The metal tree was going to be a something fun I was going to decorate for Christmas. I had planned on adding some green garland around it, ornaments, lights, etc. It’s ironic that this is exactly the type of thing I enjoy and take satisfaction from – giving new life to something, making it into something special.

Looking at it, it looks like its ready to grow — its shape suggests a form meant for growth – leaves, blossoms, and life. But it never does. It cannot. Because it was never given what living things need in order to grow.

The barren tree stands where something living should be, its barren branches waiting to blossom but never changing.

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 dissolve. Trust rusts and erodes. Intimacy becomes brittle. The tree may remain standing, but it is no longer alive.

Conversations become hollow. Joy never takes root. There is no fruit, no shade, no renewal — 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.

You stay, hoping warmth and patience will awaken life, believing that if you give enough, forgive enough, understand enough, something will finally bloom.

But addiction does not nurture — it replaces, corrodes, and starves. The relationship remains standing, visible to the world, but inside it is cold and barren.

A relationship needs presence, accountability, emotional safety, and care to grow.

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.