Quote:
|
Originally Posted by mary
There have also been times I think I couldn've/should've reached out a to few people a little bit more and didn't - and ended up regretting it. There have also been times that I've been the person that needed another chance.
Just because you have a different opinion, doesn't mean you have a monopoly on being there, or doing that.
|
i really think mary that it's not about giving a person another chance, it's about giving another person 100 another chances and having them screw you around and take advantage of you every time and then asking yourself, 'do I really want to give this person the 101th chance?'
the 2nd hardest thing to express about being around addicts is this -- they're not just friends with a variety of emotional problems who handle it in a maladaptive way, but rather they're someone who is absolutely obsessed with their drug of choice (which
causes all sorts of emotional problems) and they don't give a damn about the consequences including whatever emotional toil it might have on you.
the hardest thing about expressing what it's like to be close to an addict is the emotional toil -- if you spend most of your days with emotionally pretty well adjusted people (provided you're well adjusted yourself), you don't notice the extent to which communication depends on you being on pretty much the same emotional wavelength....you naturally adjust somewhat to the mood and vibe of the people around you, we all do this, and it's quite normal.
so guess what happens when you spend a great deal of time around someone who is mentally and emotionally spiralling down the drain? you try to reach out to them, but they're spiralling downward so you're constantly reaching downward and downward until you're right down there with them....
this is why the 2nd biggest self-help group in america behind alcoholics anonymous is al-anon, a support group for families and friends of alcoholics....
it's a really insidious thing -- trying to reach out to an addict can be like......say one person jumps out of a plane without a parachute, and in reaching out to them you follow them out the door of the plane...without a parachute. (this is codependence in a nutshell)
so i'm not suggesting the ticket guys handled things in the best possible way (knowing what i now know i'd do things differently, too), but their reaction is entirely understandable -- and it stems not from a lack of caring but from an abundance...