My closest sober friend is drinking again.  She is not only my closest sober friend but she is one of my closest friends.  The past two weeks or so we had been a little more distant.  I’d hit a point where I had to withdraw slightly to protect myself, my sanity, our friendship, and ultimately my own sobriety.

We were voxing every 1-2 days instead of 2x PER day…. so it was a decrease in communication.

Why did this happen?  Because I couldn’t take the negativity.  With leaving each other voxer messages, there is no “flow” of conversation, it is one person going on and on for as long as they’d like about whatever they want.  And with her, very often, it was the very same things: lack of sleep due to a specific problem which could be changed but was not chosen to be changed.  Severe dissatisfaction in marriage which she was unwilling to show emotions over in an honest way with her spouse.  Then came a situation with her child that was a serious problem, one that has serious consequences, and was honestly quite dangerous- and again, she was very upset about it but unwilling to do anything about it.  After hearing minutes upon minutes of this over and over again, day after day, some of the same things for *months*, literally, I told her that it was hard for me to hear, and wondered if we could not talk so much about a certain aspect of it.  I told her why it was hard for me in the most loving, kind, compassionate way that I could.  I did this too, in a voxer message.

She replied that she was very hurt.  And how could she leave out that one aspect of her life when it was such a big part of her life.  Okay, well, I felt bad and apologized and told her to go ahead and keep doing what she was doing then.  No problem, I can be a supportive friend in ALL ways  not just the easy ways, and I’m so sorry…..

Yeahhhh.

With a lot of coaching from my husband, my sponsor, and my very emotionally/spiritually healthy, strong, wise girlfriend- I learned that a better way to do this would be to move away from voxer and move toward phone conversations so that I could “redirect” the conversation topic more easily.  I don’t really have time to talk on the phone so I didn’t do that right away… I was digesting and figuring things out.  I continued to listen to her same situations day after day and just left “shorter” less involved messages.  I did however refocus on leaving very uplifting, motivating, strengthening messages.  In some ways, I perhaps PARTIALLY disregarded some of the things she said and just moved right into a motivating, strengthening message.

So things were a little different since then, maybe 2 weeks ago that happened.

She is pretty infatuated with this “friendship” with a man in the program.  A man who dates around within the program, etc. etc. etc.  They’re “just friends” but he “understands her” more than anyone else and is more “supportive” than anyone else, etc.  Of course.

I told her in the very beginning of our friendship before we were even close, about my falling out with J, and that I can’t have friends who have affairs, it pushes me in a unhealthy direction, and I accept this because of my own relationship history.  I feel that it is a healthy boundary to keep me safe and my perspective of my most important human relationship safe- that with my husband.

Last night I listened to a series of 5 voxes in a row from the 4:00 hour earlier that day.

In them, she admitted she has been drinking.  For how long, I do not know.

She mentioned it casually in this message, that she “came clean” in the Wed. meeting (2 days prior) and got lots of support.  She included in this that her infatuation man was supposed to be there but wasn’t, and some details about why he couldn’t be there for her during it.

This puts me over the edge.

She went on to talk for a very long time about how the meeting I reguarly attend isn’t “safe” for her.  As if it mattered heavily to me and she really needed me to understand that.  Well, okayyyy… I am grateful she is going to any meetings, it doens’t weigh heavily on me whether or not she goes to mine…  She also talked about how things “aren’t black and white” as I think they are and that they’re just not for her.  That I don’t understand.  okayyyyy.  It all ended with, “I just need you to be…. I just need you to…. I don’t know, I don’t know….”

I. can’t. even.

I called R.

I thought about calling this friend’s ex-sponsor because she would “get it” …. but I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do.  R was extremely extremely extremely helpful.  I was shaking.  I was very accepting of the situations at hand.  We talked all about relapse, how to be a friend to someone who has relapsed, etc.

I went to bed.

I woke up this morning with anger in my body.

I was cooking specials for my kids, assembly line fashion.  I was so angry.  I found myself doing my yoga breath to stay calm.  Until little R came out crying.  I felt so much anger in my neck, in my heart.

Angry that she 1. didn’t fricking call me when she wanted to pick up a drink.  2. Deemed this man as the most supportive man in her life and sobriety.  3. Deems this man as her #1 go to.  After all I have done, after all that I have listened to, been supportive of, talked her through, been there for her, after our late night talks on my couches when she’s spent the night, after our hours and hours on the phone, after last week’s hour long phone conversation, it is this MAN that she wants and looks for to be supportive to her coming out meeting?  Angry.  4. Didn’t tell me before she announced it in a meeting.  5. Didn’t tell me for two days after announcing it in a meeting.

R says it is fear causing my anger.  Fear of losing a friend, fear of losing a friendship, fear of change, fear deep down, that I too could go back to alcohol.  While I don’t quite get all of that yet, and it doens’t seem right…. it does open my eyes and heart to the fact that there is something under the anger.  When my little R came out of bed crying because i wasn’t in there with him, I hugged him and I cried with him.  We cried for different reasons.

What is under my anger?  I think it is partially a feeling of rejection.  It is partially a complex of over-confidence perhaps.  I wanted to be the supportive one.  I had earned that.  Alas, I was rejected.

R said a few very important things to me this morning.

  1. She is sicker than me right now.
  2. She is only doing what she can right now.

In a healthy friendship, sometimes one is stronger/healthier than the other.  Not just for AA’s but for every relationship.  One relies on the other, and this vacillates back and forth over the course of the friendship.  It is my time to be the strong one.  Some day in the future, God willing, she may be the stronger one for me.  I am holding on to that because it gives hope to HER and hope to ME and hope to our friendship.