The love is the easy part. It's the drowning that will kill you. The phone rings late at night and your whole body clenches, a fist of ice in your gut. You know, before you even answer, that it’s them. Or it’s about them. The sirens in the distance are not just sirens; they are a soundtrack to the slow-motion car crash of a life you are witnessing, a life you are tethered to by the fierce, brutal bonds of love. Loving someone in the grips of addiction is not a metaphor. It is a drowning. And the most terrifying part? They are pulling you under with them. You feel the water closing over your own head. You gasp for air, but the only thing you taste is their chaos, their promises, their sickness. For more on this, see read this. Your life, which was once a vibrant, sprawling thing, has shrunk to the size of their next fix, their next drink, their next lie. We don’t talk about the rage. The searing, righteous anger that burns alongside the love. The fury at the waste. The fury at the disease. The fury at God, at the universe, for letting this