On Loving, Letting Go, and Fumbling Towards Recovery
By Sprite Gravier
When I first moved to L.A. and tried to get sober, I thought I had to build a fortress of people around me. Friends, sponsors, mentors, meetings—anything to fill the silence that used to be drowned out by the drink. And for a while, it seemed to work. I was never alone, but I was also never still. I clung to people like driftwood in a storm, hoping they’d keep me from drowning.
Then, one by one, the people changed. Some drifted away. Some relapsed. Some simply stopped returning my calls. A few left this world entirely.
Over time, I had to learn that support isn’t scaffolding—it’s a bridge I can walk across when I need it. But the walking? That’s strictly up to me.
There’s no contract in recovery that says anyone has to stay. People vanish all the time—ghosted texts, missed meetings, sudden silence. It used to feel like betrayal. Now it just feels like gravity. I’ve learned not to mourn every exit. Some people are chapters, not novels. They arrive to hold a mirror, offer a hand, or show you what not to become. Then they go, and that’s okay.
But not all exits feel okay.
I met Conor in rehab, and he felt like a lighthouse in the fog. Blond, cute as hell, and creative as fuck. We bonded instantly in music group, reading the same books, finishing each other’s thoughts mid-sentence, and cracking each other up with just a look. I called him my Grumpy Little Ray of Sunshine, because even when he woke up grouchy, his light shone through. Always did.
He threw me a pizza party for my birthday while we were in treatment, and I gave him a faux Oscar statuette that I ordered from Amazon, engraved with “Best Friend in a Rehab.” He didn’t care that I was gay and had twenty years on him. And I didn’t care that his life had zig-zagged in colorful ways mine never did. We saw each other beyond our disparate desperations.
He made sobriety feel like mischief and music and real connection. He made L.A. feel like it had roots. I stayed in part because he was here.
We promised we’d be in each other’s lives forever. But after rehab, the tide pulled us apart. And sometime later, long after the funeral, I found out he was gone. Psychosis. Fentanyl. And just like that, my friend, my anchor, my sunlight wrapped in clouds, was no longer here. The grief split something inside me. I had expected our friendship to be my rock. Now I understand it still is. Just not in the way I imagined.
He’s the North Star I look for when things get dark. My spiritual watchman. I wear a locket with his picture in it and talk to him at times throughout the day and into the night. Through me, he gets to keep teaching, keep laughing, keep loving. He gets to live. I get to live for both of us.
Maybe our bond was always meant to be fleeting, but it was never small. It cracked me open in the best way. He taught me how to live life in all its beautiful, fucked up chaos, how to run toward it instead of away from it, and, most of all, how to love myself without needing permission.
What I build now is different. My support network isn’t a cage—it’s a constellation—bright points of light I can call out to, but not orbit forever. I can lean on people without expecting them to carry me. I’ve got my own legs. My own fire. My own pen. Because at the end of the night, even the good ones—especially the good ones—can leave. And I’ll still be here comfortable with myself, writing forward.
Sobriety didn’t make me dependent. It made me aware. That everything is temporary. That nothing is promised. That love and loss often arrive holding hands. So I don’t try to trap anyone in permanence. I just walk with them while they’re here. I laugh out loud, listen intently, and love freely. When they go, I stay grounded in the truth they helped me uncover. I keep going. Steady, stumbling, sovereign.
And somewhere up in the sky, my Grumpy Little Ray of Sunshine is still grinning through the clouds—beaming, grouchy, and unmistakably by my side. I’ve got a telephone in my heart, and I can call him anytime. ♦
