You asked me once, “What if it was me and you?” Let me tell you what me and you looks like.

It looks like me driving around the city at two in the morning, six months pregnant, peeking down side streets for a sight of your car. It looks like me wondering if my husband is coming home from work today because last month he left the house and didn’t come home until three days later. It looks like my sons and daughter asking when daddy’s coming home. It looks like me driving to a trap house in the city with a gun on my hip, arguing with your dealer about where my husband is and how much he owes this time. It’s me lying in bed at night by myself, crying, while I wonder just where you are.

You could be the best husband in the world, and you will treat every girl (as you always have) like gold, but you will always be an addict first and a husband second. You have to fight those demons every day. I will never understand that craving, but I will understand that pain.

You asked what if it was me and you?

You and me looks like me finding you in the tub with a pipe in your hand and an empty baggie on the floor. Or worse, your daughter finding you on the bathroom floor, seizing, foam coming from your mouth. It looks like hospital and EMS bills from the overdoses they can save you with Narcan. It looks like you selling family heirlooms after you forgot to go to work for three days while you baked in the car in some parking lot. It looks like weeks in jail for possession, detoxing only to smoke or shoot up the moment you’re free. It looks like you sneaking off to a motel when you need to detox again. It looks like you having two cell phones; one for your family and one for your dealer. It looks like you relapsing. Over. And over. Until you die. Until you shatter my heart.

And my worst fear? It looks like me rolling over in bed one morning, and you; you look unnaturally stiff, are cool to the touch, and foaming at the mouth. And it looks like kids whose father won't see them graduate, or get a girlfriend, or work their first job. It looks like a widow who's thirty-two years old visiting the grave of a broken man who believed no one cared enough about him to mourn him when he was gone. My life is a constant fear; waiting for the day you end up on a table at the county morgue.

You told me maybe one day when you were sick of being a dumbass and getting fucked over you’d realize you should be with me. Please don’t. I am begging you. Please don’t realize you should be with me. Please don’t come back into my life and need me. Please don’t come to me and beg me to let you back in. Because I will. Because I won’t be able to resist you. And this will be our future.

You will break me, you will break our kids, and you will break yourself. I will always love you, and there will always be a part of me that is IN love with you…and there will always be part of me that will whisper, “What if he could change? What if he won’t be this way forever? What if I can make him want to be better? What if I can be his reason to live? To change?” And there will always be part of me wishing it could be different.

Wishing I could see you come home from work, wrestle me to the floor in the kitchen, and shower me with kisses. Wishing I could watch you tuck the kids into bed, kiss their forehead, and turn out the light. Wishing I could feel your heartbeat against me as you slide underneath the covers, and wake up wrapped in your arms. Wishing you’d be there for me like I’d be there for you.

But I know better. And while a future with you may be these wonderful dreams, it will also be those horrible nightmares. Loving you, choosing you, means losing me…I will lose myself in a useless quest to “save you” when the only person who can save you is yourself. I will always love you, and I think deep down you know that. Even after you disappoint me a thousand times...we'll always love you. If you find me someday, and things are different, I will be too weak to say no…but tonight I feel strong. And I feel safer without you, saner without you. And I’m so sorry, my love, but I have to choose me. I just have to.

You're not in the cards for me. You can't even be in the same deck.