

I was passionately in love with a parasitic substance abuser
It was fun. By all the gods people have invented, it was fun. She was amazing at turning on the charm. All my friends were thrilled for me, saying how delightful she was
What they didn’t see was the manipulation, the abuse and expert-level twisting of everything to be either my responsibility or my fault
It all fell apart when I was busy working and she started using again. We weren’t angels. We drank (her drinking worried me, and that’s saying a lot given how fond of booze I am), we took drugs, we were playing very hard
If I hadn’t ended it, I know that it would have cost me everything. I was perilously close to doing things that would have cost me my career (which I did eventually anyway, but under quite different circumstances)
But without my “supervision”, she slipped back into getting high as soon as she was awake. I started to see why she was a child in an adult’s body
One day, her excuses for her shitty behaviour sounded even more hollow than usual, so I pulled the pin.
I learnt a lot. I’m glad it happened, but I wouldn’t do it again.
My bedroom is for sleeping and fucking
Admittedly, so is my sofa, but one is definitely more purpose-built…