spiking a McDonald’s Mango Pineapple Slushie with Parrot Bay Mango flavored rum so that she can drink openly and in public with little chance of being detected.. This is a pretty common alcoholic trick to reduce the chances of them being seen drinking or getting caught drinking in public.

July 10- “@omgiitsnicole: whoa. Blasted.” Hollaaa

This is Lauren Elizabeth Kelley cheering on her friend Nicole, who is tweeting about being blasted. Nicole, Chelsey, Jarrod and several others are all co-workers of Lauren’s from her cinema job, who are mostly all older than Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and the people she started drinking and doing drugs with. Jarrod and Chelsey are seven years older than Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and highschool classmates, and I believe that Chelsey is the person who “pimped” Lauren Elizabeth Kelley out to Jarrod last year.

July 10- aww congrats to dina so nice to meet errbody/chill out for the bbq. Now showering with a #budlightlime and getting readyyy

I think it is pretty clear that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was drinking before the bbq, budlight lime in particular. I also have to ask who drinks in the shower? That isn’t normal behavior as far as I can tell for anyone who isn’t an alcoholic.

July 10- Haha just got confronted abt a drinking prob? #whitgirlproblems

Someone just confronted Lauren, a 19-year-old, about having a drinking problem. Why do you think someone thinks Lauren has a drinking problem??? If it is so obvious to someone who probably doesn’t know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as well as I do, how is it possible that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and her family don’t see the problem. Of course, her father and brother are both alcoholics in denial, so they can’t see Lauren’s problems with alcohol because they refuse to admit their own problems even exist.

July 13- @CollegeTownLife You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So stop being a pussy and let’s get drunk #CTL”

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley re-posting @CollegeTownLife’S post about getting drunk.

July 14- stumbling, sipping mango parrot bay mmm

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is drinking enough Parrot Bay Mango-flavored run to have coordination problems in her own words…

July 17-Patron and bacardi for the frist tiiime

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is drinking harder, stronger alcohol. My guess is that someone is probably supplying it. She hasn’t said anything about doing packie runs in a while. The other possibility is that doing a packie store run, using her fake Ids has become so common place that she no longer comments about it.

July 17- Love hp ! Outta work time to chill

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is probably going out with friends from work to go drinking. This was a pretty typical pattern of behavior for her last summer.

July 19- I need a tall glass a something smooth

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley retweets BostonsBoy’s tweet about needing a drink.

July 20- RT if you’ve gotten laid after one of my shows

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley retweets BostonsBoy’s tweet indicating that she has had sex after his shows. Remember that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley said that her social media posts were her own words and true…

July 23- Not what I expected… beerworks being swooned lol

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is likely letting the person providing the beer seduce her. Sexual promiscuity is typical of addictive behavior, especially if the subject is being provided drugs or alcohol by the person. The park shown in the geotag on this post is one that she also goes to quite often to drink/do drugs. The park is also mentioned in an article as a place known for under-age drinking, drug use, and a place where drugs are readily available. I provided a copy of the article to Lauren’s mother in the documentation. The post is from almost midnight, well after the park is supposed to be closed to the public.

July 23- Omw to scituate to see the biddies

It is likely that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was drinking and now is likely driving drunk. In Massachusetts, the BAC level for a person under 21 is only .02, and if she had more than one beer, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would be legally driving drunk. I’d point out that many of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s social media posts indicate that she had to have been driving either high and/or drunk for much of the last seventeen months, including January 2012, when it is likely the car crash Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was in was due to her being high and/or drunk when it occurred.

July 24- The pool was so effing nice, now off to find somewhere to toke under the stars lololol

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is going to smoke marijuana after swimming, this was about midnight I’d add. I believe the place shown in this post is also a common place from her tweets and the home of one of her new friends, as Scituate is commonly mentioned in her tweets.

July 28- Liq store while I wait for this oil change.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is buying alcohol and risking a felony conviction while getting the oil changed in her car. Apparently buying alcohol has become pretty common place for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as she later admitted under oath.

July 29- Probably need to think about who your talking to… bitches get drunk and embarress themselves

From what I remember, this tweet was about midnight, and it is likely she went out to drink the alcohol she bought the day before and is so drunk she saying she embarrassed her self. The map indicates a small park near Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family home that she commonly goes to drink. The park in question is known as a place for under-aged drinking, public sex, public drug-use and drug sales. I included an article about the park in the package to Lauren’s mother Sue.

July 29 Strawberry margaritas and holy hash balls

The geotag location for this was in Mission Hill area of Boston around 2030 at night. I have to ask what is Lauren doing in one of the worst parts of Boston drinking and doing drugs at night. Someone is also supplying Lauren with stronger drugs, since hash is far more potent than marijuana. Please note that Lauren deleted this tweet and I believe that she does know that this is wrong and is embarrassed about it. I also believe her posting all of these tweets are a cry for help.

July 30- Sex drive thats push to start

This tweet was about 0930 in the morning and indicates that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley spent THE ENTIRE NIGHT in the Mission Hill area of Boston, after doing drugs and drinking. It also likely indicates that she had sex, probably with the person that supplied her the alcohol or drugs. This is very risky behavior, since Mission Hill is a very dangerous area of Boston, and known for drug, gang and criminal activity. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley continues this, it is likely she will get hooked on harder drugs, since the persons she’s associating with appear to be giving her harder drugs, and has a very good chance of her getting raped, pregnant or shot. This was the reason I wanted to expedite meeting with Lauren’s parents back in August of 2011.

July 30- Scorpion Bowl at the spottt

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley bought a scorpion bowl drink at the Ocean City chinese restaurant. I’d point out that a Scorpion bowl typically has about SIX SHOTS or NINE OUNCES of alcohol in it, and if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley drank one by herself, she’d have to stay at the restaurant for over 8 hours to get the alcohol out of her system. This means she WAS DRIVING DRUNK, probably even at the .08 adult BAC level.

August 3- Don’t wanna say goodnight but really must be passing out

It is pretty clear she was drinking, as she was at the local reservoir drinking spot near her family’s home. This tweet was about 0500 or so IIRC, and if she was thinking of passing out, she must have been fairly drunk…means she was driving home drunk. This park, DW Field, is a well known spot for drug use and casual sex. The park was recently the focus of a crackdown on public casual sex as indicated in an article I’ve included. According to a local police officer that is an acquaintance of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family, this is a bad place to be at that hour and is illegal since the park closes at sunset.

August 4- Goooood morning :) loungin around with my love haa don’t wanna get outta bed just chattin so comfy

Sounds like Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had someone stay over with her, which is something her parents would have never allowed, so she is there with just Jarrod. I believe she was at the Cape Cod house when she tweeted this, based on the other posts which refer to Long Pond, which is across the street from her famiily’s Cape house. The fact that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, formerly a moral, responsible, devout Catholic, would be sleeping with someone that is a relative stranger to her shows how far she has fallen to her addictions.

I’d point out that this is a Thursday, and her parents were in the habit of going down to the Cape house with Bridget every Friday about mid-day and coming back on Monday mornings that summer.

August 4- Chillin with my good friend from ny! Stays right by on the bass riv, small world

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is probably drinking with her friend from NY.

August 7- the modern mans Hustle i dig it i shovel, feed me your troubles and need me to cuddle (0128)
August 7- iii wanna go oo all the way, takin out my freak tonightt ;) (0145)
August 7- Tweet from JROD_FB85—LK is a lifesaver… Thanksa million (0314)
August 7- Tweet from JROD_FB85—I do it (0319)
August 7- Shoutout to @jrod_fb85 for making muh day :) (1203)

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is basically announcing publicly that she’s going to be having sex with someone. Apparently, the person she had sex with is Jarrod, from his replies and the time stamps on them. It turns out that Jarrod is a drug dealer and was likely supplying Lauren Elizabeth Kelley with alcohol and marijuana in trade for sex with her—that Lauren was basically prostituting herself to Jarrod in order to get the drugs and alcohol her addictions require. As soon as Jarrod tired of using Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as a sex toy, he threw her away like yesterday’s trash.

This likely happened at Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family house, since her parents and her sister Bridget were likely down at the Cape house until Monday, and all this took place on Sunday.

August 8- Working for someone today and forgot I was on tonight waah

I find it very unsettling that someone as organized and focused on her work as Lauren is would FORGET that she had a work shift scheduled. Especially, since she comments on work a couple of tweets later. This in not that uncommon for alcoholics. If she is having problems compartmentalizing and remembering her work schedule, that is probably a really bad sign.

August 8- Phantom charges on my debit

The unexplained or “mystery” charges on her debit card could easily be ones that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley made herself while she was high or drunk and just doesn’t remember making them—this is fairly common for alcoholics.. They could also be charges that one of her “friends” made while she was too drunk or high to realize that they had “borrowed” her debit card. This is very worrying, since the debit card goes to the bank account which Lauren Elizabeth Kelley uses for the money for her education-related expenses.

These are Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s own words—words she has admitted were written by her and the truth. They were publicly posted for most of the last eighteen months. They were among the two-years of posts and social media data sold by a social media company earlier this year.

Meeting Lauren’s Parents

I was supposed to meet with Lauren’s parents, but her father John, an alcoholic in denial himself, cancelled the meeting and refused to speak with me. When I tried to get the documentation package to Lauren’s mother Sue, John destroyed it as I described earlier. The meeting with Sue and John never happened.

I did confront Lauren’s father John about his own drinking, and the cowardly bully probably would have hit me if I had been anyone else. But John has seen what happens to people who attack me and he is too much of a coward to risk the beating he would have received at the hands of a much smaller person, so he held back and just foamed at the mouth. In some ways, I wish he had hit me—he would have gotten the beating he deserves for the years of emotional abuse he has put his wife and children through.

John later threw his beautiful daughter Lauren Elizabeth Kelley under a bus and used her to protect himself from being confronted again by me. I believe he coerced Lauren Elizabeth Kelley into perjuring herself by threatening to withhold her tuition from her. I also believe he paid Lauren Elizabeth Kelley off by providing her with more money than he had originally promised her because Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been going to school despite not having gotten the small, $6000-8000, student loans that would make up the difference between her scholarship and the money put aside by her parents for her college education. In September 2011, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had posted a plaintive cry asking if anyone had $6000 she could have because she was denied the student loan she had applied for, yet she was able to attend school with out it a few days later.

What has happened since then…

All that I had warned Sue about last summer, with respect to what Lauren would do and what would happen last year has basically come to pass as I predicted it. That isn’t too surprising, since I was one of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s closest friends and confidantes and she trusted me with things I doubt she has told anyone else.

Lauren’s drinking and drug use spiraled out of control…starting the very night she got back to Emmanuel College. The college’s dry campus policy is a joke. The RAs regularly play beer pong with under-aged students. Beer and marijuana are pretty much available and prevalent on the campus, where students regularly post about the dorms reeking of pot.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s grades plummeted and the smart, studious, beautiful, and proud woman I love has put the merit-based scholarship she needs to attend Emmanuel College, the college she was so proud of getting into, at serious risk.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley did not make Dean’s List her sophomore year, despite taking only four classes a semester compared to the five courses she was taking each semester of her freshman year, where she had a 3.634 GPA and made Dean’s List quite easily. I doubt her failure to make Dean’s List her sophomore year is because her classes were so much harder, despite the 20% reduction in classes taken. I think the poor performance had much more to do with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley spending much of her fall semester in a drug-and-alcohol fueled haze that made her wonder where the semester had gone when she was finally getting into the swing of school, sometime during finals week a year ago. Her spring semester went a bit better, but she was still getting high and/or drunk three or four times a week by her own admission, rather than the five-to-seven times a week she was doing fall semester.

Lauren was in a car crash in early January 2012 where it is likely that she was drunk and/or high at the time of the collision by her own admission. Her car was being repaired and she was driving a rental car, something she could not do unless her insurance company rented the car for her. It is likely that the accident happened late at night and that there were no witnesses and no one else was involved, based on the fact that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wasn’t arrested, which likely would have happened if there was any witnesses or other people involved. It is likely that the single-car collision did mainly cosmetic damage to her car, between $600 and $1400 worth, based on her deductible of $500 and car’s actual cash value of $1500. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley probably just drove home and perjured herself on the accident report.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is friends with people who use the screen names PrincessP0thead and CocianeDreams. Her friends post about going to Hempfest, and getting high and drunk with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has posted about drinking champagne for 24 hours straight. Another of her friends, one of Jarrod’s wolfpack, posted about a friend of his getting convicted and sent to prison.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley started referring to herself as a “bitch”. This is something that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have attacked a person for doing to her prior to her becoming a drug-addicted alcoholic. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley also started to listen to highly misogynistic gangsta rap and hip-hop music that can not be played on the radio because it would violate the FCC regulations on obscenity. She went from listening to Elton John, the Zac Brown Band, Rascal Flats, and such to the repulsive music that Jarrod and his friends listened to.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and her friend Michelle Surette went to a sports bar in Boston to watch an AFC playoff game last January and Lauren Elizabeth Kelley posted the next day that she wasn’t responsible for anything that happened in the previous 12 hours. Since neither she nor her friend Michelle had an apartment in Boston and her dormitory was closed, it is pretty easy to see that she had spent the night with some random stranger that she had picked up at the sports bar—likely having slept with him by her disclaimer of responsibility.

There are too many other examples of her addictions and the stupid and reckless behavior that goes along with them for me to mention. These are not things I am guessing about or making up—but things Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has written herself—things she admitted were true and written only by her.

From what I can see, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is still the drug addicted alcoholic that I confronted back on June 29, 2011. She is so much less than the beautiful, strong, amazing, smart and capable woman I asked to marry me. Since it is pretty clear to me, after trying to help the woman I love for seventeen months, that nothing more than the wretched, pathetic, dishonest, weak and cowardly drug-addicted alcoholic is left of my beloved, feisty and stubborn Irish rose, I have decided to move on as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley , the woman who loves me, would want me to do. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to find someone who makes me happy, loves me and can appreciate what I offer her—something the drug-addicted alcoholic can no longer do.

I will abide a short while longer because Christmas is a time of miracles and I believe in the strong, capable, smart and stubborn woman I asked to marry me and hope that she still survives and will read this post and show me a clear and obvious sign that she is still there and that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley still wants the future with Asians with freckles that she and I had talked about for a week in June 2011. If I have not seen any sign of my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley by year’s end, I will move on as I know she would want for the man she loves.

I do not want to do this, but life goes on, even as her addictions seem to deepen their hold on her. I fear that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will not realize the cost of her addictions or how dangerous they are to her, her health, her mind, her body or her future until she hits rock bottom. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will likely end up in jail, the hospital like her brother did, flunking out of Emmanuel College, living on the street, or dead before she hits rock bottom and realizes how serious her problems with drugs and alcohol are. This may never happen—as is the case with her father.

But, I doubt I will be here to see that happen. I have fought for my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for seventeen months, to no avail and with no sign that anything of the woman I love even exists any more.

In so many ways, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions are worse than death because there is no closure—there is no surety that the woman I love is truly dead and gone as there was with Gee’s cancer or my brother’s hideous death at the hands of a drunk driver. There is a chance that I am abandoning the woman I love and have pledged my heart to—that the incredible woman I have watched grow from a bratty, if adorable daughter of two of my closest friends—family in all but blood—might still survive buried under her addictions.

But, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions and the horrific things they have made her say and do have cost me enough. I have paid the price for trying be loyal and steadfast to the beautiful young woman I still want to marry financially, socially, spiritually, physically and mentally. I can not take the abuse of her addictions much longer and know that I deserve so much better.

I thought that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley really understood how much I loved her—that I have loved her all of her life and that over the past twenty years that love has grown and changed and that I want to spend the rest of my life with her—even if it means walking beside her on her long road to recovery the rest of my days.

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, at least the part of her that isn’t the drug-addicted alcoholic, loves me. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is far too honest a woman to tell me she loves me or say “Sarangheyo” dozens of times over the course of the week we were discussing having children, getting married and starting a life together to have said it if she were not sure of it in her heart.

I doubt that the rift between us is caused by anything other than her addictions, given how it started the moment I confronted Lauren Elizabeth Kelley about her drinking.

I doubt that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have bothered to lie about me or push me away if she didn’t still love me and care about me.

I doubt that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have admitted she was still reading everything I have written here on my blog, on Facebook and on Twitter last February unless she still cared what I thought and still loved me.

I doubt Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have followed the advice I have tried to give her over the past seventeen months if she didn’t know I have always been there for her and always done my best to support her in all her dreams and give her the best advice I could.

I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life. I have cared for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have been friends and close confidantes for years—trusting each other implicitly with all of our fears, goals, dreams and wishes.

I think Bridget, Lauren’s sister, is correct when she said that no one would ever love or care for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as I do.

I never stopped loving Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, caring about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley or being her friend. Her addictions made her throw away twenty years of love, caring, devotion, friendship, loyalty and trust.

I pray Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can forgive herself for that if she ever recovers to the point she realizes what her addictions have truly cost her. I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will mourn and grieve for the lost future that her addictions have cost her—the one with Asians with freckles that our beautiful children would have been.

If the drug-addicted alcoholic is all that is left of my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, then I will be moving on because staying any longer will destroy me. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has become a deceitful, stupid, callous, selfish and ugly thing that my beautiful Irish lass would despise and loathe were she healthy. Seeing the pathetic wreckage of the woman I have loved more than anyone else I have ever known is too painful and too toxic for me. It reminds me that I have failed the beautiful, sexy, smart, and beloved Irish woman with the red hair and the freckles that I wished to count and kiss.

I will wish my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley well—long life, happiness, success, peace, serenity and most of all, love because I love her and have always only wanted the best for her—even if it did not include me. I can do this because I do not hold what her addictions have caused her to say and do against her and forgive her for the past seventeen months of pain, hurt, lies and horror.

I pray that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finds the peace and serenity it will take for her to learn to love herself, trust herself and believe in herself once again. I hope that she can trust her heart enough to see what an amazing and incredible woman God has always meant for my beloved to be—that she can see her true worth.

It is likely that if and when Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finally hits rock bottom and reaches out for help, I will not be here any longer. Even as much as I love her—I can not stay and still be the person who loves Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—be the person Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loves. The wretched drunken drug-addict has hurt me so deeply and wounded me—making me far less than I should be. The healing balm of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s love for me no longer exists and no longer heals the scars that her actions and the past have left.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever finds the strength, courage and will to fight her addictions and make the amends she needs to do to clean up the devastation her addictions have caused, I hope she will seek me out. I will always love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and if, at that time, she is clean and sober and makes her amends, I would love to have her back in my life.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will always hold the biggest piece of my heart because she is the person I have loved longest of all and deepest of all. It was my honor and privilege to watch her grow from the adorable red-headed baby daughter of two of my closest and most loved friends in to a woman so amazing I asked her to share the rest of my life and marry me, be the mother of our children and to keep me company for the rest of my life.

I keep hoping against all odds that the amazing woman I love will finally realize what her addictions are costing her and face her fears before she loses the man she loves and the future we talked about. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is still reading this… you have one month left. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is smart enough and strong enough to fight her addictions and come home to me. I doubt this will happen.

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.

Dan @ 3:11 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
No Reason To Stay

Posted on Thursday 29 November 2012

It sucks when you know you need to let go but you can’t because you’re still waiting for the impossible to happen.

It sucks when you know you need to let go but you can’t because you’re still waiting for the impossible to happen.

Holding on is being brave, but letting go and moving on is often what makes us stronger and happier.

I’ve decided to let go and move on in the New Year if I haven’t heard anything from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, the beautiful woman that I love, by then. If all that is left of the incredible woman that loves me is the drug-addicted alcoholic that is all I have seen for the last seventeen months, then I have no reason to stay.

It isn’t that I don’t love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and have no doubt that I will always love the beautiful woman I asked to marry me, just as I love Gee, the beautiful woman I married before her. It isn’t that I don’t want to keep my vows to the beautiful, smart, strong and capable woman I asked to marry me. But, I just don’t see anything left of her in the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has become.

Let me share with you a blog from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

Here are ten signs it’s time to let go:

(1) Someone expects you to be someone you’re not. – Don’t change who you are for anyone else.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is not the person I love any more. She has become the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been pretending to be for the past eighteen months—the lies she has been telling seem to have become her reality. I do not know who the drug-addicted alcoholic is. I do not love the drug-addicted alcoholic that has been lying about who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I are to each other and how we feel about each other. I have no commitment to the drug-addicted alcoholic and can’t become someone who could love a drug-addicted alcoholic.

(2) A person’s actions don’t match their words. – Everybody deserves somebody who helps them look forward to tomorrow.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told me she loves me and that she adored the Asians with freckles that would have been our children. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wanted to share a future together with me. These are all things that the drug-addicted alcoholic has thrown away and no longer wants as far as I can tell.

(3) You catch yourself forcing someone to love you. – Let us keep in mind that we can’t force anyone to love us. We shouldn’t beg someone to stay when they want to leave. That’s what love is all about – freedom.

I won’t ask the drug-addicted alcoholic to love me. I can’t love the drug-addicted alcoholic. If the pathetic, lying, dishonest, weak and cowardly drug-addicted alcoholic is all that remains of my beautiful, strong, honest, capable and smart Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, then I have no reason to stay.

(4) An intimate relationship is based strictly on mutual attraction. – Being beautiful is more than how many people you can get to look at you, or how others perceive you at a single glance. It’s about what you live for. It’s about what defines you. It’s about the depth of your heart, and what makes you unique. It’s about being who you are and living out your life honestly.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is no longer being whom she really is—I know the truth of who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley really is because I have known her all of her life and loved her all of her life. The drug-addicted alcoholic is an imposter hiding in her physical shell. The drug-addicted alcoholic isn’t honest about anything any more. All she lives for now is her next high and next buzz—her next drink and her next blunt.

This is a photo of the wretched, pathetic, dishonest thing that her addictions have left of the amazing, strong, beautiful, sweet, smart, and honest woman I love.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley posted this after a long night of work, drinking tea with her mother, and smoking weed--in her own words, she said: "Tired af...worked mad, smked mad, shower bathrobe bedtime night *"

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley posted this after a long night of work, drinking tea with her mother, and smoking weed–in her own words, she said: “Tired af…worked mad, smked mad, shower bathrobe bedtime night *”

(5) Someone continuously breaks your trust. – Love means giving someone the chance to hurt you, but trusting them not to. When you completely trust a person, without any doubt, you’ll automatically get one of two results – a FRIEND for life or a LESSON for life.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was someone I trusted implicitly and someone who trusted me. We were close friends and confidantes for years. I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and I trusted her not to hurt me. The drug-addicted alcoholic has done nothing but lie about us and hurt me for the past seventeen months. The stupid, weak, cowardly, dishonest drug-addicted alcoholic doesn’t know how to love, trust or care about anyone any more.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is no longer the laughing, smiling, beautiful, funny, lovable and sweet woman I used to know and love. Who we were and how we felt about each other is clearly visible in this photo of us together. This is how I choose to remember the amazing woman I love and wanted to marry.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

(6) Someone continuously overlooks your worth. – Know your worth! When you give yourself to someone who doesn’t respect you, you surrender pieces of your soul that you’ll never get back.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, the woman that loves me knows what I am worth. The drug-addicted, pathetic, wretched alcoholic does not. It is that simple.

(7) You are never given a chance to speak your mind. – Sometimes an argument saves a relationship, whereas silence breaks it. Speak up for your heart so that you won’t have regrets. Life is not about making others happy. Life is about being honest and sharing your happiness with others.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, the honest, beautiful, smart and stubborn woman I love would argue with me, but at least she would listen. The dishonest drug-addicted alcoholic hasn’t spoken to me since I confronted her about her drinking on June 29th. She won’t even talk to me or listen to me. I have tried to tell her the truth about what her addictions are doing to her, what they are costing her and what the consequences might be for her, her health, her body, and her future. She clearly isn’t listening and doesn’t care—so why should I?

(8) You are frequently forced to sacrifice your happiness. – If you allow people to make more withdrawals than deposits in your life, you will be out of balance and in the negative before you know it. Know when to close the account. It’s always better to be alone with dignity than in a relationship that constantly requires you to sacrifice your happiness and self-respect.

I’ve spent seventeen months trying to help the amazing woman I love and have sacrificed my health, my happiness and my time. While Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was worth what trying to get her the help she needs cost me—the drug-addicted alcoholic that is all that appears to be left is certainly not.

(9) You truly dislike your current situation, routine, job, etc. – It’s better to be a failure at something you love than to succeed at doing something you hate.

This is the truth. I hate the drug-addicted alcoholic that has destroyed everything I love about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I hate being in a situation where I can’t even talk to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley or be with her—something that is all the fault of the drug-addicted alcoholic she has become.

(10) You catch yourself obsessing over, and living in, the past. – Eventually you will overcome the heartache, and forget the reasons you cried, and who caused the pain. Eventually you will realize that the secret to happiness and freedom is not about control or revenge, but in letting things unfold naturally, and learning from your experiences over the course of time.

I guess that the future I hoped for with my beautiful and beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is no longer possible. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is lost to her addictions and there is nothing of her left—no one to share that future with any longer.

So, I will be moving on in the New Year because I know that is what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to do because she loves me. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to be loved as I deserve and happy and with someone who loves me—something she is no longer capable of.

It takes REAL COURAGE to LET GO. One of the things that I am learning in the past 5 years of my life is that…LIFE IS A SERIES OF LETTING GO. But even more than LETTING GO, is LETTING GOD be sovereign in my life’s circumstances.

BE BLESSED! BE GREAT!

I doubt Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s life as a drug-addicted alcoholic will have much success, happiness, health or a long life. At some point, she will hit rock bottom and eventually realize she needs help. It is likely that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have to end up in the hospital, jail, flunking out of school, or living on the street before she hits rock bottom and realizes she is an addict and an alcoholic.

There’s also a good chance she will seriously injure or kill herself or someone else in the process of hitting rock bottom. I hope that she won’t get killed or injured seriously in the process of hitting rock bottom. Unfortunately, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been driving drunk and/or high for much of the last eighteen months.

I doubt her “friends” or family will be able to help her when she hits rock bottom. Her father John and brother Johnny Jr. are both alcoholics in denial. Her brother is also a drug-addict in denial more likely than not. Her mother Sue and sister Bridget are too frightened of her father John to really be of any help.

Almost all of her current “friends” are part of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s current problems with drugs and alcohol. Few, if any, of them have any real commitment with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley or love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. Like Jarrod, I think most of her “friends” will dump her if she becomes a problem for them.

No matter what else, I will always love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. Even if nothing is left but the drug-addicted alcoholic, I still wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley happiness, success, long-life, health and most of all, love, because I only want the best for the woman who was one of the people I love most.

I hope that if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finally can face her fears and fight her addictions, she will be able to look back and realize all that her addictions have cost her.

I pray that if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever regains her health and recovers from her addictions she will be able to understand why I think I was lucky to have her in my life despite what her addictions and my trying to help her have cost me. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will finally understand my final gift to her.

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.

Dan @ 3:53 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
When She Looks Back

Posted on Saturday 24 November 2012

“Distance teaches us to appreciate the days that we are able to spend together and distance teaches us the definition of patience. It is a reminder that every moment together is special, and every second together should be cherished.”

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

I cherish every moment I have had with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I am blessed by the years of love, caring, devotion, friendship and loyalty Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have had before she fell to her addictions.

I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and always will, regardless of how far apart we are physically—she will always be close to my heart. I have cared for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and always will, no matter the distance between us.

My fierce, funny, sweet, feisty and lovable Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hamming it up for the camera down at her Cape house.

My fierce, funny, sweet, feisty and lovable Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hamming it up for the camera down at her Cape house.

I hope my Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is strong enough to eventually fight her addictions before they cost her her health, her body, her mind, her spirit, her future and possibly her life. I hope some day when she looks back, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley may realize what her addictions have truly cost her.

I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will look back upon that week we talked about having a future together and realize that her addictions are what made her throw away twenty years of love, devotion, caring, friendship and loyalty.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley might realize that her sister was right when she said that no one will ever love her or care for her the way I do. I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will see that she lost her greatest supporter and the person who always believed in her no matter how many times she let him down and always tried to help her achieve her goals and make her dreams come true.

I never walked away from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I have been there for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life—even when her own family wasn’t. I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and cared for her all of her life. I never stopped loving Lauren Elizabeth Kelley or caring about her. I never stopped being Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friend.

Even now, after eighteen months of abuse, lies, defamation and the other horrible things her father and her addictions have made her do, I am still here for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—loyal and loving beyond all reason—for a short while longer. If all that is left of my beautiful, strong, sweet, funny, and lovable freckled redhead is the drug-addicted alcoholic that I have seen for eighteen months, then there is no more reason for me to stay.

Anyone else would have walked away. Anyone else would have given up on the pathetic, lying, hateful thing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has become. I haven’t because I know who she, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, truly is. I have known Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and seen her grow in to an amazing young woman that is honest, compassionate, gracious, beautiful, strong, stubborn, capable and lovable beyond measure. I know how far Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has come from the selfish, self-centered and bratty child she once was.

My beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley

My beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley

That is why I asked Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me. That is why I have pledged to spend to share the rest of my life with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—even if it means walking beside her on her long road to recovery the rest of my days.

That is why I have promised to catch Lauren Elizabeth Kelley when she stumbles or falls; to protect Lauren Elizabeth Kelley when she feels threatened or is scared; to guide Lauren Elizabeth Kelley when she gets lost or feels confused; and most of all, to love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley more each and every day.

This is my commitment to the incredible woman who surprised me by telling me she loved me and talking about all the things that involved starting a life together for a week in June 2011. This is my promise to a beautiful young woman that I have been friends and close confidantes with for years. This is a vow I have to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s mother and sister. This is who I am and always have been.

Even if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley never fights her addictions, and is truly lost to them for the rest of this lifetime, I know that we will be together again in the next, because a love as strong and true as the one we share will bring us together again. I still hope for my beautiful Irish rose—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—to regain her true self and for her to marry me and for us to start on the future we once talked about. As time goes by, I doubt more and more that that will happen in this lifetime.

I will always treasure the memories of the lifetime Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have had together. I have known Lauren Elizabeth Kelley longer than my twin brother was alive. I have known and loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley longer than Shelley, Su, Gee and Yoon combined—and I always will. I will miss Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and mourn the amazing woman that said “Sarangheyo” to me. I will grieve for the beautiful woman that said she loved me and for the future we could have had.

I will miss Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s beautiful eyes that change color like the North Atlantic after a Nor’easter has passed through. I will miss the beautiful smile that was my reward for spoiling Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and could light up an entire room. I will miss the mischievous laugh and grin that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had when she was planning something. I will miss the scent of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s hair and the soft skin with the freckles I wanted to kiss and count. I will miss my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as I have for eighteen months.

No matter what happens, I wish my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley well. I wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley long life, happiness, success and most of all, love—even if it is not with me. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley eventually finds serenity, peace and grace once again. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley learns to love herself and appreciate what an amazing person she is and always has been. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finally learns to forgive herself for whatever things that are driving her to punish herself so harshly. And, I hope that one day Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will remember who I truly am and how much I truly love her.

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.

Dan @ 2:25 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Thankful Things 2012

Posted on Wednesday 21 November 2012

Looking back on the last two years, I realize that I am thankful that I got the chance to tell Lauren Elizabeth Kelley how my feelings for her had changed and grown.

I am thankful that I got a chance to tell my amazing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley how much I loved her and ask her to marry me.

I am thankful that we got a chance to talk about possibly having a future together, even if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions make that future unlikely now.

I am thankful that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told me she loved me and said “Sarangheyo” to me dozens of times the week we spent talking about our future together. I know she is too honest a person to have told me that if it were not what she meant and felt.

I am thankful that many of my friends have supported me and been there for me during this difficult time without judging me.

I am thankful for nearly two decades of love, happiness, friendship, caring, devotion and loyalty that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I shared. I will always cherish the memories of the time we spent together, as friends, and as something more. I’ve written about a few of these cherished and treasured memories at: http://bit.ly/UaOrna

I hope and pray that the beautiful woman I love—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—will find the courage, the strength and, most of all, the will to fight her addictions. I hope that the knowledge that there is at least one person that loves her and finds her so amazing that he would want to spend the rest of his life with her will help her find what she needs to fight her addictions.

I hope that the words and wishes I have for my beautiful Irish rose eventually find their way to her and reach her before it is too late—before her addictions cost her her health, her mind, her spirit and her future. I know she was still reading what I wrote and listening to the advice I had for her as of the end of February because she said she was.

I hope and pray that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will eventually find her way back to whom God meant for her to be—the amazing, strong, beautiful, smart, gracious, compassionate, kind, happy, good, sweet, feisty, lovable red-haired, freckled woman that I love and asked to marry me.

Most of all, I wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley happiness, success, joy, health, long life and love—no matter what happens between us, because I love her that much. Loving one imperfect person is the hard stuff, as Glennon of Momastery wrote. Glennon is right—she should know, having come through recovery along a path similar to the road that my Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is on. http://bit.ly/RjBT8U

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley should never recover from her addictions, or if her path should take her out of my life forever—I will miss her and mourn for the future we could have had and grieve over the loss of one of the most incredible women I have ever known. I hope that we will be together in our next life, because I know a love as strong as the one we have shared will bring us together once again.

I would ask my friends and family pray for the beautiful, feisty, freckled, redheaded Irish woman I have come to love more than anyone else I have ever known—pray for her safety and for her safe return to being whom God has meant for her to be. http://www.godvine.com/prayers/44906

I have stood by my vows to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for eighteen months, waiting and hoping that she would recover from her addictions—so that she and I could start on the amazing future we had once talked about—the future that includes our children—the Asians with freckles that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley said she adored. As more time goes by, it seems less and less likely that that future will ever come true—because it seems less and less likely that the incredible woman that said “Sarangheyo” dozens of times has survived the horrors of her addictions.

If my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley does still exist, I hope she can give me a clear and obvious sign that she is still there, fighting her addictions and still loves me; still wants the future we talked about; and wants me to accompany her on long road to recovery. As I have said to her—if nothing remains of the strong, feisty, freckled Irish woman I love but the pale, drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been for these eighteen months, then there is no reason for me to stay—no one to keep my vows to—no one I love or care about left.

I do not know the drug-addicted alcoholic, except as someone who has lied about me, hurt me, and destroyed everything I love about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to move on if she is truly lost to her addictions because she loves me and would want me to be happy and loved—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would agree that I deserve so much better than the pathetic and wretched thing that she has become. I forgive Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for what she has said and done because of her addictions, and know that it was not truly her choice to say and do those things.

I will abide by the vows I have made to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley a while longer in the forlorn hope that she still lives and hears these words before I move on. I hope that she gives me the sign I need to see so I know she is still here. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is still here, there is nothing that can make me leave. If all that is left is the drug-addicted alcoholic, then there is no reason to stay.

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.

Dan @ 7:19 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andMy Life andpv
The Choices We Make

Posted on Wednesday 21 November 2012

“These are the choices we make, which define us.

I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.

I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend.

And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important.

Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone.

I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.

I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.

I need to do my damnedest to be there for that.

Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known.”

~Fiona Apple

Though these words were written for her dog, I think they apply to any one you love. They certainly describe the last weeks of Gee’s life in so many ways…

I put love and friendship ahead of my career and took the time off of work to spend every moment I had left with Gee, the beautiful woman I married.

I cooked meals for her at home and would bring them to the hospital—still hot from the stove—so she would not have to eat that horrible hospital food and could have the foods she loved most in her last days. This earned me unlimited respect from the wonderful and compassionate nurses that worked the Hem-Onc ward she was in.

I slept beside her, holding her hand so that Gee would know that she would never be alone—that she was loved beyond reason—and that I was keeping my commitment to her.

Being there for Gee was an honor—as was sharing my life with her and having her as my wife. I know a half-dozen people that would have gladly married her if Gee had been willing to accept them—but she did not—she only accepted me as her husband.

Fiona says that “These are the choices we make, which define us” and that is the key—we are defined by the choices we make.

No matter what happens to us—ultimately, we are defined by the choices we make.

I hope that the woman Gee asked me to find—my beloved and beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—will eventually read this and realize that she too is defined by the choices she makes.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has a choice to make now. She can remain the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been for the past eighteen months—or she can trust her heart, learn to love herself again, trust herself again, and believe in herself enough to fight her addictions and take a chance on the love she and I have for each other and the future we talked about.

Before Lauren Elizabeth Kelley decides—I would point out that the love, devotion and commitment I showed to Gee is the kind of love, commitment and devotion I have offered her—that my promise to walk beside her on her long road to recovery was just that—a promise and one that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knows I will keep if she asks me to. However, she has to ask me before I move on—before I decide that there is nothing left of the amazing woman I love but the tragic, pathetic, dishonest, weak and cowardly drug-addicted alcoholic.

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.

Dan @ 1:15 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andlife with Gee andMy Life
My Gift To Lauren Elizabeth

Posted on Monday 19 November 2012

We don’t remember days...we remember moments

We don’t remember days…we remember moments

There are many moments I remember from the years I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, cared for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and been friends with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order…

  • Watching the adorable freckle-faced, redheaded toddler of two people I have considered family for over a decade throw a temper tantrum because she doesn’t get her way. Her temper tantrums when she was very young were cute—when she was a bit older—they were a force of nature, being powered by one of the feistiest, most stubborn and willful children I have ever known—one who grew into one of the most amazing women I have ever known.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley unhappy about doing homework early one morning at her mom's office.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley unhappy about doing homework early one morning at her mom’s office.

  • Watching a sleepy young girl that I have always loved cover her head with a blanket, with a book on a pillow at her mother’s desk because she, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, just doesn’t want to do her homework.
  • Three people I love and consider family—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, her mother Sue and her little sister Bridget.

    Three people I love and consider family—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, her mother Sue and her little sister Bridget.

  • Working at her father’s company and seeing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and her family—five people I love and have considered family for 30 years. These are the three I miss the most—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, her mother Sue, and her sister Bridget.
  • Taking Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to Cracker Barrel for the very first time for her seventeenth birthday and watching her browse the country store with a look of wonder and amusement.
  • Laughing at hearing my beautiful friend Lauren Elizabeth Kelley shout out that she isn’t going to become a vegan because she didn’t want to give up Coach purses or nice shoes. I knew the nutrition argument would be tough against someone as stubborn and feisty as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, but I also knew she was very fashion and status conscious as a teen.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley shows excitement when I offer to teach her how to drive.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley shows excitement when I offer to teach her how to drive.

  • Seeing the unabashed happiness and excitement when I told Lauren Elizabeth Kelley I would teach her to drive.
  • Spending an afternoon with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley teaching her to check the oil, brake fluid, windshield washer fluid and tire pressure on her car.
  • Sitting with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and rubbing her shoulders and neck.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley sleeping on the companionway, under the dodger in one of my fleece shirts.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley sleeping on the companionway, under the dodger in a fleece shirt she borrowed from me.

  • Watching Lauren Elizabeth Kelley sleep, curled up on s/v Pretty Gee’s companionway like a beautiful ginger cat, in the polar fleece she swiped from me.
  • Cleaning out the pool and laughing with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and listening to her fears of falling in the green slime while I held her feet so she’d be safe—promising to pick her up out of the slime if she fell, but reserving the right to laugh first.
  • Having Lauren Elizabeth Kelley rub my shoulders and neck.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley very late one night, after we had come in from a walk along the streets and beach near her family’s Cape house.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley very late one night, after we had come in from a walk along the streets and beach near her family’s Cape house.

  • Walking in the early morning fog along the road and the beach near Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family’s Cape house one August evening, holding hands with her. She was wearing the red fleece cape I had given her.
  • Going to the Registry of Motor Vehicles and standing in line with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to register her very first car.
  • Hearing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley laugh when she realizes her dad has sabotaged my go-kart so he can win.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and me while kayaking during a family outing on the Bass River back in 2008.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and me while kayaking during a family outing on the Bass River back in 2008.

  • Kayaking with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family and the Garcias and towing our sunken kayak with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley sitting in it back to the Bass River Kayak place because she wouldn’t get out and we couldn’t paddle the sunken kayak.
  • The small near-heart attack I had when Bridget told me that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had told her and their mother Sue about me asking Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me, and fearing how Sue would react. It turns out that Sue really wasn’t surprised or even concerned about my asking Lauren Elizabeth to marry me—in fact, in some ways I think she had been expecting it.
  • Watching the sunrise with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley down at the Cape house after talking through the night and having her mother come up and ask us what we wanted for breakfast.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and Jesus, in New Bedford.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and Jesus, in New Bedford. Taken one evening when we were out playing pool and getting pizza.

  • Taking Lauren Elizabeth Kelley down to New Bedford to go shoot pool and then taking a photo of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley posed beside the painted Jesus on the pizza shop wall before we got dinner.
  • Having Lauren Elizabeth Kelley steal my polar fleece out of my sailing bag during a day sail on s/v Pretty Gee.
  • Going over to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s house to pick up Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, her sister Bridget and her brother Johnny so we could have a meal at Chipolte’s because I wanted to spend time with three people I have loved all of their lives.
  • A Lauren Elizabeth Kelley-style iced coffee—hazelnut with four splenda and milk.

    A Lauren Elizabeth Kelley-style iced coffee—hazelnut with four splenda and milk.

  • Waking Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and watching her beautiful smile appear as she realizes I have brought her an iced coffee because I love her.
  • Stealing a sip and then a gulp of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s iced coffee because she loves me and would let me.
  • Nibbling on Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s earlobes and inhaling the scent of her hair as I whisper in her ear to wake her up in the morning.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hamming it up and brandishing two spatulas at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hamming it up and brandishing two spatulas at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday.

  • Laughing as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley brandished twin spatulas at Fire & Ice, when they let her cook on the big grill at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday.
  • Teaching Lauren Elizabeth Kelley how to parallel park and spending hours with her teaching her how to drive so she would be safer on the roads when she finally got her driver’s license.
  • Going to the movies and seeing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley at the cinema she works at and getting a big hug and a huge smile from her when she sees me.
  • My funny and much beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley

    My funny and much beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley

  • Rubbing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s beautiful but not ticklish feet while she lounged on the sofa at her house before she had to get ready for work.
  • Tickling Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and blowing raspberries on her beautiful smooth stomach and holding her in my arms.
  • Tasting the salt on Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s skin when I would kiss her stomach.
  • Ellie giving me bunny ears at her 18th birthday dinner at Fire & Ice in Boston

    Ellie giving me bunny ears at her 18th birthday dinner at Fire & Ice in Boston, 2010.

  • Letting Lauren Elizabeth Kelley give me “bunny ears” when getting our photo taken at her 18th birthday party at Fire & Ice in Boston.
  • Going with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and talking with her insurance agent and making sure she got the right things on her first car’s insurance policy as her mother Sue asked me to.
  • Going over to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s house to make breakfast at 1600 in the afternoon because Bridget and Lauren Elizabeth were hungry and didn’t know what to make. Breakfast is probably Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s favorite meal.
  • Ellie beautiful smile during a late night game of Scrabble down at the Cape.

    Ellie beautiful smile during a late night game of Scrabble down at the Cape.

  • Playing Scrabble late into the night and watching Lauren Elizabeth Kelley smile as she realizes that she can win—beating me with the words I had taught her.
  • Walking into Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family’s kitchen and stealing a cookie from the batch Bridget just pulled out of the oven and doing my cookie trick for her to see her laugh.
  • Talking about projects she wanted to do around the house—like painting her room and converting the porch into a sunroom for her parent’s anniversary in the hopes her parents would install a hot tub in response.
  • Some of the snack-sized cheesecakes I loved to make and give to my beautiful and beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

    Some of the snack-sized cheesecakes I loved to make and give to my beautiful and beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

  • Bringing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley cheesecakes and watching her try and sneak one and hide the aluminum pie plate in her room as she takes the rest to the kitchen to put in the freezer.
  • Listening to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley tell me how she wants to name our children Kelley and Cadence and that the names would work for either boys or girls, and pointing out how it was a good thing she was going to take my last name, since naming a child Kelley Kelley would probably be evil.
  • Laughing as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley capsized the O’Day Javelin her mother bought for Bridget—dumping Bridget, Johnny Jr., me and Lauren into the water.
  • Laughing as I sent Bridget and Carmen to tickle Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and pounce on her even as she pleads for me to save her. I should have saved her, but I use my powers for good mostly.
  • Going grocery shopping with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley because she didn’t like anything they had at the house to eat.
  • Sitting and watching Lauren Elizabeth Kelley try on two dozen outfits and seeing how happy she was to fit into a size 3 pair of jeans and enjoying how good they look on her.
  • Lauren Elizabeth Kelley at Texas Roadhouse for dinner with me and her family.

    Lauren Elizabeth Kelley at Texas Roadhouse for dinner with me and her family.

  • Seeing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley look so cool, confident and beautiful when we went out to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. It was back when she still knew she was smart, capable, strong, beautiful and loved—and she knew I loved her.
  • Putting together a car safety kit for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley because she had just bought her first car. The kit contained basic supplies like a first aid kit, a polar fleece blanket, jumper cables, spare fuses for her car’s electrical system, a good flashlight, and a tire pressure gauge that was once my twin brother’s because that is how much I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.
  • Carrying Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s purse and all the clothes she wanted to try on while out shopping with her. Shelley, Su, Gee and Yoon had done the same thing when shopping.
  • A group photo of Carmen’s mother, Johnny Kelley Jr. Carmen, Carmen’s brother, Bridget Kelley, and Lauren Elizabeth Kelley after we got ice cream at the ice cream truck at the park across from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family’s Cape house in Yarmouth.

    A group photo of Carmen’s mother, Johnny Kelley Jr. Carmen, Carmen’s brother, Bridget Kelley, and Lauren Elizabeth Kelley after we got ice cream at the ice cream truck at the park across from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s family’s Cape house in Yarmouth.

  • Treating my beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to a Klondike bar at the ice cream truck stopped at the park across from her family’s Cape house in Yarmouth, Mass., with the Garcias.
  • Walking Brandy, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s big white labrador retriever with her. Brandy is the company mascot for Lauren Elizabeth’s father’s company.
  • Volunteering to fix her family’s clothes dryer just so I could have an excuse to spend time with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in the mornings, and doing laundry for my beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley when I finally fixed the dryer.
  • My fierce, funny, sweet, feisty and lovable Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hamming it up for the camera down at her Cape house.

    My fierce, funny, sweet, feisty and lovable Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hamming it up for the camera down at her Cape house.

  • Watching the funny faces that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would make while hamming it up for the camera down at her family’s Cape house. I love how expressive her beautiful face is.
  • Walking up behind Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and wrapping my arms around her waist to hug the woman I love and resting my chin on her shoulder and burying my face in her beautiful and silken red hair and breathing in the scent of her hair.
  • Taking photos of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley when she isn’t paying attention and making her laugh when she finally realizes what I’ve been doing.
  • My beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s freckled face...

    My beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s freckled face…

  • Telling Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that I wanted to kiss and count every freckle she had—like all the ones you can see on her beautiful, freckled face. I adore Lauren Elizabeth Kelley beyond measure and hope that she fights her addictions and comes home to me soon.
  • Trying to count the freckles on Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s beautiful face just before waking her up for the day—wishing I had the courage to kiss them all.
  • Getting hugs from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley when I’d bring her souvenirs from the various trips I went on. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was the only one who got more than one postcard or souvenir from me from any trip. She was always someone I loved to dote on and spoil.

These are all small vignettes of a life we shared together—of years of friendship, love, caring, devotion and loyalty. They are the truth of who we are to each other and what we have meant to each other over the years. I think Lauren Elizabeth’s sister Bridget was right when she said, “You’re perfect for her. No one else will ever love her or care about her the way you do or as much as you do” when I asked Bridget what she thought of me and her older sister as a couple.

These are the memories of the beautiful young girl that I have loved all of her life and the incredible woman she has grown into. These are the memories I will keep and cherish and share of the amazing woman I love and still hope to marry. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is mi querencia and mo chuisle mo chroi. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman whose love for me has healed me.

These memories are part of the many reasons I have found the strength to abide and stay, even when Lauren appears to be nothing more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that has hurt me and lied about us. These memories are part of the reason I still want to be with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

This is my gift to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the amazing woman I love—for whenever she gains the strength, the courage and the will to fight her addictions and to see the truth once again. My beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, is one of the most honest people I have ever known—yet her addictions have robbed her of the truth and made her tell horrific lies.

I hope someday Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will look back and recognize the truth of what I have written here, of what the photos of us show and of the feelings we have shared over her entire life. I hope that she can forgive herself for destroying all that we had and all that she and I could have been together. I hope that we are together the way we should be in our next lives—for I know a love as strong as ours will eventually bring us together again.

I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life, cared for her all of her life, and considered her a part of my family since she was born. Last summer, I realized that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was the woman I loved most of all and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her—even if it means walking beside her on her long road to recovery.

I will never betray Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as Ian did. I will never throw Lauren Elizabeth Kelley away as Jarrod did. I will never hurt Lauren Elizabeth Kelley as her father has for years. I have never stopped loving Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, caring for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley or being Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friend. I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will realize the truth some day soon—fight her addictions and come back to being the amazing woman I love so that we can start on the future we had talked about together.

I wish I could let Lauren Elizabeth Kelley see herself as I do for just a day—then she would not let her fears, insecurities or self-doubts give her addictions the power they hold over her. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is one of the most amazing women I have ever met. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is capable, strong, smart, sweet, kind, compassionate, generous, gracious, stubborn, feisty and lovable beyond measure—whether she sees the truth of this or not.

I do not know if I will still be here for her—because all I see is the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been pretending to be for the past seventeen months. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the woman that loves me and talked of starting a future together—is reading this, I would ask that she give me a clear and obvious sign that she still loves me and still want me to be here for her. If she are still here, there is nothing that would make me leave. If all that is left is the pale, pathetic, drug-addicted alcoholic shadow of her true self—then I have no reason to stay.

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.

Dan @ 6:33 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
The Palanca Letter

Posted on Monday 19 November 2012

A little over three years ago, I was honored by Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s mother Sue, who asked me to write a Palanca letter for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. The Palanca letter is a tradition in Catholic schools and they are written by people closest to a young adult who is about to graduate high school. It is a letter of encouragement and inspiration which is given to the young adult while they are on a spiritual retreat during this rite of passage for them.

This is the letter I wrote for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

Daniel Kim November 7, 2009
49 Floral Street
Newton, MA 02461

Lauren—

I am honored that your mother asked me to write a Palanca letter for you. As you know, you and your family are very special to me and I consider all of you as part of the family I have chosen for myself.

I want you to know that I think you are a beautiful person and I am proud to be one of your friends. You do have the good heart and generous and kind spirit that I consider to be a necessity to be a beautiful person—as well as being one of the prettiest young women I know. Please note that when I use the word beautiful, I do not mean just the more commonly accepted definition of physical appearance. To me, physical appearance is only a part of what makes a person beautiful. If one does not have a good heart and isn’t generous and kind in nature, they can never be beautiful, no matter what they look like.

You are a very intelligent young woman—although there are times you seem to do a very good job of hiding that fact—like most teens. However, I am sure that you will be successful in your future ambitions, and with a little more experience, will have the self-confidence to believe in yourself as much as I believe in you.

You are a gracious person, and I hope that as you grow into adulthood, you learn to keep that sense of grace about you. I hope you continue to give of yourself and continue to be generous, especially to those less fortunate than you. To be gracious, even under the worst of conditions, was something Gee showed me, and I believe you are capable of that kind of grace yourself.

I hope you continue to inspire your family and friends to be better than they would be without you in their lives, and that you carefully choose your friends to be of that same caliber—people who inspire you to be a better person than you would be without them. Remember to surround yourself with people who love you for who you are, unconditionally, and to love them back, for who they are, unconditionally, and remember to treat them well.

You are fortunate to have family and friends that truly love and support you, and that you love and support in return. I know, as I am one of them. I warn you to be wary of ever taking those people for granted, and to always be sure to let them know how much they mean to you as often as you can. And whenever you have doubts or need help, take advantage of the fact that you do have us around—talk to us and let us help you.

I have been blessed to get to know you fairly well since I moved back to the Boston area. Watching you grow into the person you are today has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I hope that you recognize your inherent qualities and habits, both good and bad, and work on improving the the former and reducing the latter, so that you grow into the person I see you capable of becoming in the future, .

Be well and know that you are loved.

As always, your friend,

Daniel Kim,
Beloved of Gee,
Twin to David

I wrote this letter as one of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s good friends—someone her mother had asked to be Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s protector, advisor, confidante, and mentor. When Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s parents, John and Sue, basically checked out of Lauren Elizabeth and Johnny Jr.’s lives a few years earlier, I had basically been asked to step in to act as an intermediary and to guide and protect the two older Kelley children as I could. I promised Sue I would do my best for these two young friends of my—the two eldest children of two people I had considered family for over a quarter of a century.

I think this letter also shows the love and caring that I have had for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life. My devotion to her family and their trust in me is evident as well. In some ways, I feel that I must have failed in some way for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to have become the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been for the past seventeen months. For her to deny the years of love, caring, devotion, loyalty, friendship and trust is horrific and I can not understand how it is even possible for her to do this.

I will abide by the amazing woman that the young Lauren Elizabeth Kelley I write about in this letter has grown into—a woman that is smart, strong, good, kind, sweet, feisty, stubborn, honest, beautiful, gracious and compassionate. To have known her as a child and watched how she has grown and changed over the years really was a joy and an honor.

I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life in some fashion. I will always love her—I do not know how to not love her. She has been a part of my life for more time than even my twin brother. I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley longer than I knew Gee, Su, Shelley and Yoon combined. I have cared for her all of her life. I have been close friends and confidantes with Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for many years—years during which she and I trusted each other with our hopes, goals dreams and fears.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman I love most of all. She is the woman I have asked to marry me and I hope to spend the rest of my life with, even if it means walking beside her on her long road to recovery from addiction and alcoholism for the rest of my days. I know who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is—she is strong, beautiful and capable far beyond anything the drug-addicted alcoholic could possible imagine.

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loves me for she is one of the most honest people I have ever known and she would not have learned to tell me “Sarangheyo” or told me “I love you” unless she truly did. I know that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have never spoken to me about all the topics having to do with us starting a life together unless it was what she wanted. I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have never asked me to see the claddagh ring I had bought for her unless she were ready to accept it and all it stood for.

I believe in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I have faith in the amazing woman that loves me. I trust the incredible woman I love. I hope that she will fight her addictions soon so that we can start on the future we had talked about together.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—trust yourself, believe in yourself, love yourself and fight your addictions—follow your heart.

I can not believe that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley could have succumbed to her addictions. The amazing woman that loves me is too strong, too smart, too stubborn and too brave to have fallen so easily to her addictions. I believe that the incredible woman I love still is there fighting to beat her addictions. I pray she finds her way back home to me so that we can start on our future together.

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.

Dan @ 6:04 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andMy Life andpv andReligion
Her True Worth

Posted on Friday 16 November 2012

I keep wondering why the beautiful woman I love, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, has been a drug-addicted alcoholic for seventeen months. I think I finally figured out what happened to the amazing woman that loves me.

I think her betrayal by Ian in January 2011, when she caught him cheating on her with a woman who by all accounts wasn’t as pretty or as smart as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley herself, her self-esteem took a major hit. I think this blow to her self-esteem combined with the years of emotional abuse by her father—who told Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that she wasn’t good enough, perfect enough, pretty enough or smart enough for years—caused my beautiful Irish rose to doubt herself and to stop believing in herself and loving herself.

I think one of the reasons Lauren Elizabeth Kelley pushed me away when she became a drug-addicted alcoholic is that she didn’t feel she was worthy of being loved, especially not the way I loved her—she felt she wasn’t worthy of being the person I wanted to marry, raise a family with or spend the rest of my life with.

I think the problem was made worse by the lies she told in order to try and isolate me from her family—lies about who we were to each other and how we feel about each other. I think that she started to believe the lies after a time. My beautiful, amazing, smart, strong, stubborn, feisty, sweet, good, kind, compassionate, honest and lovable Irish rose stopped believing that she was all this and more.

I believe her father held her tuition over her and used it to coerce Lauren Elizabeth Kelley into perjuring herself to protect him in August of 2011, right after I confronted him about his own issues with alcoholism. This made things worse for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, because now she was backed into a corner and didn’t know of any way out.

However, the truth of who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I are to each other is pretty clearly visible in the photos of us together. The smiles on our faces and the laughter we experienced shows how much love, friendship, caring and devotion we have shared over the years.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and me kayaking on the Bass River with her family and Carmen’s.

It amazes me that the very intelligent Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hasn’t figured out how to fix the problems her lies and her father’s lies have caused her. The simple solution is for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to tell the truth. If she tells the truth about how her father coerced her into lying and perjuring herself and recants her lies—she can make things right.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, at least the woman I know and love, is one of the most honest people I have ever known. In fact, even all this time, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has never lied to me as far as I know. Instead, she has lied about me, but has never actually lied to me, and I think this is important to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

In fact, I believe that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley needs to be able to tell herself that she has never lied to the man she loves and hasn’t betrayed his trust in her. In many ways this is true and it makes a strange sort of sense. I believe that is why Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has never spoken to me since we stopped speaking on June 29, 2011. I think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley knows she would have to lie to me if she spoke to me, and to prevent having to lie to the man that loves her, she has chosen to not speak to him at all.

I wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley could find the strength to tell the world the truth about us—about how much we love each other another and what we really are to each other. I wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had the courage to face her addictions and fight them. I know she is ashamed of most of the things she has said and done because of her addictions, but running away from the problems only makes it all that much further she has to travel to face them. The longer she remains a drug-addicted alcoholic, the more she will have to be ashamed of and the higher the cost will be in the long run.

Unlike Ian—the person who betrayed Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, or Jarrod—the person who threw Lauren Elizabeth Kelley away when he grew tired of her, or her father John, who has emotionally abused her all of her life—I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life. I have cared for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life. I have been her greatest supporter and number one fan and always done whatever I could to help her achieve her goals and make her dreams come true. I have been her protector and mentor for years. I have always watched out for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, who has been one of my closest friends for years.

I know her true worth—I know who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley really is. I have known Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life, loved her all of her life, and cared for her all of her life. I never stopped loving Lauren Elizabeth Kelley or caring about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I never stopped being her friend—whether she recognizes the truth of these statements or not. I do not know how to not care about or love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—they are things I have done all of her life and to not do them is foreign to me.

I am here for the amazing, beautiful, strong, stubborn, kind, good, honest, feisty, sweet, compassionate, fiery, gracious and lovable woman I have asked to marry me. If nothing else, I will be here for her when she decides to fight her addictions and ask me for my help. Like Gee, I can no more abandon Lauren Elizabeth Kelley because of her illness than I could have abandoned Gee.

I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is reading this and understands how much I love her and that I know her true worth. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is a priceless treasure beyond measure to me. I love her and always will. However, that does not mean I will wait for her forever. Unless I see some clear and obvious sign that the amazing woman that loves me is still alive, then I will have no choice but to move on as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would want me to do if she is truly lost to her addictions.

Unless I have a clear sign that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley still loves me, still wants the future we talked about and still is here—then I will have to move on because I have no commitment to the drug-addicted alcoholic that has been occupying her body for the past seventeen months. I do not know the drug-addicted alcoholic. I do not care about the drug-addicted alcoholic.

It would appear that the drug-addicted alcoholic is still there, in spite of the academic progress Lauren Elizabeth Kelley appears to have made this semester. This is a social media post from one of her friends to her, where they apparently have sushi and blunts regularly on Friday nights. Lauren’s friend Michelle, one of the many who bought fake IDs with Lauren last summer, is also going into Boston to go drinking with Lauren—yet Lauren doesn’t think she has a problem.

A social media post directed to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley mentioning sushi and blunts.

A social media post directed to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley mentioning sushi and blunts.

I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will tell the truth about who we are and how we feel about each other. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will tell the truth about what her father made her do and how he threw her under a bus to protect himself—using her tuition to coerce her into perjuring herself. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will make amends for the things her addictions have made her say and do. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will fight her additions and ask me for my company along her long road to recovery.

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.

Dan @ 6:32 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Every Minute

Posted on Wednesday 14 November 2012

“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.

Dan @ 4:55 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Time To Step Up

Posted on Tuesday 13 November 2012

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.

Dan @ 6:41 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
No One To Blame

Posted on Sunday 11 November 2012

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley once believed in God—the woman I love is a devout Catholic. I know this because I have known her all of her life. I wonder if she really thinks what has happened the past seventeen months is God’s Plan for her.

Does Lauren Elizabeth Kelley think it was God’s Will for her to push away the man she loves and turn her back on him and lie about him? If not, then whose Plan and Will does she think it is?

God gave her FREE WILL. So, what happens to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and what she becomes is up to her.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can remain the drug-addicted alcoholic that has lied about the man she loves for seventeen months. That is a choice, and if she chooses to make it she has no one to blame but herself for what happens.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loses me—the one person in her life that has always believed in her; always been there for her; always loved her; always cared about her; the man who was one of her closest friends and confidantes for years; and has always been her greatest fan and supporter—that won’t be my fault. It was her choice to make.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, if your addictions ruin your future, destroy your health, and make your dreams and hopes fade and die—that was your choice.

Or Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can choose to believe in herself, love herself, trust herself and trust in her heart.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can choose to believe her heart knows what it was doing when it said “I love you” and “Sarangheyo” to me so many times in June 2011.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can choose to ignore her fears and fight the addictions that they have been giving so much strength to. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can choose to believe me when I tell her that she is one of the most amazing, beautiful, smart, stubborn and lovable women I have ever met.

I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley doesn’t let what Ian, Jarrod and her father have said and done to her ruin the years of love, caring, devotion, loyalty and friendship we have shared.

I have to ask Lauren Elizabeth Kelley whom would she rather believe:

  • Ian, the immature fool who betrayed her and cheated on her;
  • Jarrod, the drug-dealer that let her debase herself for four months to get the drugs and alcohol her addictions required and then threw her away when he tired of her;
  • her father John, who has emotionally abused her and told her that she wasn’t smart enough and wasn’t good enough for years;
  • or me, Daniel Kim, the man that has SHOWN HE LOVES HER, even when she wasn’t very lovable and thinks Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is amazing, beautiful, smart, sexy, desirable, compassionate, gracious, funny, stubborn, feisty, and wants to share his life with her even after all the horrific things her addictions have made her say and do.

The woman I love is smart enough to know whom to pick and believe and loves herself enough to let it happen—that is why Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was talking to me about children and marriage.

If, in the end, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley allows her fears, self-doubts and insecurities to rule her instead of her heart, and she lets them continue to give her addictions the iron-grip they have over her, she will lose me—because I do not know the drug-addicted alcoholic and do not care to.

I have no commitment or promise to the drug-addicted alcoholic. If that is all that is left of the incredible woman that loves me, I will move on as I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would truly want me to because she loves me. If that happens, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will have no one to blame but herself.

One of the things I love about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is that she is a strong, proud, intelligent woman that is capable and independent. Yet, in some ways, this can also be one of her greatest weaknesses—that she, like the man she loves, has trouble asking for help or admitting that she’s not perfect. I think this may be part of her problem in admitting she is an alcoholic and a drug addict or in asking for help for her addictions.

I would remind the amazing woman I love that no one would think less of her for asking for help because it takes more strength, courage and honesty to admit she has a problem than it does to continue to deny the truth and stay a drug-addicted alcoholic.

While Lauren Elizabeth Kelley may be doing better in school than she was last year—I have to wonder does she really think that she is free of the drugs and alcohol that made her into something that she would have loathed and and been ashamed of had she been healthy.

Does Lauren Elizabeth Kelley think that the addictions that turned the beautiful, proud, devout and moral Catholic woman I love into someone who would debase herself and trade her dignity and body for the drugs and alcohol her addictions require as she did with Jarrod for four months last year are just going to fade away?

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley might want to consider that the amazing woman I love would not be confused if she did well, but merely consider that the norm. The drug-addicted alcoholic she has been hasn’t been doing too well academically and is probably a bit surprised when she does get decent grades.

That is not the woman I love—the woman I love, my Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—is one of the smartest women I have ever met…and proud of her academic prowess. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was so proud of when she made Dean’s List her Freshman year while taking five courses a semester—those two extra courses are quite possibly the only reason that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hasn’t lost her scholarship after how poorly she did the last two semesters.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, my beautiful and smart beloved, is honest enough to realize that her addictions are a problem and will remain one for the rest of her life. She would know that she has to learn to deal with them and finally admit that she is an alcoholic and a drug addict.

Until she admits the truth, there is no way she can begin on her long road to recovery—the one I have promised her I would walk beside her on for the rest of my life because that is part of what it will take to share the rest of my life with the amazing woman I love.

I hope that the beautiful and amazing woman I love still exists. I hope that the improved academic performance is because the proud, stubborn and feisty spirited Irish woman I love so much is fighting her way back to being whom God has always intended for her to be.

I ask my beloved Irish rose, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, if she still is reading this blog and still exists to give me a clear and obvious sign that she is still there, still loves me and still wants the future we talked about when I asked her to marry me.

I ask that she give me this sign soon, before I think she has been lost to her addictions and that there is nothing left of her here for me. I hope that she fights her addictions, makes her amends and asks me for my help soon. I have to ask Lauren Elizabeth Kelley if she hasn’t punished herself—punished us—enough already.

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.

Dan @ 12:55 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Good News, Bad News

Posted on Friday 9 November 2012

Well, the good news is that my beautiful Lauren Elizabeth Kelley appears to be doing better in her studies than she did last year. Of course, given how she did last year, that probably isn’t setting the bar too high. Hopefully, she will do well enough to keep her scholarship and be able to stay at Emmanuel College, the school she was so proud of getting into and that meant so much to her because it is a Catholic college.

I know that the amazing woman I love is one of the most intelligent women I have ever met and has always been very proud of herself being a good student, even when she was much younger. I think it was her stubbornness and her pride in her academic achievements that prevented her from crashing and burning right after what I believe is the precipitating event that started her down the road to addiction seventeen months ago. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley managed to hold out until after the spring semester of her freshman year ended before she started drinking and doing drugs heavily.

The fact that she was taking five courses a semester rather than the normal four her freshman year, when she did make Dean’s List, is probably the only reason she hasn’t lost the scholarship her addictions put at risk last year. Those two extra courses are likely the only thing that kept her GPA high enough to keep the scholarship, given how it appears she did the last two semesters.

In many ways, this is also bad news, because it might allow the bright, intelligent, and stubborn woman I love to rationalize that her drinking and drug use aren’t a problem because she is now doing better than she was last year. The fact that one of her new friends uses the username PrincessP0thead and that a recent social media post seems to indicate that one of her friends’ friends was recently incarcerated, most likely for drug-related charges I would guess, doesn’t seem to bother her at all.

I hope that my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will realize that her problems with drugs and alcohol are just that—problems—and that she needs to fight them. I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s improved scholastic performance also means she will start believing in herself again, loving herself again and trusting herself again. I hope she will trust her heart enough to take a chance on us—to give us a chance to see if the future we talked about that week in June is what we both hoped and dreamed it would be.

I would love to see the incredible woman I love again. I would love a chance to spend my birthday or the holidays together. I hope that the improvements she has been showing mean that the smart, stubborn, sexy, sweet, beautiful and honest woman that loves me is once again coming to the forefront and pushing out the drug-addicted alcoholic that has been occupying her body for much of the past seventeen months.

The past few social media posts I have seen concerning her were from someone who appears to not be a drug-addict or alcoholic…so the hope that my beautiful, feisty, honest, freckled, red-haired, and much beloved Irish woman might still survive is re-kindled.

This is the Lauren Elizabeth Kelley I love and want to marry—strong, confident, beautiful, smart, stubborn, funny, kind, feisty and compassionate.

A card for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley

A card for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley

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.

Dan @ 9:15 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Facing Your Fears

Posted on Friday 9 November 2012

Here are some quotes on fear and facing fears that I wish Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, the sweet, freckled, redhead I love would read and learn from.

1) Abraham Maslow, psychologist: “I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive.”

2) Bill Cosby, comedian: “Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.”

3) Gandhi, spiritual/political leader: “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.”

4) Winston Churchill, UK politician. statesman; former British Prime Minister: “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”

5) Judy Blume, author: “Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

6) Don Miguel Ruiz, author, speaker, Shaman: “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive—the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”

7) Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, poet, philosopher: “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

8) Dale Carnegie, speaker, writer: “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

9) Oprah Winfrey, television pioneer, actress/producer: “The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”

10) Henry Ford, US indistrialist: “One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”

11) Frank Sinatra, singer, actor: “Fear is the enemy of logic.”

12) Colin Powell, US statesman; four-star general: “Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.”

13) Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

I think Judy Blume is right, in that if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley does not face her fears—if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley does not handle them—she will be limited for the rest of her life. Her fears and insecurities are what give her addictions the hold over her that they have. Facing her fears will give her the ability to fight her addictions.

Don Miguel Ruiz is also correct, because I think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s greatest fear isn’t death—but living. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley said she loved me in two different languages dozens of times the week we were talking about having a future together, about having Asians with freckles that our children would be and getting married. Yet, we haven’t started on that future because I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is too afraid of living and following her heart’s desires.

I know Oprah is right. Facing the truth—the hard, ugly, truths that I have been telling Lauren Elizabeth Kelley for the past seventeen months will set her free—set her free of her addictions, set her free to start on the future we both want together.

I hope that my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finds something in them that will help her face the fears and insecurities that have been giving her addictions their strength and control over the amazing woman I love so much. No matter what else happens, I will always love her and care for her. Love is eternal and she knows this is what I believe. I have loved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and I always will. I never stopped being her friend, caring about her or loving her. I never stopped believing in the amazing woman I love, trusting her or having faith in how strong, smart and stubborn she is.

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.” —A. A. Milne

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.

Dan @ 5:51 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
A Woman Like You

Posted on Thursday 8 November 2012

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—

This is what I wish we could have together…that is why I asked you to marry me after all. I just wish you were healthy enough to love yourself and accept the love I have always had for you.

No matter what you choose to do, even if you choose to remain the drug-addicted alcoholic you have been for the past seventeen months, I wish you love, happiness, success and will always love you.

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.

“A Woman Like You”

Last night, outta the blue
Driftin’ off to the evening news
She said, “Honey, what would you do
If you’d have never met me”
I just laughed, said “I don’t know,
But I could take a couple guesses though”
And then tried to dig real deep,
Said, “Darling honestly…

I’d do a lot more offshore fishin’
I’d probably eat more drive-thru chicken
Take a few strokes off my golf game
If I’d have never known your name
I’d still be driving that old green Nova
I probably never would have heard of yoga
I’d be a better football fan
But if I was a single man
Alone and out there on the loose
Well I’d be looking for a woman like you.”

I could tell that got her attention
So I said, “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention,
I wouldn’t trade a single day
For 100 years the other way.”
She just smiled and rolled her eyes,
Cause she’s heard all of my lines
I said, “C’mon on girl, seriously
If I hadn’t been so lucky, I’d be..

Shootin’ pool in my bachelor pad
Playing bass in my cover band
Restocking up cold Bud Light
For poker every Tuesday night, yeah
I’d have a dirt bike in the shed
And not one throw pillow on the bed
I’d keep my cash in a coffee can
But if I was a single man
Alone and out there on the loose
Well I’d be looking for a woman like you.”

She knows what a mess I’d be if I didn’t have her here
But to be sure, I whispered in her ear
“You know I get sick deep-sea fishin’
And you make the best fried chicken
I got a hopeless golf game
I love the sound of your name
I might miss that old green Nova
But I love watchin’ you do yoga
I’d take a gold band on my hand
Over being a single man
Cause honestly I don’t know what I’d do
If I’d never met a woman like you.”

Dan @ 9:29 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
God Gave Me You

Posted on Thursday 8 November 2012

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, I really believed that God gave me you. When I asked you to marry me back on June 22, 2011, it was because I realized how much I love you and what an amazing and incredible woman you have become. You have grown from the adorable, if bratty and self-centered, daughter of two people I have considered family for 30 years into one of the most capable, smart, sweet, kind, compassionate, gracious and beautiful women I have ever known.

I realized that you were the woman that Gee asked me to seek out when she made me promise not to “close my heart to the world” just before her death. I was even more amazed at your response to my asking you to marry me. I had expected you to either say yes or no, or possibly tell me I was crazy. You didn’t do that. Instead, you asked if Gee—a woman you had never met, never known, and had been dead for ten years—would be angry at us, or at me, if we got married—if I got re-married.

I explained that Gee had asked me to get re-married if I found someone I loved enough, and I told you I knew you were the person that Gee had asked me to find after she was gone. Your consideration for a woman that was important to me, but that you had never known, showed me that I was right–you were the one that she asked me to find.

Then you told me you wished you had had a chance to meet Gee. I wish you could have met her too. She was an amazing person, much like you are. In fact, you are one of the few people I have ever met that I think is capable of achieving the kind of grace that Gee had.

You then told me you regretted never having had a chance to meet Gee. All this just confirmed how you must be the person Gee knew I would find.

Just before we finished breakfast, you told me, “I love you.” It was a simple declaration. Given what we had been talking about over the course of the meal, I am certain that you meant that you loved me the same way I loved you—as someone you wanted to spend the rest of your life with as I do with you.

Then, over the course of the next week, we talked about Asians with freckles, which our children would be and how you adored them. We talked about how you wanted to name our first two children Kelley and Cadence. We talked about when and where we’d get married. We talked about religion and I remember how surprised you were that I was converting to Catholicism because I knew it was the right thing to do for the beautiful devout Irish Catholic woman I loved.

We talked about the claddagh ring I had bought you and how it was only going to be your engagement ring until we got married. We talked about the platinum and diamond claddagh band I was designing to be your wedding and engagement band and how your gold claddagh ring would be held in trust for our eldest daughter.

You asked to see the claddagh ring on Thursday, June 28th. I promised you I would bring it by the house the next time I was going to see you. I am certain that the only reason you asked to see the claddagh ring was because you had decided you were going to accept it and my proposal of marriage.

Unfortunately, that never happened, because I made the mistake of confronting you about your drinking the next day. We went from exchanging virtual hugs and kisses via text message to you telling me to lose your number and f*ck off. You pushed me away because I confronted you about your drinking, which I understand is pretty common for alcoholics to do with the people they love most. At the time, I didn’t realize you were a drug-addict and an alcoholic and had been falling to your addictions for a month.

I am pretty certain that your fall to your addictions has a lot to do with Ian’s betrayal of you earlier in January 2011. I think his betrayal of you brought up all the issues of worthlessness and inferiority that the years of emotional abuse your father has subjected you to as you were growing up. That is the only reason I can see that you, one of the strongest, smartest, and most beautiful women I have ever met, would allow her self-doubts, insecurities and fears turn her in to a pathetic, weak and dishonest drug-addicted alcoholic.

I wish I could feed your dreams and starve your fears…I wish you would realize that I really am here for you and love you.

I wish you could see yourself through my eyes for just a day. You would see the amazing woman I love and how beautiful, strong, funny, smart, stubborn, feisty, kind, compassionate, generous, gracious, sweet and honest she is. You would see how capable and ambitious she is—you are. You would see how much more than the drug-addicted alcoholic she really is—that you really are.

I have been here, waiting for the woman I love so much—even more than my beloved Gee—to come to her senses and fight her addictions, but the longer I see no sign of the feisty, freckled, redhead that I adore, the more I am sure that she has fallen to her addictions. I hope and pray that this is not the case because I still hope to start that future you and I had talked about that week in June 2011.

I have been here because I still believe in the woman I love—you, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I still trust you and love you and care about you—even though in many ways you haven’t deserved it for so long. I ask you to listen to your heart because I believe it knew what you really wanted. You wouldn’t have told me you loved me in two different languages dozens of times that week unless you really did. You wouldn’t have talked about a future together unless it was something you wanted. You wouldn’t have asked to see the claddagh ring unless you wanted to accept it and my proposal.

You are my Austin…I still love you. I still want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. Please come home to me. Please give me a sign you still exist and still love me and want that future too.

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.

Dan @ 3:08 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Acres of Diamonds

Posted on Sunday 4 November 2012

Acres of Diamonds

There was a farmer in Africa who was happy and content. He was happy because he was content. He was content because he was happy. One day a wise man came to him and told him about the glory of diamonds and the power that goes along with them. The wise man said…

“If you had a diamond the size of your thumb, you could have your own city. If you had a diamond the size of your fist, you could probably own your own country.”

And then he went away. That night the farmer couldn’t sleep. He was unhappy and he was discontent. He was unhappy because he was discontent and discontent because he was unhappy.

The next morning he made arrangements to sell off his farm, took leave of his family and went in search of diamonds. He looked all over Africa and couldn’t find any. He looked all through Europe and couldn’t find any. When he got to Spain, he was emotionally, physically and financially broke. He got so disheartened that he threw himself into the Barcelona River and committed suicide.

Back home, the person who had bought his farm was watering the camels at a stream that ran through the farm. Across the stream, the rays of the morning sun hit a stone and made it sparkle like a rainbow. He thought it would look good on the mantle. He picked up the stone and put it in the living room.

That afternoon the wise man came and saw the stone sparkling. He asked, “Is Hafiz back?” The new owner said, “No, why do you ask?” The wise man said, “Because that is a diamond. I recognize one when I see one.” The man said, no, that’s just a stone I picked up from the stream. Come, I’ll show you. There are many more.”

They went and picked some samples and sent them for analysis. Sure enough, the stones were diamonds. They found that the farm was indeed covered with acres and acres of diamonds.

What is the moral of this story? There are five morals:

1. When our attitude is right, we realize that we are all walking on acres of diamonds. Opportunity is always under our feet. We don’t have to go anywhere. All we need to do is recognize it.

2. The grass on the other side always looks greener.

3. While we are envying the grass on the other side, there are others who are envying the grass on our side. They would be happy to trade places with us.

4. When people don’t know how to recognize opportunity, they complain of noise when it knocks.

5. The same opportunity never knocks twice. The next one may be better or worse, but it is never the same one.

Based on a story by Dr. Russell H. Conwell

Most people are looking for the same thing Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I are looking for—someone who loves them, is committed to them and cares about them. We are looking for someone who is honest, devoted, caring and steadfast. We are looking for someone to share our lives with. We are looking for a partner that will be there for us in good times and bad.

The real difference is that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley already has someone like that—someone that has known her all of her life. . Someone that has seen her at her worst and loves her and thinks she is amazing anyways—me.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has someone who has always been there for her—me.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has someone that loves her and has been her friend and confidante for years—me.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has someone that has proven that they will stand by her because they have done it for years—me.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has someone who is honest, devoted to her beyond all reason, and cares about her—me.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has someone that is steadfast—even when she has been a horrible person—me.

I am the man she loves and who asked her to marry him and share his life. She knows that I keep my vows and commitments—she and her parents have seen the truth of that over the 30 years her family has known me. She has seen it herself.

Her heart knows it—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is far too honest a person to tell me she loves me dozens of times in two different languages to not love me. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would have never talked about all the things having to do with starting a life together if it wasn’t something she really wanted. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley would never have asked to see the ring I had bought for her if she didn’t want to accept it.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions know it—I am the only person they have pushed away since she fell to them seventeen months ago. The drug-addicted alcoholic is ashamed of the things she has done and said because of her addictions and doesn’t want me—the man she loves—to see what she has done—what her addictions have made her do.

I am probably the only person that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley loves enough to face her fears and fight her addictions—the only one who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley cares enough about to risk doing that for. Then again, I am the only one who cared enough about her to see what she had been doing to herself.

My birthday is in a little over a month’s time. I would ask that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley fight her addictions and give me a clear sign that the amazing woman I love is still there someplace—that she still exists and is fighting her addictions and trying to find her way home to me. This is the gift I want from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—one only she can give me—to have her back in my life so we can start on the future we have talked about.

I do not know if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is reading what I write still, but I know—despite the lies she has been telling—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was reading every word I wrote and everything I posted on here on my blog, on Facebook and on Twitter as of last March. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is still there and still reading.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—

You are like the farmer—you have sold the farm—given up the happiness and contentment we had together and the future we were talking about—you are looking for what you already had—and like the farmer, you are committing suicide—by the slow death of your addictions to drugs and alcohol.

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.

Dan @ 12:23 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Looking Back

Posted on Sunday 4 November 2012

Looking back… as the 12th anniversary of one of the happiest days of my life approaches, I was just reading some of the posts I made both here and on Facebook back in June 2011. They were some of the happiest posts of my life… because they were about some of the happiest events of my life.

It is so hard to believe all the pain and sorrow of the past seventeen months could have started from something so joyful. I had realized that I have always known the woman that Gee had asked me to seek out after she was gone—someone that I have known for years—all of her life.

It was a shock to me to realize that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was the woman I had promised Gee that I would marry—the one person I love more than I love Gee.

In so many ways, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was not the person I had expected to find in my heart, but when I awoke on June 22, 2011 at 0130, from a dream so vivid that I could still taste the salt air from it, I realized that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and our daughter—a precious Asian with freckles—were the future I really wanted and that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

In some ways, it made perfect sense. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was someone I have always loved—all of her life. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I had been friends and confidantes for years—we had trusted each other with our secrets, hopes, goals, dreams and fears for years. Lauren Elizabeth was always someone I have cared about and doted on. She has always been special to me.

I was surprised to find out that her mother had told a mutual friend a couple years earlier that she would not be surprised if Lauren Elizabeth and I became more than friends. We were already very close and the love and caring we shared was obvious between us—as can be seen in the photos of us together over the years.

When I told Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s mother Sue, that I wanted to marry her daughter, she did not seem surprised and she did not treat me any differently from before.

Asking Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me and telling her how my love for her had grown and changed over the years and that I realized she was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with was something I did with great terror. I feared that my revealing how my feelings for her had changed would destroy a friendship we had shared for years.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s response was nothing like what I expected. I had expected a simple yes or no, or possibly a “you’re crazy” and her running off.

What I did not expect was for the incredible and beautiful woman I love to ask me if Gee, a woman she had never met and didn’t know, would be angry at me or her or us if we got married—if I got re-married.

I explained to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that one of the last things Gee had made me promise was to not “close my heart off to the world” after she died, and Gee had made me promise to get married again if I met someone I loved enough. I then told Lauren Elizabeth Kelley that I believed that she was the woman that Gee had asked me to seek out.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley then told me she wished she had had a chance to meet Gee, something that she never did because of how ill Gee was for much of the time we were together.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley then told me she regretted never having had the chance to meet Gee—someone she had heard much about over the years, since I did talk to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley about what Gee and I went through and how we felt about each other many times in the previous six years—especially the times when Lauren Elizabeth would ask about how she would know if she had met the right person and what love was really like.

Then, as we finished up breakfast, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told me she loved me—a simple declaration of “I love you.” I am pretty certain that given what I had just told her and what I had just asked her, that she meant she loved me as a woman loves a man.

The fact that we spent much of the next week talking about what we would name our children; getting married; where we would get married, when we would get married; how Lauren Elizabeth adored Asians with freckles—which our children would likely be; religion; and the claddagh ring I had bought for her—was just more proof of her love for me. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley also told me she loved me again, dozens of times in both English and Korean—something I do not believe she would do unless she did love me.

On June 28, 2011, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley asked me if she could see the claddagh ring I had bought her. Up to this point, she had never said yes to my proposal, but it certainly seemed like she was seriously considering it, especially given the topics we had touched on the previous days. I told her I would bring it by the next time I was going to see her—just a few days later. Little did I know that was never going to happen.

I believe, given the subjects and topics Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I had talked about for almost a week, that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley had asked to see the claddagh ring so that she could accept it and my proposal of marriage. I do not believe she would have asked to see the ring unless she were going to accept it.

On June 29, 2011—I had texted Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in the morning a message sending her virtual hugs and kisses. About mid-day, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley posted that she was going down to the Cape to go drinking. I asked her—via text message and PM—to be careful and to not use the fake IDs I knew she had—the ones she had shown me the day before. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley got angry and after I showed my concern about her drinking, she stopped speaking to me—having gone from accepting virtual hugs and kisses via text message to telling me to lose her number and fuck off in less than five hours. The only major event was my confronting her about her drinking. I didn’t realize she was an alcoholic and a drug-addict at the time.

That was when Lauren began telling her family the lies she has been teling about me, about us and about who we are to each other and what we mean to each other. I believe she told these lies to try and isolate me from her family—people I have known and loved for 30 years and considered part of my own family—as they considered me part of theirs. I believe that Lauren didn’t want me to be able to tell them about her addictions to drugs and alcohol—something she had managed to keep hidden from all of us thus far.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions have cost her a lot in the seventeen months she has been a drug-addicted alcoholic. Her addictions have damaged her health, her body, her mind and her future.

Lauren’s mind has been seriously affected and her academic performance has suffered dramatically since she started drinking and doing drugs heavily in May 2011. All the things I warned her mother and her about in August 2011 have come to pass as I predicted. Lauren is at risk of losing her scholarship—the scholarship she needs to be able to afford Emmanuel College. While Lauren was on Dean’s List her freshman year, she has failed to make Dean’s List since she fell to her addictions. Even though she was only taking four courses a semester her sophomore year, she has failed to make Dean’s List, something she did quite easily while taking five courses a semester previously.

Lauren’s health has been pretty seriously affected. In many of the photos of her since we stopped talking some of the negative effects of her heavy drinking and drug use are pretty clearly visible. Lauren’s weight has been cycling pretty rapidly over a fairly large range since she fell to her addictions—going from about 115 pounds in June 2011, to about 160 pounds in August, and then down to probably close to 105 pounds in April 2012, and then back up to about 150 pounds in August 2012, which is the last time I saw her.

In some of her photos, her skin appears jaundiced, her eyes are tear-filled and bloodshot, and her hair appears dry and brittle. In others, her face appears oddly shaped or swollen. In yet others, she is wearing large sunglasses, and I have to wonder if it is to cover her bloodshot eyes. In some, her neck appears very thin, almost anorexic in appearance—and in others she wears a scarf to hide her neck.

Lauren’s addictions are destroying her future—because in January 2012, it is likely that Lauren was in a drug-or-alcohol fueled car crash. I can’t call it an accident, since it was likely that Lauren was high and/or drunk by her own social media posts at the time the accident occurred. If Lauren has been driving drunk or high regularly since she started doing drugs and drinking heavily—which appears to be the case from her own social media posts—it is very likely that she will eventually be arrested for DUI, and will be lucky if she doesn’t kill or seriously injure herself or an innocent bystander in the process. A DUI conviction, especially as an under-aged drunk driver, will destroy many of her dreams and goals—like attending law school.

If Lauren is caught using a fake ID, that is a felony in the state of Massachusetts, and a felony conviction will also preclude many of her goals and dreams. I am the only person who has tried to warn her about the possible consequences to her and her future if she continues to drink and do drugs as she has been doing.

Lauren is very lucky she hasn’t been assaulted, robbed, raped or killed while she has been drunk or high. A very large percent of the violent crimes that women are victims of are due to them being high or drunk when the crimes occur. Lauren has posted that she was close to the point of passing out while in public several times. Lauren has also posted that she has been involved in risky sexual behavior while drunk or high.

Lauren has also posted that “she wasn’t responsible for anything that happened in the past twelve hours” after going out to a bar with her friend Michelle—one of the others that bought the Chinese made fake IDs that Lauren showed me—and spending the night in Boston. Since neither Michelle or Lauren had an apartment in Boston and Lauren’s dormitory was closed for the winter break at the time—I am guessing that Lauren spent the night with some random guy she picked up at the sportsbar she and Michelle had gone to watch the AFC championship game at.

Finally, I would point out that Lauren’s risky sexual behavior—including the four months she was prostituting herself to Jarrod for the drugs and alcohol her addictions required—has put Lauren at serious risk for sexually transmitted diseases. I doubt that she has practiced safe sex, since she was likely high or drunk much of the time she was probably having sex. The fact that Jarrod was likely sexually active with multiple partners at the time Lauren was “dating” him and that he and his partners are drug users puts Lauren in a very high risk category.

If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley does still exist—I have not seen any evidence of it. For the last seventeen months I have been going on my faith in the woman I love. I know how strong, stubborn and smart the amazing woman that loves me really is and find it almost impossible to believe that she has succumbed to her addictions completely. I trust Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, as I have all of her life and always will. I believe in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—as I have all of her life—being her greatest supporter and someone who has always tried to help her achieve her goals and make her dreams come true.

I still believe that the amazing woman that I asked to marry me—that loves me—still exists and is there fighting to return to her true self. I would ask Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—that if you are still there—to show me a sign that you still exist and that you still love me, you still need me, and still want the future we had talked about that week in June.

If you—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—can not show me a sign that you are still there—it must be because you have succumbed to your addictions completely and that there is truly nothing left of the woman that loves me. If that is the case, I must be moving on—because I know that is what you—the woman that loves me—would want, just as Gee did.

It really is up to you Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. You can choose to remain the drug-addicted alcoholic shadow of yourself that you have been for seventeen months. Or, you can choose to fight your addictions, make your amends and ask me to be part of your life again.

I can’t wait forever. I won’t wait forever. I deserve better than the drug-addicted alcoholic and the lies she has been telling and the abuse she has been committing. As much as I love you, if you are a victim of your addictions, there is nothing left for me here. It is that simple. Most women would kill to have a man that loves them and is as loyal and committed to them as I am to you. Either you are the smart, beautiful, strong, stubborn and brave woman I love—or you are the stupid, ugly, weak, apathetic, and cowardly alcoholic that has been lying about who we are and what we are to each other for seventeen months.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, you only live once. Just consider that and take a chance on me—take a chance on us—I think I have proven that I will not betray you, that I will be here for you and that I love you.

Isn’t that what you said you really wanted so many years ago.

If I do move on because you are lost to your addictions and never took a chance that what we have is real and true and you finally look back and realize what you have lost—you will have no one to blame but yourself, your doubts, your insecurities and your fears.

I have done everything I could for you and have no regrets about what I have done out of my love for you. I never stopped loving you, caring about you or being your friend—your addictions made you throw all that away.

I love you Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. I always have. I always will. But that doesn’t mean I will wait forever.

I have said all I need to say to you Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

Either you still exist and are still reading the words written here because you love me and still care about what I have to say—or you have succumbed to your addictions completely and no longer exist.

Either you will see the truth of what I’ve written here or you will continue to believe the lies and deceit that your addictions have led you to tell the past seventeen months. There is a strange beauty and light to the truth, even if the truth is something that is ugly and unpleasant—it is the truth and no one else is telling it to you. I love you too much to deceive you—and have never lied to you.

Either you want to fight your addictions, make your amends and return to being the person God has always intended you to be—or you have chosen to remain the drug-addicted alcoholic that is a pale and anemic shadow of who you really are.

I will leave this here, for you, my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley or the drug-addicted alcoholic that you have been to see and read. This is my gift to you—in the hopes that you will see the damage that your addictions are doing to your body, your mind, your health and your future—that you will realize that the cost to you is too high and the addictions, while they may make you forget your pain temporarily—are just a temporary mask at best and far worse than facing your fears and seeking the truth.

You know where and how to reach me. You know what you must do before I can help you—what I require from you—that you make amends for the lies and actions your addictions have made you say and do; show me that you have made a place for me beside you in your life and that you will fight to keep me there; show me that you are the woman that loves me and more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that has been occupying your body for the past seventeen months; and show me that you are as committed to me and our relationship as I have always been. These things are not negotiable. The woman that loves me knows that they are the least I deserve and what is right. The woman I love is strong enough and honorable enough to do them with out hesitation or question.

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.

Dan @ 1:57 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andlife with Gee andMy Life andpv
Lipstick & Liquor: Secrets in the Suburbs

Posted on Friday 2 November 2012

Ellie of the Crying Out Now blog posted a link to the trailer for the documentary Lipstick & Liquor: Secrets in the Suburbs. It is a documentary about alcoholism and women, and how alcoholism is becoming increasingly common in women.

Alcoholism is now the third leading cause of preventable death for women between the ages of 35 and 55. The damage that alcohol does to women is progressive and far more aggressive than it is in men. Women are also starting to drink at younger and younger ages, like my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

In alcohol rehab programs there is a rule of thumb called the 5:15 rule. In general the amount of damage alcohol does to a woman in five years takes FIFTEEN YEARS to do the same damage in a man. This is due to the differences in the way men and women metabolize alcohol and in the higher percentage of body fat women generally have—which leads to them having a higher BAC count than a man of equal mass given the same amount of alcohol to drink.

There is also a greater social stigma associated with women drinking. Where society often laughs it off as boys being boys when young men get drunk, women who get drunk are cast in a much more negative light as a general rule. This makes it much harder for women to admit they have a problem with alcohol or to seek treatment.

Watch the video that www.lipstickandliquor.com has put together. The stereotypes of the classic, falling down drunk, red-nosed alcoholic do not really apply to most women. They come from all economic classes and social backgrounds.

Alcoholism is an illness that really does not discriminate beyond the genetic heritable vulnerability some ethnic groups and families have—like Lauren Elizabeth’s, where the disease runs heavily on both her mother and father’s families.

Alcoholism is a progressive illness. The longer a person remains an alcoholic, the greater the damage the disease does to the body and mind. Alcoholism re-wires the brain and changes the way an alcoholic’s brain functions. The longer a person remains an active alcoholic, the less likely they are to successfully remain clean and sober.

Here are two photos of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley. The first was taken several years ago, before she had a serious issue with alcohol and drug addiction. While, it is very likely that she was drinking at the time, she was not drinking or abusing alcohol or doing drugs the way she has been for the past seventeen months. The second one was taken in the beginning of January of 2012. It clearly shows some of the effects that Lauren’s heavy use of alcohol and marijuana have had on her. The jaundiced skin, the gauntness, the bloodshot eyes, and the dry, brittle hair are all clearly visible.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley at Texas Roadhouse for dinner with me and her family.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley at Texas Roadhouse for dinner with me and her family.

Lauren posted this after a long night of work, drinking tea with her mother, and smoking weed--in her own words, she said: "Tired af...worked mad, smked mad, shower bathrobe bedtime night *"

Lauren posted this after a long night of work, drinking tea with her mother, and smoking weed–in her own words, she said: “Tired af…worked mad, smked mad, shower bathrobe bedtime night *”

Like the women in the Crying Out Now blog and the women in the documentary Lipstick & Liquor, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is not your typical falling over drunk, red-nosed alcoholic. Lauren is very good at hiding her addictions from the people closest to her. Lauren has not let it affect her work noticeably yet, though it has negatively affected her schoolwork at Emmanuel College over the last two semesters, three if you count the current fall semester.

In fact, if Lauren has another semester like the two she had her sophomore year, it is very likely that Lauren will lose the scholarship that she needs to attend Emmanuel College.

Emmanuel College apparently doesn’t care that they’re losing some of their best and brightest students to the drug and alcohol problems that are rampant on their campus. I know this because when I contacted Emmanuel College earlier this year to talk to them about my concerns for their students, including Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, the school staff harassed me and did nothing about the problems I had mentioned.

One of Lauren’s friends, Suzy, @suzyrhymeswith on Twitter, tweeted photos of her BAC meter and bragged that she had blown a 0.19 on it after being unconscious, most likely passed out rather than asleep, for seven-and-a-half hours or so. This likely means her BAC was over 0.30 when she passed out and she is lucky that she didn’t suffer from alcohol poisoning and die in her sleep. Suzy has since dropped out of Emmanuel College.

The problems at Emmanuel College extend beyond the students drinking and getting high. One RA was outed as having played beer pong with under-aged underclassmen on campus, and Suzy posted a photo of Gia’s “Beer Pong Beirut”. Also, during Lauren’s freshman year, one problem she had was a drug dealing roommate, which Emmanuel College did nothing to address, even though Lauren had asked repeatedly to have the situation remedied. Lauren was not using drugs or drinking almost at all her freshman year.

I keep hoping that my beautiful, smart, strong and brave Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will finally see that her addictions are the cause of many of her current problems. She has lost seventeen months of her life to her addictions, yet doesn’t seem to think they are a problem.

The evidence is pretty clear from what I can see.

It is clear in Lauren’s grades—where she has failed to make Dean’s List her sophomore year, even though she easily made it her freshman year while taking five courses instead of the four she has been taking her sophomore year.

Lauren is about to lose her scholarship, which means she will have to drop out of Emmanuel College.

Lauren was in a car crash in January that was likely caused due to her being drunk and/or high at the time by her own social media post admissions. Lauren is lucky she didn’t get killed or seriously injured in that accident. She is also lucky she didn’t get arrested or seriously injure or kill some innocent bystander.

I keep praying that the beautiful, smart, strong and stubborn woman I love will find the will, courage and strength to fight her addictions.

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.

Dan @ 5:57 pm
Filed under: Crying Out Now andLife with Ellie andpv
Why Can’t You See

Posted on Friday 2 November 2012

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—

One of your friends tweeted this to you:

My homie caught a bad rap on some bs, least I could do is write him frequently, put some $ in his box & send him good books

It sounds like someone just got arrested and thrown in jail? I know that Eliud, who sent this tweet to you, is one of Jarrod’s wolfpack. I suspect that Jarrod is a drug dealer or at least a very heavy marijuana user based on his own tweets and the fact that he was likely supplying you with the drugs and alcohol your addictions required while you were with him last year.

Doesn’t it say something that you’re friends with someone that tweets about his friend getting arrested?

Doesn’t it matter that you are friends with a Twitter user named PrincessP0thead and another that wanted to use the name CocianeDreams?

If you were still the honest and good woman I love—you would realize that you have a serious problem with alcohol and drugs. That much is clear from your own words and actions from the past seventeen months.

Somewhere, I believe the honest, good, smart, stubborn, proud and beautiful woman I love still exists. I think that is why you wanted to disavow your actions back when you and Michelle went into Boston to watch the AFC championship games last January. I think that is why you tweeted that you weren’t responsible for anything that happened in the previous twelve hours.

I’m pretty sure that you spent the night in Boston based on your own words, yet neither you nor Michelle had an apartment there, so I am guessing that you stayed with some random guy you picked up at the sports bar you were at. I know the devout and moral woman I love wouldn’t sleep around like that—and she would be ashamed of behaving the way you have been.

I have to really wonder if you are proud of what your addictions have turned you into—a weak, immoral, stupid, drug-addicted, alcoholic, lying coward that would debase herself repeatedly because of her addictions.

I have to ask if you are proud of how well you did in your classes at Emmanuel College these past two semesters? You used to be a Dean’s List student… but now, taking fewer classes, you aren’t.

I really have to wonder why you can’t see what your addictions have done to you. Look at your “friends”. Look at how you have been doing in school. Look at how you have treated me—the man you say you love and wanted to start a family with—someone who has been there for you all of your life. But, somehow, you just can’t see any of it.

Have your addictions really made the bright, smart, studious woman I love that stupid?

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, please show me that you still care about me and what I think. Show me that you still exist and that you are still there. Fight your addictions and come back to me.

I love you and want to be here for you as I’ve promised you, but I just don’t know if you exist any more. I know that you—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the woman that I love would want me to move on if she were gone. I am beginning to think you—my beautiful Irish rose—have succumbed to your addictions and are as lost to me as if you had died.

Please, give me a sign that you are still there—that you still love me and care about me. If you are still there Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, there is nothing that would stop me from being here for you. If you are gone—there is nothing for me here.

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.

Dan @ 3:30 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
A Strong Woman….

Posted on Friday 2 November 2012

A strong woman is one who feels deeply and loves fiercely. Her tears flow just as abundantly as her laughter. A strong woman is both soft and powerful...

A strong woman is one who feels deeply and loves fiercely.
Her tears flow just as abundantly as her laughter.
A strong woman is both soft and powerful…

This is who you used to be. You used to feel deeply, love fiercely and weren’t afraid to laugh or cry with all your heart. You were sweet, soft, and caring, yet strong, powerful and stubborn. You were a gift—to me—to your family—to your friends—to the world.

I have said that I don’t know or love the drug-addicted alcoholic that you have been for the past seventeen months. I can’t love her—she is weak, cowardly, stupid, selfish, and greedy—all the things you, the woman I love, are not.

It is not a contradiction to say I love you, Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, the beautiful, strong, smart, stubborn woman but despise the drug-addicted alcoholic you have been for seventeen months because she is not you.

The woman I love is strong—the drug-addicted alcoholic is not. The woman that loves me is smart and beautiful—the drug-addicted alcoholic is not. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley cares about her friends and family—the drug-addicted alcoholic only cares about her next drink or high.

That is simply the truth of the matter. The choice of who you want to be for the rest of your life is yours and yours alone.

So, decide what you really want from life.

You can continue on the road you’re currently on and likely end up in jail, the hospital, living on the streets, or dead. That is what happens to most drug addicts and alcoholics. Please remember that this is what will happen if you choose to do nothing.

Or, you can choose to fight your addictions and return to being the person God meant for you to be. You can return to being the amazing woman I love. You can start on the future with Asians with freckles that we had talked about last June. You can have me beside you on your long road to recovery as I have promised you I would be.

Those are your choices. Decide for yourself. No one else can do it.

Everything that has a beginning has an end. Not everything you have stays forever, but there are things you would be glad to fight for so you can have them longer. Anything worth having is worth fighting for. The only things that life denies you are the things that you’re willing to let pass by. So fight for the things you love and love the things worth fighting for.

Don’t let that lovely dude or girl slip out of your hands. Do all what it takes to get him/her stick with you forever.

I hope you’re not so stupid that you’re going to let your addictions destroy the love we have between us.

The worst loneliness is to be not comfortable with yourself.

~Mark Twain

You must really be lonely to be needing the alcohol and drugs as badly as you do. Why do you hate yourself so much that you would destroy your health, your body, your mind and your future the way you have been for the past seventeen months.

Honestly, if you don’t think you’ve been destroying yourself…ask yourself why the drop in grades between your freshman year when you were taking five classes a semester and made Dean’s List and last year, where you only took four but failed to make Dean’s List and I doubt you even broke a 3.0 average.

I am fairly certain that if you have another semester like your last two, you will likely lose your scholarship and have to drop out of Emmanuel College. Is that what you really want? When you were accepted to the school you tweeted that you were so excited and that it was so important to you to go to Emmanuel because it was a Catholic college.

I have to wonder where that excited and enthusiastic woman has gone. Last December, you posted that you wondered where the semester had gone and that you were just getting in to the swing of school. The problem is that was during FINALS WEEK. Could it be that you didn’t remember the semester going by because you were drunk or high five-to-seven days of the week almost every week by your own accounts.

This is what your addictions have done to you. Alcohol and drugs have turned you into something that you would loathe if you were healthy. You have gone from being strong, happy, smart, beautiful, ambitious and proud to weak, lonely, stupid, ugly, apathetic and ashamed. I pity the drug-addicted alcoholic you have been for seventeen weeks.

I do not know the drug-addicted alcoholic, and I really don’t ever care to. She isn’t the beautiful, feisty, stubborner than a mule, intelligent and strong woman I love—the fiery redhead that loves me and told me “Sarangheyo” so many times and was so proud to have learned how to say I love you in Korean.

I have loved you all of your life. I do not know how to not love you. I still love you and always will. I still want to marry you and share my life with you. I still want to be there to walk beside you on your long road to recovery. That is all. That is who I am. That is what I do.

It really is YOUR CHOICE.

CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE. CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT FROM YOUR LIFE.

What ever you do, don’t blame me. I didn’t walk away from you. I never stopped loving you, being your friend or caring about you. You did all that to us—to yourself. I never betrayed you like Ian did or threw you away like Jarrod did. I never abused you like your father did. All I have ever done is been there for you—a constant presence in your life that you could count on, trust and know loved you.

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.

Dan @ 2:38 am
Filed under: Life with Ellie andpv
Fearing the Truth

Posted on Wednesday 24 October 2012

Today, I got a comment on a photo I posted on one of the social media websites. It was a response to a photo of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley where I had basically told the viewers that the photo was taken before Lauren Elizabeth Kelley fell to her addictions. The photo was taken in 2008 and long before Lauren Elizabeth Kelley stopped believing in herself, loving herself or trusting herself. She still knew she was strong, beautiful, smart and was confident in herself.

The comment was from Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s brother, Johnny Walker Kelley Jr.—who is likely a drug addict and alcoholic in denial himself. He said:

“Yo dude this has to stop this is wicked messed up”

Well, I agree, I wish it could stop. But I won’t stop until Lauren Elizabeth Kelley gets the help she needs for herself and is on her way to being clean, sober and healthy once again.

Last summer, when I was trying to get Lauren Elizabeth Kelley the help she needed, I asked her brother, Johnny Jr., for help. Johnny said he wasn’t going to get involved. He said it was her decision and he wasn’t willing to upset his father or his sister because it wasn’t his business. I e-mailed him the documents that his mother Sue had asked me to put together regarding Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions and changes in her behavior.

I said to Johnny:

“Read the documentation I put together for your mother. If you do and you agree with what I’ve said, then help me help your sister Lauren. If you read it and don’t agree, I won’t ever bother you about it again.”

Well, Johnny wouldn’t read it…he said he couldn’t be bothered. He wouldn’t help his beautiful sister. He then turned his back on me—someone who had been his friend all of his life—someone who he considered family, and considered him family. His betrayal was very painful, especially considering that I was the person who had saved him from one of the stupidest mistakes of his life.

Unfortunately, I believe that if Johnny Jr. and Sue had worked with me, that we could have gotten Lauren Elizabeth Kelley the help she needed and she wouldn’t have had to gone through the last seventeen months as she has. If she had gotten help last summer, before she went back to school, she would probably have stayed on Dean’s List and wouldn’t be on the verge of losing her scholarship at the moment.

Johnny Walker Kelley Jr. is as big a coward as his father. He has no honor and no loyalty. He has proven himself to be a pretty worthless human being that only cares for himself. The way he treated his girlfriend Tara speaks volumes about the kind of person Johnny Walker Kelley Jr. is.

I think Johnny Walker Kelley Jr. fears the truth for the same reasons his father does—the truth is ugly—the truth is Johnny Jr. is a drug-addict and an alcoholic in denial. I am pretty certain that his chronic depression was the underlying cause of his drinking and drug use, and that if he ever lets his depression go unchecked again, he will be drinking and using drugs again.

I know this because I was the person his mother Sue trusted to talk to Johnny Jr. when he flunked out of Bentley College three years ago. He had nearly gotten arrested several times and finally ended up in the hospital. His mother and I got him into treatment and his problems with drugs and alcohol suddenly stopped, which I doubt is a coincidence. I believe that Johnny was very lucky—his hospitalization prevented him from getting arrested, seriously injured or killed and also got him the help he needed.

His beautiful sister, my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hasn’t been that lucky. I fear she will have to end up in jail, the hospital or worse before she realizes she has a problem with drugs and alcohol. Until Lauren Elizabeth Kelley hits rock bottom, I doubt she will realize how much of a problem she has. Her brother Johnny Jr. was one of the few people she might listen to, since she knows he has had problems with drugs and alcohol, but he doesn’t have the courage or backbone to do it. Johnny Jr. is a coward and he fears the truth.

I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley realizes her addictions are a problem before she is seriously injured or killed, before she ruins her health, her mind, her spirit and her future, and before she loses her scholarship and has to drop out of Emmanuel College.

I doubt that will happen, but I keep writing this blog to remind Lauren Elizabeth Kelley of what an amazing and beautiful woman she is—why I love her so much that I asked her to marry me. I want her to know that I still believe in her, trust her, have faith in her, and love her—even in spite of all the horrible things her addictions have made her say and do.

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.

Dan @ 9:59 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andMy Life andpv
Doing The Most Good

Posted on Wednesday 24 October 2012

Love is… when your heart is set on doing the most good for the one you love.

I think that is a pretty good rule to follow. Sometimes you have to do something that the person you love isn’t going to be happy about. Sometimes they won’t understand what you’re doing is the best thing for them and that you are doing it because you love them. If you truly love someone, you sometimes have to choose to not do something they want you to do because not doing it is what is best for them.

A good case in point is last summer, when Lauren Elizabeth Kelley asked me to buy her two bottles of Barcardi 151. Lauren had wanted me to just buy the alcohol and give it to her. I refused to do it. I stand by my reasons, which were:

  1. It was illegal to do. Lauren wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol herself and knew that buying it with a fake ID was both illegal and risky.
  2. It was a betrayal of the trust her parents had placed in me as their friend when they asked me to watch out for, guide, protect and mentor their two oldest children.
  3. It would have been irresponsible of me as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friend.
  4. I didn’t think it was good for her. I guess, subconsciously, I suspected Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was an alcoholic, but didn’t know it consciously at the time.

Now, if the conditions were different, I might have considered buying her the alcohol she wanted, but only under very rigid conditions. If she really wanted to experiment with alcohol and not just have it to share with her friends, that would have been different.

When I was growing up, I was allowed access to alcohol when I was even younger than she was at the time. My family’s approach to alcohol was simple, if I wanted something I could ask for it, and my father would buy it and I could drink it—but only at home and under his supervision. If I got sick, well, that was my own fault. This was a safe way for me and my siblings to experiment with alcohol. I would have done the same thing for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.

I wasn’t going to give Lauren alcohol to give to her friends. If I were going to buy Lauren alcohol, I would only do it if I were there when she was drinking it to make sure she was safe and to take care of her. But that wasn’t what Lauren wanted. She wanted to share it with her friends. If her friends got injured or sick from it, Lauren would have been responsible—and I would have been responsible too.

Likewise, when Lauren Elizabeth Kelley again asked me to buy alcohol for her and she offered herself to me for doing so, I refused. I think this both angered her and confused her. Lauren knows I love her—I had made that abundantly clear during the previous week of talking to her about marriage, having children, and spending the rest of our lives together. Lauren also knew I was physically attracted to her. I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was angry because, even though I love her and wanted her, I refused her request.

What I don’t think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley understands yet is that the reason I refused her request is because I love her. I love her and would not take advantage of her that way—that my love for her wouldn’t allow me to let her debase herself in such a way. I love Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and would never dishonor her that way. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is beautiful and desirable, but only a selfish person who doesn’t love her or care about her would ever do that to her—someone like Jarrod.

The posts I have written about or to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, both here, and on Twitter and Facebook, are also part of my being set on doing the most good for the woman I love. No one else is telling Lauren Elizabeth Kelley the truth about what she has been doing to herself, where it can lead or what the possible consequences are. In fact, no one else has cared enough about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to realize that she has a problem with drugs and alcohol and no one else has tried to help her.

I don’t know if the amazing woman I love—the feisty, strong, brave, smart, devout, stubborn, beautiful, compassionate, gracious, and good Irish lass that loves me—even still exists. I believe she does, mainly because I know how strong, stubborn and smart Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is. I keep hoping that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will come to her senses and fight her addictions and return to being whom God has always meant for her to be.

I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is strong enough, brave enough, and smart enough to beat her addictions. It won’t be easy, but if Lauren Elizabeth Kelley ever gets the will to do so, I know she can do it. If Lauren Elizabeth Kelley doesn’t think her drinking and drug use is a problem, I would ask her to just look at her grades and how well she has done in her classes at Emmanuel College the past year, and ask her why she failed to make Dean’s List the last two semesters?

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is one of the smartest and most intelligent women I know. Her freshman year, she managed to make Dean’s List while taking five classes each semester and came out of the year with a 3.634 GPA. Yet, her sophomore year, taking only four classes a semester, she failed to make Dean’s List either semester. I know that it was her drinking and drug use that caused her to fall so far short of what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is capable of doing.

I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is still reading this blog. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley sees this post and realizes the truth of what I am saying. I hope Lauren Elizabeth Kelley finally fights her addictions and returns to being the woman God has always intended for her to be.

“Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous.”

~President Snow, The Hunger Games

I have a lot of hope and pray that it is dangerous to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions and brings about their end. I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley believes in hope…after all, she was a huge Obama supporter in 2008.

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.

Dan @ 4:11 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andMy Life andpv
Crying Out Now: A Binge Drinker Tells Her Truth

Posted on Tuesday 23 October 2012

There is another great post over on the Crying Out Now Blog. It is written by an anonymous binge drinker who is trying to get sober. In so many ways, the words she writes could easily be Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s story in the near future. Here is the entire post.

A Binge Drinker Tells Her Truth

***Submitted by Anonymous

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever written, but I can’t not write it.

I’m hoping that getting it down on paper and seeing how bad it looks will convince me to stop binge drinking. I’ve spent the past hour or so reading other stories on this site, and I’m completely blown away by the bravery and honesty of everyone. Thank you all so much.

So I’m 28 and I’ve been drinking since I was 16. It’s been out of control since my early twenties. I’ve always thought I’m not an alcoholic because I rarely drink during the day, and I can go weeks without drinking. But I can’t face social situations sober, and I drink in secret.

I have driven drunk once, because I couldn’t face a dinner with my closest friends in the world with only one or two drinks; I had to drink half a bottle of wine in my car first. The thought that I could have killed someone still scares the hell out of me, but not enough to stop drinking. I’ve rarely had sex sober. Or kissed anyone for the first time sober. When my sister and I go to our parents place for dinner every couple of weeks, I drink in secret and then have to make excuses why I can’t drive home.

Once I went to birthday drinks with an old flatmate and her friends, who I didn’t know very well. Because I was so nervous I drank a bottle of wine and god knows how many vodkas before I left my flat, and ended up so drunk that my neighbors found me later passed out on the driveway, covered in vomit, and I ended up in the back of an ambulance on my way to the ER. I have no idea how I got home that night, but I think I probably walked, both along busy roads and quiet dark streets. Anything could have happened to me. I was so lucky.

These are the very worst examples. If I wrote about every negative event in my life that included alcohol this would go way over 1000 words. But you get the picture. And nothing extreme has happened for awhile now, and I don’t drink everyday, but when I do it’s easily a bottle of wine, sometimes more. I always used to tell myself that I need to drink because I’m naturally shy. When I’m around new people, or people I don’t feel comfortable with, I need a few glasses of wine. But it never stops at a few glasses. Once I start I just keep drinking. And I do the same with my best friends and my family too, even though I can sometimes be around them totally sober and be completely comfortable. So it’s gone from drinking to be confident, to drinking because I can, because I love it, and I love getting drunk.

So I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t want to go to AA and I can’t face admitting any of this to my family or friends. They know I have a drinking problem but they don’t know it’s this bad. And I don’t want to stop drinking completely. I want to still be able to have a glass of wine or champagne every now and then.

There are no words to express how much I love drinking, especially wine, and especially the first mouthful. Almost all of the best nights of my life have involved copious amounts of alcohol. Binge drinking is such a part of life in Australia, and so many of my friendships are based on going out and getting drunk. I’m scared of what I’ll lose if I stop drinking. But then again I’m terrified of what I’ll lose if I don’t.

Can anyone offer me any advice? Has anyone done this, gone from drinking heavily to just having the odd glass of wine every now and then? Is it possible? Any advice would be so appreciated.

Like the author, I am pretty sure that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been drinking since she was 15 or 16. In fact, I have a video of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley talking about drinking when she was 16. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s drinking has been out of control since she was 19.

Again, like the author, I think Lauren Elizabeth Kelley tries to tell herself that she is not an alcoholic because she rarely drinks during the day—preferring to drink late at night under the cover of darkness and can go weeks without drinking. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley also doesn’t seem to face social situations very well sober and does much of her drinking in secret—hiding her behavior from her family and the other people she loves.

In many ways, the fact that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley drinks in secret and hides it from her family and loved ones is why I didn’t realize what was going on with my beautiful and beloved Irish lass until a month after she stopped speaking to me when I confronted her about her drinking. I did not know she was an alcoholic or a drug-addict, but in hindsight, I can clearly see that there were signs that I might have noticed had I been looking for them.

Like the author, I believe that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has driven drunk and/or high. In fact, I am almost certain, based on Lauren’s own admissions in her social media posts that she was drunk and/or high last January, when she had her car accident. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other things that the author writes about are true—like having to be drunk or high to have sex—again, from Lauren’s own social media posts, that seems to be likely.

Like the author, I think Lauren has found herself in shameful situations because she was too drunk or high to take care of herself. Last January, Lauren wrote that she wasn’t responsible for anything that happened in the last twelve hours. Lauren had gone out to a sports bar in Boston with her friend Michelle and stayed someplace in Boston overnight—likely with some random guy she picked up at the bar, since neither Michelle or Lauren has an apartment in Boston and her dormitory at Emmanuel College was closed for the winter holiday break. I think that her embarrassment and shame are the reasons she wants to disavow her actions. She, like the author, has been very lucky she hasn’t been robbed, assaulted, raped or murdered while she has been so vulnerable due to being drunk and/or high.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is a binge drinker—like the author of the post above. In fact, Lauren doesn’t think anything of getting high by smoking marijuana heavily before going out for a night of drinking. One time, Lauren wrote:

“it was her favorite hour, the smoky pre-game to happy hour.”

From her own words she smoked weed for about an hour and then went out drinking, starting at about five in the afternoon. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley was out drinking until just past three in the morning by her own words. She had spent the better part of twelve hours getting high or drinking. I’d point out that this is not unusual for her. Lauren posted a photo of some her drinks that night, which you can see below.

Some of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s Drinks at the Cask and Flagon on 25 Nov 2011

Some of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s Drinks at the Cask and Flagon on 25 Nov 2011

I think Lauren thinks she needs alcohol or drugs to have fun. Lauren has associated drinking and doing drugs with the social parts of her life. Like the author, so many, if not all, of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friendships are based on drinking or getting high. And, I’m sure that self-lock, which I wrote about earlier, is causing her to be frightened of what she will lose if she stops drinking and doing drugs. I, like the author, am terrified of what Lauren Elizabeth Kelley will lose if she doesn’t stop.

Like the author, I don’t think that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wants to admit the truth to her family. Her father John and brother Johnny Jr. are both alcoholics in denial. Her mother Sue is too terrified of John to be able to help Lauren, but wants to know the truth—and probably does realize what I have been telling her all along has been the truth. Lauren’s sister Bridget doesn’t really know what is going on and is at risk of falling to the affliction that has claimed her father, her brother and sister.

Part of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s problem is shame and embarrassment at what she has done because of her addictions. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is a fundamentally good person. Lauren knows right from wrong; is a devout Catholic, and has good values and morals. I think this is why Lauren Elizabeth Kelley does things and then wants to deny they ever happened.

I think that because Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is fundamentally a good devout Catholic, I believe she had to tell herself that Jarrod loved her—when all he was doing was taking advantage of her addictions and trading her the drugs and alcohol her addictions required for the sex he wanted. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley could not admit that her addictions had basically made her prostitute herself for the drugs and alcohol her addictions require.

Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is also one of the most honest people I know. I think this is why Lauren has never spoken to me since she pushed me away and started telling the lies she has been telling for the past seventeen months—so she can tell herself that she has never lied to me or broken my trust in her or betrayed me. In fact, while she has lied about me, even perjured herself—most likely under coercion from her cowardly fatheras far as I know Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has never lied to me.

I hope that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley realizes that she has a serious problem with alcohol and drugs very soon. I doubt she will be able to keep her scholarship and stay at Emmanuel College for much longer if she continues to do drugs and drink as she has been doing.

I know she is still doing drugs, and that means she is likely still drinking, as I don’t see her giving up one of her addictions but not giving up the other addiction. One of her friends posted that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and another friend were so high and then followed up with a post about hempfest as seen in this redacted screenshot.

Some of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friends’ Tweets

Some of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s friends’ Tweets

I hope my beautiful and much beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley realizes she has a problem with alcohol and drugs before it costs her too much more. Her addictions have cost her academically, financially, socially, psychologically, physically and spiritually—they have not cost her legally yet, but that is not far off if Lauren stays her course and remains the drug-addicted alcoholic she has been for the past seventeen months.

If she is really weak enough, stupid enough and cowardly enough to remain the drug-addicted alcoholic much longer, then I fear my strong, intelligent and brave, beautiful, feisty Irish rose is gone for good.

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.

Dan @ 3:44 pm
Filed under: Crying Out Now andLife with Ellie andpv
Can I Borrow $25

Posted on Monday 22 October 2012

My friend and fellow twinless twin Jim had a link to this story posted on Facebook. I thought I’d post the story here.

****************************************************

CAN I BORROW $25?

Once upon a time; —- A man came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find his 5-year old son waiting for him at the door.

SON: ‘Daddy, May I ask you a question?’

DAD: ‘Yeah sure, what it is?’ replied the man.

SON: ‘Daddy, how much do you make an hour?’

DAD: ‘That’s none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?’ the man said angrily.

SON: ‘I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?’

DAD: ‘If you must know, I make $50 an hour.’

SON: ‘Oh,’ the little boy replied, with his head down.

SON: ‘Daddy, may I please borrow $25?’

The father was furious, ‘If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I don’t work hard every day for such childish frivolity’s.’

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.

The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy’s questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?

After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down , and started to think:

Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $25.00 and he really didn’t ask for money very often The man went to the door of the little boy’s room and opened the door.

‘Are you asleep, son?’ He asked.

‘No daddy, I’m awake,’ replied the boy.

‘I’ve been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier’ said the man. ‘It’s been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here’s the $25 you asked for.’

The little boy sat straight up, smiling. ‘Oh, thank you daddy!’ he yelled. Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills.

The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again.

The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.

‘Why do you want more money if you already have some?’ the father grumbled.

‘Because I didn’t have enough, but now I do,’ the little boy replied.

‘Daddy, I have $50 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you.’

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness.

MORAL & LESSON FROM THE STORY: -
******************************
It’s just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts. Do remember to share that $50 worth of your time with someone you love.

If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of hours —- But the family & friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives!

I think there is too much emphasis on working and monetary/financial success. Out of all of my friends, some of the happiest and most fulfilled are some of the poorest. They may not be rich in money, but they are rich in so many other things that mere money can’t buy. They spend time together as families, something that the workaholics that are so focussed on their material wealth often fail to be able to do.

Over the years, I’ve found so many things that really matter can not be bought. No amount of money could have saved Gee from her cancer. I do not regret spending the time I took off of work when Gee was ill and then again when she was dying. I cherish every moment I got to spend with my beautiful Gee. She was the most gracious of people I have ever known and every hour I got with her was worth a hundred years without her. I was lucky to get a chance to have her in my life and was very fortunate to marry her. Being her husband was an honor and a privilege.

Likewise, no amount of money could save Lauren Elizabeth Kelley from her addictions. I was lucky to get to spend as much time with Lauren Elizabeth as I did before her addictions took over her life. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, when she is healthy and not a victim of her addictions, is one of the most amazing women I have ever met and the only one I have ever loved more than my late wife Gee. That is really no surprise, given that I have known Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and loved her all of her life in some fashion, over two decades and more than ten times as long as I had Gee in my life. I have cared for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley all of her life and been her friend, her guardian, her mentor and confidante for many years.

Last summer, I asked Lauren Elizabeth Kelley to marry me. For a week we talked of all the things that might matter if we were going to start a life together—raising children, what we’d name them, when we’d get married, where we’d get married and so much more. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley told me “Sarangheyo” and that she loved me dozens of times during that week. She asked to see the claddagh ring I had bought her and I told her I would bring it by the next time I was going to see her. The next day, I confronted her, via text message and private messages on Facebook, about her drinking and she stopped speaking to me. I did not know that she had been falling to drug addiction and alcoholism for the better part of a month at the time. I later discovered the facts through seeing her social media posts.

I still hope that my beautiful Irish rose learns to love herself again and trust herself again. I hope that she does this before her addictions damage her future, her health, her mind and her body much more. I believe in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and know that the woman I love is one of the strongest, smartest and most stubborn I have ever met—all reasons I love her so. I know that she could beat her addictions, but only if she chooses to fight them.

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.

Dan @ 11:58 pm
Filed under: Life with Ellie andMy Life andpv