Have you ever been addicted to a person? I have been, and let me tell you that being addicted to a person has been more difficult in my world than being addicted to a substance. I spent several years in a friendship in which I felt like I needed the other person in order to survive, like my livelihood depended on her. But, it didn’t. And, I was dispensable to her, as seemingly not too much sadness went into the dissolution of our friendship on her end, but I have never really had someone just manipulate and use me for such a long time. Usually, you see, I am much better at discerning who people are pretty early on, I am generally pretty closed off emotionally, except for frivolity and lighthearted merrymaking, and I choose close friends really carefully, after a few bad relationships in high school.
So, imagine my surprise when at the age of 50, I’ve poured myself into a friendship that required me to leave behind my other friends, to minimize my time with family, to pay such close attention to the other person’s every emotion that I lost sight of who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. Who I want to be is a person who welcomes everyone into my circle, who loves all people, who makes decisions based on what I want my world to look like, which is inclusive not exclusive. I’ve wrestled recently with how I am fix the situation, and it feels the most like being an addict and having to complete the 12 steps.
The first step is hope: admit you have a problem. For me, this looked like realizing that I was too closely holding onto someone that hadn’t chosen me.
The second step is faith: accept that there is a higher power in the universe and that the higher power can help you move past your addiction. One of the first things I did when I realized that I was addicted to this person, was to move back into a regular time of quiet, meditation, biblical study, and journaling.
The third step is surrender: surrender to a higher will or purpose. I have continued in therapy and am also seeking guidance from a spiritual director to better discern what my next steps are.
The fourth step is soul searching: looking inwardly to realign our intentions. As I move forward, I continually ask myself if where I am going is really in alignment with who I want to be, who I feel called to be, to my higher purpose. I’ve also been reading The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living, which is extremly helpful in realigning.
The fifth step is integrity: speaking the truth about our vulnerabilities. This is something I am trying to get better at. I am trying to have intregrity and speak teh truth at all times, not just when it feels like the other person is trying to get it out of me. If I don’t make things a secret, I won’t feel like I need a special bond with someone in order to share.
The sixth step is acceptance: the knowledge that everyone has both good and bad traits. I accept that I have had soem bad moments, made bad choices, done things I regret, but I also am pretty awesome most of the time. If I can embrace that both things can be true, I can move forward in a new way, instead of constantly looking toward my shortcomings.
The seventh step is humility: knowing I can’t do this life on my own. By surrendering to a higher power, I can have some relief about some of the things I’ve done. I don’t get a free pass to just dismiss that I misplaced my affections and time commitments, but I do get to have help with heavy things.
The eighth step is willingness: make a list of the people you’ve wronged and be willing to make amends. I have a long list of people who I have wronged during the course of this friendship. From people I backshelved to people I outright wronged, there is a long list of friends and relatives I owe apologies to, who may or may not accept them. I just wish I had put as much effort into my dad while he was still alive, as I did into this friendship that began to end the day we finished cleaning out our parents’ house. That moment should have been the writing on the wall, but I kept going back for more for a solid two months. Again, the list is long.
The ninth step is forgiveness: forgiving people who have caused you trauma or pain. This is the step I would say that I am on, both in life in general and in regards to the pain caused by this particular friend. I have experienced a lot of trauma in my life time, compounded by trying to process a lot of it with someone who turned out to be a person who didn’t chose me, who instead for a couple of months used everything she knew about me to intentionally hurt me, or at least to make herself better in the choices she was making. I guess I am working toward getting to a place where I can think about how to try to work forgiveness. Why woudl someone do the things to another person that she did to me? I have no idea. I would never do those things to someone else. So, forgiveness is hard in this instance.
The tenth step is maintenance.
The eleventh step is making contact.
The twelth step is service.
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I don’t want to leave this entry without admitting that I did some pretty horrible things in the end of our friendship too. I have never sent meaner more horrible text messages to someone than I did to her. I would like to make excuses, but I won’t. What I do know is that pretty much as soon as I realized I’d gone off the rails, I made an appointment with my therapist and nurse practitioner, and I tried to convey that I needed a break from her. That suggestion fell on deaf ears, until things spun so out of control that her therapist suggested that we not be friends anymore, to which I was amenable, even though that text message was one of the most condescending things I’ve ever read. Now I have a really hard time even existing in the same space, because I feel so foolish and so overwhelmed with disgust at my gullability and naivety. I am afraid that, much like a person who is addicted to a substance, that if I am around her too much, I will forget how horrible things got in the end, and how truly bad the friendship was for me in the long term. And, much like a substance addiction, I will never say that there weren’t good times. There were, but they don’t make up for the bad.
Reason Breeds Insanity 