What I know, what I want

My Dearest Love,

I love you to the depths of my being. I see you hurting, and I hurt too. Sometimes, we get stuck in this pattern, where you want to avoid the hurt, and I want to absorb your hurt for you. I know that's not healthy for either of us. I'm trying to get to a healthier place, and I know that you want that too.

I know that you've been through terrible experiences that nobody should have ever had to experience. I know that you're doing the best you can right now, and that it's not your intention to hurt me. My head knows that when you engage in self injurious behavior, it's not about me. I know that that doesn't mean that you don't love me, but that you can't see past your pain.

I know that I will love you forever. I want to be with you forever. I know that when I struggle with your acting out behavior, it's not that I don't love you enough, but that I love you too much. Sometimes, you know that too.

I know that I have tools to take good care of myself. I know that if I'm using these tools to the best of my ability, I can be ok, whether or not you are. I know that right now, I don't seem to be using my tools to the best of my ability.

I know that you have the right to be exactly where you are, even if where you are hurts me. I know that as much as I want to protect you from yourself, I really can't. I know that in the end, the only person I can truly protect is me.

I know that I came into this relationship with my own buttons, and one of my biggest buttons is being around someone engaging in self-harm. I know that you did NOT install that particular button.

I know that I want intimacy with you so desperately, that I am often willing to put myself in harms way in order to try to maintain a connection with you. I know that desperation is never a good place for me to be.

I know that we have family therapy scheduled for a week from now.

I want to try an experiment. For the next week until our family therapy appointment, if you choose to engage in ANY behavior that is harmful to you, I want you to find someone else to share it with. I want to hear your successes, if you're willing to share them with me. I'm willing to hear your struggles, as long as we can both remember that my job is not to fix it for you, but to love you while you work through it yourself. If you find that you need somebody other than yourself to keep you safe, I want you to find someone else or somewhere else to get that need met.

More than anything, I want to get to the other side of this together, and to be with you forever. I know that I will love you forever, no matter what.

One step forward and...... FIRED!

My partner and I were conditionally fired from couples therapy last night. Well, actually, SHE was conditionally fired, but since it's pretty difficult to do couple's therapy alone, the effect is the same.

I know she's confused. She has been stepping up lately. She took care of me when I was sick, and she got her step 1 homework completed.

But, she was agonizingly passive aggressive in therapy yesterday throughout the entire session, and the therapist had had enough. He asked how many meetings she's been going to. She had committed to her sponsor to go to 5 a week after the last time she picked up a white chip in the beginning of November. I don't think she has yet to honor that commitment, and she hasn't told her sponsor that she's not doing it. The therapist told her AGAIN that she does her best work in therapy when she's taking good care of herself by going to lots of meetings. He said that he felt like he was in a session with a 6 year old, and he just can't do couples therapy that way. He said that he sees me getting healthier and healthier, and if she doesn't make some changes, he thinks I'll leave her. He said that he won't continue with us unless she goes to 5 meetings a week. She said she'd discuss it with her sponsor. It was hard hearing her not be willing to do whatever it takes for our relationship. It's interesting timing, because she's also been conditionally fired by her individual therapist for a couple of weeks now, because she's been choosing not to submit insurance papers for YEARS!!! She agreed during our 3 hour session with HER therapist not to go back until she'd submitted the paperwork. That was the beginning of December, and she just hasn't gone back.

I'm trying to stay in the moment and take care of me. Last night, our meeting topic was Live and Let Live. After the meeting, I went out with my sponsor and sponsee. I can't make my partner's choices for her. I can only make my OWN choices. Just for today, I'm going to work really hard on keeping the focus on ME!!!

Live and Let Live

Yesterday's reading in the Naranon daily reader, Sharing Experience Strength and Hope, talked about the slogan, "Live and Let Live." The writer said that s/he worked it backwards. S/he first learned to let live, and then learned to live.

I realized that that slogan worked for me yesterday as soon as I chose to work it. But for me, I had to live in order to let live. I chose to spend about an hour being home alone and miserable after my expected losses. And I waited, ever so patiently, for my designated babysitter to wake up and come play with me. You know, even while I was doing it, I could see how that waiting shit so doesn't work for me. And how I was playing out the exact same psychodrama I play so well and so often with my addict without the addict in the equation. It wasn't the giving my friend space to sleep in that was a problem, any more than giving my addict that same space. It was the fact that what I was choosing to do with my time was wait for somebody else. So after an hour or so of that, I made a different choice. I went out and played with a baby. It was just what I needed to jumpstart my day.

I went out and played with my designated babysitter. She indulged me in my fantasies of creating natural consequences for my addict. Of course, the fact that I'd be creating them makes the consequences decidedly unnatural. But my wise friend didn't point that out to me. We went to a meeting, where among other things, I heard today's reading on the slogan, live and let live. I then spent a wonderful 3 hours with another friend in recovery. We sat outside listening to live music and sharing.

On my way home, I was listening to the radio and came up with the silly but fun idea of throwing myself a dance party. So that's exactly what I did. I now have a fun artist's date to report back to my Artist's Way group. And I honestly had fun alone in my house. Whoda thunk.

The not so surprising thing is that the more I live my own life, the easier it's becoming to let live. I don't need to call my addict on her addicty ways. And I don't need to create natural consequences for her. I'm too busy living.