Dear Justice:

“how do you move on and cope with the guilt of leaving a depressed addict?”- but you didn’t leave him. He left you, didn’t he?

“I had feelings for him immediately when I met him”- you had feelings for him before you learned who he is: what he valued, what motivated him, and so on.

“I had never felt chemistry like I had for him. I felt 100% comfortable around him and his presence made me feel like home”- nothing more intoxicating than the feeling of what we wish a home to be, what we wish it was.

What about him triggered that feeling of home- could be something in the way he looked, something about his smile, or his voice, or his eyes.

“I realized how in love with him I really was”- you were/ are in love with him. But notice: this in love feeling, this attachment and attraction, the home feeling, these started before you knew him and were fueled all along by something within you that was triggered, or activated, not by who he is.

First there was the Feeling, then you liked a whole lot about him and about spending time with him, you paid attention to all the wonderful things about him and put out of your mind, best you could and for as long as you could, all the not so wonderful things about him.

“He is such a depressed and lost soul and so addicted to these substances… I can’t help but blame myself for feeling like  I could have done more and also feeling like I enabled his behavior for so long”- reads like his liking of alcohol and drugs was independent of you.

About “could have done more”- maybe you can volunteer for some agency that tries to help young drug addicts who are depressed, young people just like this man that your thread is about. There are so many lost souls. And although it is this one man that triggered your  in-love feelings, the other lost souls are of no less value and each one needs help.

I hope to read more from you.

anita