One of my loved ones who I met on the streets of Kensington decided to walk away from the care that they were receiving. While his family and I did what we could to encourage him to stay and continue his care, he was absolutely determined to do otherwise. We did all that we knew to do and said all that we knew to say to convince him to stay and keep working toward renewed health. In the end, he walked away.
As I was leaving the
situation, I started reminiscing about my own childhood and the day I decided
to run away from home when I was about five years of age. My home at that point
in life was a 15-acre property, that of an Episcopal church with a large
parking lot. My dad was an Episcopal priest and my mom was a teacher
specializing in private tutoring.
I made it known that I
was planning on running away from home. This was a storyline I had seen in a
recent TV show and I related to it for some weird childhood reason. I told my
parents what I was doing. They spoke to me briefly and said that since I wasn't
happy I could do so. I packed my bag and walked down the sidewalk and into the
parking lot. I remember looking back and waiting for them to come running after
me.
No one did.
I sat at the far end of
the parking lot for a little while hoping that someone would come out and get
me. After some amount of time, I walked back to the house and continued on with
my day back with my family.
**********
As I compared these two
storylines, I started wondering if the better approach to take when someone in
the throes of addiction demanding to be fed should just be allowed to leave and
not put up any fight at all. The difference, of course, is that the addiction
demanding to be fed could easily kill the person whose rational side of
thinking would actually prefer to be healed even though the addiction side of
thinking is screaming louder at that moment.
The little child
choosing to run away from home typically doesn't go far. They walk down
the sidewalk, sit for a bit and come home. The person in addiction
running away from their healing may or may not ever come home and that's
frightening.
Loved ones of the person
running away from their healing are put in a terrible bind. If they simply let
their loved one walk away without putting up any debate or argument and their
loved one dies, they are left wondering what more they should have done. If
they debate or argue to encourage them to stay and their loved one
still leaves and dies, they're left wondering if they debated and argued the
point too much.
The Civil War that goes
on in the mind of the addicted person in this sense ends up being shared or transferred
to the loved one. The loved one ends up having a Civil War in their own mind about
what they should or should not have done. It’s a really tough place in which
loved ones often find themselves…
**********
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