Breaking Out

I spent most of the daylight hours of yesterday dodging the efforts of someone else to control my opinions, my social life, and my child-rearing philosophy.  The whole time, I felt a great amount of resentment building up in me.  This person looked at my writing, criticized my choice of illustration, and then complained that I hadn't shared something I'd written with her when I wrote it over 8 years ago ... all in the same day.  The longer she was around, the more angry I got.  She and I had not even spoken, prior to this summer, for over thirteen years.  The person she knew then is not the person I am now, but she still thinks of me as being that way. Even though she knows it's not true.

I needed some perspective.  So I went somewhere last night where I knew I would be accepted for who I was, where people embrace change for the better, and where I don't have to be on my guard.  Funny thing  -  but it wasn't church.  Oops, I digress.  In that place, I found the serenity I was looking for, and I found it in that very self-same acceptance and love.  I felt the chains of the day snap and break off me.

One of the things criticized was my choice of alias for this blog (Lazarus). I had thought it was pretty self-evident until this person questioned it yesterday.  It took me some time to realize that the reason for this is the same reason that folks who are alcoholic and don't know they are, have a real hard time with folks who claim to be alcoholics and in recovery.

For the record, I think you know that the Lazarus I mean is not the poor beggar begging at the rich man's gate.  The one I mean is the one Jesus raised from the dead, His friend who lived in Bethany, close to Jerusalem, the brother of Mary and Martha.  By way of illustration (since all the photos of mummies were of people with arms outstretched, a totally unrealistic image since the arms are bound close to the body), the best I could come up with was the idea of bursting forth, being let out of prison, ... ahh yes, chains.  Breaking chains.

What's coming to me as I write is that I felt stress, and distress, yesterday because I felt like I had to prove something, that I had to show this person that I had changed, that I'm not the same person as I once was.  Yet I found myself behaving in exactly the same way as I always had with her - putting on masks so that I would not be in confrontation with her.  Wow.  As angry as I was with her, I was twice as angry with myself for not staying true to who I had become.  And it also explains to me why I was so obsessed with explaining my choice of alias to her.  I am coming to understand that trying to do that is like expecting someone to get the point of a movie when all they have seen is the last five minutes of it. 

My wanting to justify myself to her made me realize that my relationship with her was not healthy - at least for me - because it was based on an imbalance of power; whether it was intentional or not on her part is immaterial.  

I know that such relationships either need to be radically changed ... or discontinued.  The temptation for abuse in such an association between two people is astronomical.  In other words, if I want to continue on in my recovery ... I don't need to be in a relationship with someone else that will undermine that recovery. I need to be with people who will encourage and not condemn, accept and not judge.

That way I can become who I am becoming, and break free of the chains of addiction to conforming myself to what other people think, and/or to the temptation to try to make them think what I want them to think.  That's a trap I thought I had been freed from.  Yesterday I walked right back into it.

So now I am walking right back out.  I have to; it's a matter of survival.  I can't allow myself to get back into that hamster's wheel of self-defeating behaviors.  

Two of the promises of CoDA (Codependents Anonymous) come to me as I think about this. They follow one after another, and go like this, "I learn to see myself as equal to others.  My new and renewed relationships are all with equal partners.  I am capable of developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships.  The need to control and manipulate others will disappear as I learn to trust those that are trustworthy."  Hm.  Trust those that are trustworthy - there's a mouthful!!  Wouldn't a lot of problems in this world be solved if we could be in relationships with people as equal partners, and we only trusted those people who were trustworthy?  

My natural tendency is to be in unhealthy relationships, and so I cherish those relationships that I have where I KNOW neither party is - OR FEELS - superior to the other.  But I know that this is not by anything I have done, but simply by the kindness of God toward me even though I don't deserve it.  To paraphrase something I think of often, "What I really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition."  That spiritual condition is maintained by daily connection with God, and that alone.  I can't fake it or manufacture it on my own.  It's a gift - and I'm so grateful for that.