You're listening to the middle of the holidays.

We're in between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And I have been thinking about you guys so much.

In fact, before I just sat down to my office and hit the record button to make this

for you, I was thinking about all of the past holiday seasons that I've had loving somebody that suffers with addiction.

And I was thinking about the very first holiday.

I owned my own apartment and my the guy that I was dating who ended up being my

husband was over at my apartment and we celebrated Christmas together.

We had gone to the outlets and purchased a whole bunch of knickknacks for each other and wrapped them up and put

them under the tree.

And there was such a part of me that felt like I had been waiting a really long time to share this moment with somebody. Even though I was really, really young, I always

felt like I couldn't wait to have these special moments with and share them with another man.

And here I was, I had made hot cocoa and we were unwrapping gifts and I had the Christmas music on and the candles lit and it just felt so

warm and perfect and thoughtful and loving.

That was the first Christmas and then I compare it 10 years later

to the last Christmas that I spent before getting divorced from that very same man. And that Christmas was horrific. That Christmas day he left early in the morning after we had opened gifts to go by drugs,

which of course I didn't know about at the time.

He had made up some excuse that he needed to get a laptop from work or something.

And I wanted to believe him, so I did, even though in the back of my head I knew that this was a lie and something felt off.

But I contrast the first Christmas to the last Christmas and it helps me reflect on how progressive this disease is,

how it slowly takes over the people that we love if they don't get control over it, that it's not just

this one day we wake up and roll over and see somebody that's a completely different person than who we fell in love with.

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