Some memes

well yesterday was about sponsors and today the reading is about my part in relationships. well yesterday afternoon my last sponsor (who i also count as a close friend) reappeared in my life after a 16 month absence. his phone call and subsequent attendance at a meeting brought up a bunch of new stuff and some old garbage. after a year of putting his behavior behind me and letting go, there he is all of a sudden. i wanted to be angry at him and sullen and withdrawn, but all i could be was happy to see him and have an attitude of forgiveness. we had a long talk and finally i see that the old stuff i was carrying was actually his stuff and i was ignoring the hurt to protect myself with an old behavior.
my part in that relationship was that i enabled him to take advantage of me way back when and still felt that somehow i failed him. i will not go into his part because he is not here to either defend himself nor to provide any input to what he was feeling. today i have hope that we have addressed many of the issues that came between us and that we can rebuild our relationship into something new and healthy. that hope started to grow when i saw his number come up on my phone and has only grown stronger over the past 12 hours. the truth, plain and simple, is that i am powerless over other people and their behaviors, and powerless over the hurt and joy i feel. i am not however powerless over my current behaviors and attitudes. things are now different and we now know what are expectations are for each other and time will tell whether my hope translates into reality.
∞ DT ∞