This isn’t going to be a long post… nor a witty one, or pretty or clever or any of my usual antics online.

I’m sad. SAD. Sad for a friend in recovery who wrote me an email today telling me she had relapsed.

There was once a time where I would’ve written a long dissertation telling her why she should come back and to put the bottle down. That she had every thing to live for and please please please don’t die slowly. I’d have told her that there IS a solution. That it CAN get better. Written reams on steps and what to do and how to do it and why. As if my emotion or passion can chase away the sick of an actively using alcoholic.

I didn’t. I couldn’t. You see she deserves better than that from me.

I love her in only the way you can love a fellow battered soul. We’ve shared SO much with each other through the last few years that she feels like family… even though I’ve not ever met her. (Not that that matters… the heart can be transferred over wifi too) She knows. She knows the answers, the solution, the issue. She doesn’t need me to tell her those things. Not even a little.

What she doesn’t know is that she is lovable. That she is worthy of getting better; deserving of the happiness and joy that’s waiting for her after she throws away that bottle. That she’s NOT alone. That, even if she feels like no one else does, I love her. To tell her that her humor and warmth and transparency and kindness and sarcastic biting wit is everything; and the way she can say only one word and make my entire day. She doesn’t know how she touches other’s lives in ways that defy explanation; and that her smile lights up an entire room.

She doesn’t know she’s worth it. But I do.

So I simply typed… i love you no matter what. i don’t want you to hurt. the sick CAN go away and then put a stupid heart emoticon as if that could even begin to relay how much I care.

It wasn’t enough. But maybe this is. Maybe she’ll never read this. But the simple fact that she reached out to me over the interwebz says that maybe she will.

You are never alone. The sun does come back out again. There is a solution. And I’ll be… right… here.