I have a friend that I have known well for about 23 years, she’s also a recovering addict. She has been a sister, friend, sponsee and confidant. I have always maintained that the most challenging people in our lives are our master teachers – I guess you could also say she has been a master teacher as well. There is little I don’t know about her, and none of that has ever changed how I feel about her. It doesn’t mean we haven’t had speed bumps in our friendship, but the inherent wholeness that is this woman has never been lost on me.

Our relationship was distant for several years, but no less love for each other during that time. A few years ago we started slowly reconnecting and last year we began talking and texting again, mainly because she had run out of people. Her life fell apart completely several years back, largely her own doing, and there were few, if any, people left for her to connect with. I am one of the few bridges not burned in the wreckage of her active addiction.

Over the last 6 months whenever she would call it was a crap shoot of “who” would be on the other end – a sobbing, 5-year-old little girl, an exhausted and desolate grown woman, a rebellious, angry teenager, or a frustrated, raging, mentally ill human – lost in the dark without much needed medical care. Yet with each call and text, I was fiercely clear my job was simply to communicate, in whatever way I could, that whatever happens in her life, I am, and always will be, a soft place to fall.

It’s easier to type those words then to live them though, but it has become a non-negotiable in my life. Near-death experiences will do that for you. You know as never before, as few people do, that other people’s lives are inextricably connected to yours – that she is because I am, and vice versa. If she knows no peace, I know no peace.

It’s a tough place to be when the other person may have done some things that were hurtful, or disruptive, and has basically worn you out, frayed your last nerve from her drama and the projection of her own deep woundedness onto you. Many times I have thought my shoulders aren’t that wide, and my heart just isn’t that big.

It rips out your insides when you know you can’t trust the person you love, when you can’t find the space in your life for them because frankly they scare the hell out of you. How do you be around someone who is in hell and doing everything they can to push you away, testing you with a raging inferno in her desire to know what you are made of, whether you have what it takes to weather her storm? To say it’s exhausting and can make someone soul weary doesn’t even come close.

How do you be around someone who is doing everything they can to push you away in her desire to know what you are made of? Share on X

It can be easy to miss the fact that she is crying out for healing, crying out to be seen and to know that she is loved and lovable, because she communicates the words “somebody please love me” through her unpredictable nature that is a hurricane, a force of nature riding the fury of her suffering. Mostly this is lost on people. Yet it is the time to love her harder. 

Believe me, I get it. I know the damage that active addiction does to lives, I lived it and vomited my disease onto others, burned bridges, lost trust and friends and support. Sadly, when someone is clean for a long time, and then begins using again, people in recovery tend to back away – they don’t know how to be with the crazy, raging, suicidal, active addict. They may have nothing left to give to the person that is out of their mind and operating from addiction, a place of lying, stealing and manipulation. I get it.

So the phone calls and texts kept coming and sometimes she would scream at me and hang up, other times she would sob in desperation, or we would get to have a moment of silliness born out of the bizarre human condition we sometimes live. And all the while, I have stayed committed to being a soft place to fall. With each call and text she is slipping further and further into the dark, and I know it’s simply a matter of time before this Bermuda Triangle of active addiction, and everything that comes with that life, finally takes her down.

On Easter Sunday she reached about as dark a place as someone can get. She shot a state trooper (not fatal, he’s alive and recovering fine), and now is in prison, waiting trial and eventually sentencing. It’s likely she will never see the outside again. The details aren’t important, at this point they simply don’t matter. I cannot deny that she shot a cop and there are consequences, yet I hear the silent screaming for mercy and compassion.

Her letters can’t even begin to convey her loneliness, guilt, grief and confusion – to name a few. Being out of control terrifies her. In many ways she is trapped, sitting in solitary confinement, no longer able to have the sun on her face or choose a meal. I know, she chose this, in her insanity. She knows it too. She is slowly realizing that she will need to be fiercely independent yet also depend on strangers for survival. She will long to overcome her deep, paralyzing fears of being alone in the world and will need to be courageous in order to know she has what it takes for this new life. Even though she has yet to comprehend what lies ahead.

She won’t know what she needs, so sometimes I will need to read her like a well-worn book with dog-eared, frayed pages and a broken spine... Share on X

She won’t know what she needs, so sometimes I will need to read her like a well-worn book with dog-eared, frayed pages and a broken spine, telling her what I read in this book because she doesn’t know herself at times. She will push me away, like a small child asserting her autonomy, and since I can’t tightly grasp her hand to keep her safe, I will need to hold her heart firmly, and make sure she knows I have her back.

I know she doesn’t sleep much, that her thoughts race because of the million broken shards of life in front of her yet no clue how to make the pieces fit, to make sense of it all. I know she chases time with thoughts of how she got where she is and does she fit in this life. She is riddled with demons, smothered by her own blankets of insanity.

Her latest letter brings me to tears – again. She asks, “How do I ask you to do time with me?” And I think, you just did. In fact, you already did, years ago when we stepped into each others lives. Funny thing is, you actually don’t have to ask me to do time with you. It’s a given, it’s why I am here. It’s the hardest thing we can do in life, be that soft place to fall for those who are the most difficult to love. It takes more strength, patience, resolve and commitment than I think I possess.

How do I do time with my incarcerated loved one? I don’t know if I have what it takes, but I think I already have been doing time. I love her harder. Whether you realize it or not, as a human we are each doing time with every person – with all life – and I get to decide how I will “do time” with others whether they are a stranger or a loved one. So how do you plan to do your time?