The metal tree was supposed to be a fun project for Christmas. I planned to add some green garland around it, ornaments, lights, etc.
Maybe it’s ironic in way that this is the sort of thing I find drawn to post Salvation – Giving life into to something, making it into something special.
It looks like it’s ready to grow — its shape suggests a form meant for growth – leaves, blossoms, and life.
But it cannot. Because it was never given what living things need in order to grow.
The barren tree stands where something living should have been. Its barren branches waiting to blossom but never changing.
Simply put, it was watered with the wrong thing.
Alcohol was poured where love should have been, and the soil & the tree hardened. Each time it was poured into the soil, it replaced what should have sustained growth and made it stronger.
Promises are washed away. Trust rusts and erodes. Intimacy becomes hollow. The tree may remain standing, but it is no longer alive.
There is no fruit, no shade, no renewal — no life only the cold endurance of survival.
One of the hardest parts is that to others, they see a tree ready to grow & blossom.
They might even ask, “Why would you leave? You’ve built something and you’re going to walk away?”
But you know the truth when you touch it: it is hard, unyielding, lifeless. You cannot rest beneath it. You cannot be fed by it. You cannot grow alongside it.
Seasons pass, then years, yet nothing ever blossoms, no leaves come. Only the quiet pain of waiting & hoping for a spring that never arrives.
That is what loving someone with an addiction can feel like.
Being in a relationship with an alcoholic is like living on an island. It means feeling alone even though most of your time is spent together.
It means having the wind knocked out of you after you just breathed in a sigh of relief.
Being in a relationship with an alcoholic means feeling sad even during moments of happiness.
Addiction does not nurture — it only consumes. It replaces, corrodes, and starves. The relationship remains standing, visible to the world, but inside it is cold and barren.
You stay, hoping warmth and patience will awaken life, believing that if you give enough, forgive enough, understand enough, something will finally bloom.
A relationship needs presence, accountability, emotional safety, and care to grow.
There’s a well-known saying, “You cannot choose both love and addiction.” When alcohol becomes the primary nourishment, love is starved out.
One day you finally understand that love can’t grow where it is never truly watered, and you have to walk away to find ground where something living can finally take root.
Leaving the tree is not a failure of love.
It is an act of realizing a truth.
Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is stop pouring your life into something that was never alive to begin with — and walk toward soil where real roots can grow.