I'll see you on the other side...

Is giving up the same as letting go –

Some days ago I let go of a friend, the friend probably thinks I abandoned them, that I gave up on them. For me the jury is still out on what the difference is.

In my mind I know that I have to be less invested in the outcomes of other peoples lives, that I have no control over the choices and decisions people make, no real influence at all in fact.

That when a person is in the grip of an addiction their only salvation is themselves , that you may look upon someone you love and see a drowning person that you think you can save. The truth, the reality is you cannot.

Addiction is defined as among other things “an enslavement to”

You can stand on the shore and watch the black swirling waters of this, you can hold out your hands, begging cajoling and threatening the person you love, willing them to choose you, to choose life and to choose love over the addiction that is killing them.

I have had to wonder at what the view from the depths of addiction are, from where I stand all I see is blackness sucking you deeper and deeper – I see no good outcome, no happiness, no “big party” I see turmoil and great chunks of life breaking away being destroyed. Friends and family being smashed against the rocks of lies and deceit .

But what do you see…..?

Do you see me standing on a self righteous pillar? Do you see my desire to separate you from this thing you think you cannot live without?  What gave birth to this resentment in you, this hatred? This place where I am standing does it look barren to you filled with a nothingness, an endless tedium does it look dull and dreary?

Perhaps you pity me as much as I do you? Perhaps you think all life ends in death and if yours does so at the bottom of a bottle of the end of a line it seems better to you than age and decrepitude .

And what of my addictions – my addiction to rescuing, my fulfillment  from saving, from loving without love in return, the cigarettes I smoke, the coffee I drink, the enormous amounts I feed my ego the food thinly veiled as success?

And this is where I thank you, I thank you for seeing myself in you, for allowing me to find my own personal hell for seeing the addict that lives in me.

For understanding that I cannot erase this thing in me but just as I see you and wish you had the fortitude not to pick up another drink to be able to walk away from the drugs, I am challenged to stop doing the things that I have done to just stop, to “just say no” – to quote Nancy Reagan

This is why I am letting you go, this is my healing, my salvation – this is serenity. I accept I cannot change you.

Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do, the most loving thing – is to do nothing at all, and in this I honor both of us.