Some memes

improves as i figure out who i am and who i am not. needless to say, if my life improves so does the quality of my relationships. my source material was all about relationships and finding the ways and means to exercise flexibility in those relationships. i know that when i was using and perhaps even before i was using, i placed huge expectations on any relationships i happened to form, which were not all that many. i lacked the flexibility to roll with the punches when things got tough, so i just walked away, “ex-ing” them out of my life. not the healthiest of solutions but the one that fit me the best, why work hard when they are going to fuck me over anyhow?
it would be wonderful to say that behavior was tossed into the bit bucket when i got, or when i first starting actually working the steps or even after my first round of steps. yeah that would be nice, the reality is, however, it faded into the background, ready to be pulled out of my bag of tricks when needed. i have reverted that form, more than once in my recovery journey and justified it by saying it was an unhealthy relationship anyhow. while that may be true, what is also true is that i made no attempt to set or enforce any sort of boundaries or even have a serious conversation, before i walked away. looking back from this perspective, my justification looks like a fairly honest assessment of the state of those relationships at that time, my part is that i did nothing to attempt to steer them towards being healthier and equal.
these days, my default behavior is to put the work into the relationships i value. it has been a very long minute since i walked away from a relationship, other than with my last employer and i saw that as a mutual understanding, i did not want to be there and their budget could not carry me any longer. i do have a bit of a strained relationship with one of my peers at work, but they are leaving this week anyhow, so that is one i need not work on, blessings arrive in all sorts of sizes and packages. the one lesson i have carried through since i finally woke up and smelled the relationship coffee is that, if i want to have equal partners in relationships, i need to be intimate and not expect them to change to meet my expectations. that has been one of the toughest credos to carry forward, despite how well it works. to tell the truth, i am quite sure that the relationships that are part of my life are worth fighting for, at least in the here and now. i may be obstinate and strong-willed, but as i learn to be flexible, i get more than i ever believed possible for those relationships.

∞ DT ∞