He's gone. I made him leave. We are broken up. When I finally said enough was enough, my heart broke. I had several panic attacks. My appetite has been ruined since he left. I lost my father to cancer, and this is such a very different, very specific form of grief, but I don't regret my decision. I know i did the right thing for me. The week after it happened, I felt free. I felt like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I am in my 20's, he is in his 30's, and I stagnated more and more throughout the course of our relationship. I stopped going to school. I stopped playing music. I stopped going out and spending time with my friends. I'd sit at home, waiting for him to spend time with me, waiting for him to change, and he never would. He chose alcohol over our love. He was, he is and always will be the love of my life. I imagined a home we would build with our own hands-he is a carpenter. I imagined the babies we would have. All of that is gone now, and I have to build my life around a new future for myself. I filtered all of myself into him and his dreams, and the moment I started to wake up and focus on me--it all fell apart. I applied to a school a town away, and that was the catalyst for change. Due to financial difficulties, I probably won't be going to the school after all and will be staying in town, which seems ironic. I'm grateful to have my life back, but it is amazing how overnight I went from being the love of his life to the psycho ex girlfriend. I was trying to give him time to find a new place, but I couldn't handle it. He was processing the situation with extreme coldness and anger. I couldn't take it, I told him to leave. He is now angry that I won't give him the remainder of his rent money, even though I've covered him before in countless ways to make up for the loss of rent money. He is now refusing to give back a few things of mine, and we aren't speaking.

To be honest, I am devastated. I miss him. He is my best friend and it kills me that I can't talk to him. Changing my routine is the hardest thing. I was use to waking up in his arms, coming home to him, cooking dinner together, making his lunch in the morning. Spending our rare 1 day a week sober and hanging out. I miss singing with him. I miss his songs. I miss every damn thing about him, but I know I couldn't take it anymore. 

I sometimes feel like being in an active alanon community helped bring me to the light, but it at times hinder my ability to wake up and smell the BS. As long as I was going to meetings, it was fine. I was taking the steps to take care of me, and then his drinking would be acceptable in a way. When I stopped going, I didn't have this ever present focus in my life making it seem "ok" in a way. That we have all had alcoholics in our lives, and that as long as we banded together and worked the steps, it could help bring us to serenity. I don't want to seem condescending, but the 12 steps wasn't the solution. Me finding the strength within myself to know what was best and see beyond the ever blinding light that is love is what pulled me through and having an insanely amazing support system of friends to gently but effectively snap me out of it. I'm not saying you should stop going to alanon, but I'm saying that sometimes it requires more than that. I felt the boards allowed me to vent without the judgement of others that I found in many face to face meetings, and for that I'm grateful, but it took some time away from alanon to allow my own conscious to decide what was right free from the mantras and the words. I wish now, I'd have the strength to have ended things sooner, but I am who I am, and I did what I thought was best in the moment, and I ultimately don't have any regret. I loved an amazing man, who was amazingly sick. My love will never go away, but the relationship must come to an end and I must take care of me now.