One of my closest, long running friendships of my life taught me a huge life lesson, and helped me learn the difference between chaos and connection (and how they DON’T actually go hand in hand).
I never realized how heavily I was playing the victim game in my life - specifically the role of saviour/martyr - especially in my friendships. In my teens and 20s, one of my best friends seemed to always need saving (or so I thought). We moved in together, and at first things were wonderful….but then the cracks started to show…We would party together, and that is when we would open up to each other about the problems we had with each other…otherwise we would just glaze over the problems we had with each other - or avoid each other completely.
Even after we moved out from each other, I often felt as if I had to rescue her from her problems…she would call on me for help and then get herself into another situation after I had just helped her through her last problem. I would get so upset, frantic, and anxious as she would sometimes just completely disappear…I would obsess over her, hover around my phone waiting for her messages, which often wouldn’t come until days later…
She would eventually reach out, we would get together and take at least one kind of intoxicant, clear the air, apologize, and start again…
One reoccurring theme of our friendship was that we would both get really drunk and then go out to bars, and she would disappear into thin air… if you follow girl code at bars, you know you don’t leave your friend behind, so I would spend what felt like hours walking around the bar looking for her, only to find her either outside with some guy, or in other precarious situations that I would again feel the need to rescue her from. It was an unintentional re-traumatization and abandonment, over and over again….
I eventually realized that I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. I couldn’t keep being the saviour, the person who was there to fix the problems again, only to get dropped when there wasn’t any problems she needed saving from. I realized what I allowed would continue… I wanted a true connection, not chaos.
Despite my addictions at that point, I wanted a friend that I could be friends with without the partying.
I decided to do an experiment and stopped making an effort, and the friendship almost instantly dissolved.
My biggest takeaway from that my friendship with her was that I either had to meet people where they were at and be OK with whatever short comings they had without trying to fix them, or I had to move on from the friendship…there was no in-between anymore. I am grateful for the experience, because I learned how to love myself enough to put that boundary up.
I hope you find or have already found the love for yourself to put boundaries up when needed. :) #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Addiction