Yes, she went through terrible traumas. Horrible to even contemplate....... Just to say, that the reason we found it so hard to let go, was because we saw her as a beautiful flower, not just a metaphor, but an expressive beauty, lead by her heart, striving for compassion.
I know we just have to let her go....and hope that she is alright.
I just want to say, I can really understand your position of caring about someone like that and not knowing where to draw the line......... I want to tell you how its been with my daughters father, becuase i feel similarly about him. he is -not- an N, or a borderline, or anything, (im not sure if your friend is or not) but he -is- a very damaged person with a lot of issues, which is why we're not together.
he doesnt have a personality disorder in any way, hes a wonderful, talented, creative, thoughtful person with massive amounts of integrity, who i probably respect more than anyone else ive ever met; but he is =so= damaged, that he jsut doestn trust =anyone=, and for that reason he wont get any kind of help. still he struggles to live -without- taking out his emotions on others, which is a big reason why i respect him. but he is bipolar and he doesnt trust doctors enough to get medicine, which is another reason hes hard to deal with and another reason i respect him, for having the mental strength to survive being bipolar, without meds, beuase i know how incredibly tough that is.
so here is this person, that i respect so completely, but who is so unable to trust anyone who might possibly help him. ive known him for.... almost 13 years now..... there have been many times he has turned against me as though i were his enemy, becuase he was in so much pain. it really hurt and i just have to draw the line on that kind of behavior. i swore to myself i would always be loyal to him, becuase he made my pregnancy so wonderful and was there for me so many times in real life when the chips were down. BUT this -doesnt- mean accepting bad behavior.
there have been times i havent seen him for several years becuase he was behaving so badly and i did not want to be around it. he pulled himself together and we were friends again.
this person has huge amounts of anger becuase of things that have happened to him all his life and he has plenty of reason to feel that way..... i often dont know how to 'defuse' him when he gets that way, and have to just disengage. recently something GFN said really helped me in my dealing with him. (which i wanted to tell GFN actually
.)
last week the phone rang at 4 am, which is very unusual. it was this guy, who was in a very bad space. he was very upset and 'angry' about varoius things that happened that made him feel powerless and that he couldnt control and nobody likes to feel that way. he was talking about ripping up photographs and sounding very upset and i knew it was bad if he was calling at 4 am. i didnt know what to say but then i thought of what GFN recently taught me about anger being a secondary emotion.
so i said to my freind - 'i am sorry you are hurting'. i kept saying that over and over in a patient way, as he 'raged' at me. it wasnt really apparent how much good it did but a few days later he called me sounding really positive and saying he had gotten cable and was finally on the internet, which hes been working toward for awhile. it was a really positive outreaching move for him. he talked about getting work (hes disabled) and in general sounded really interested in being involved with life again, which surprised me a lot.
i was suprised that this happened beucase its very hard to defuse him sometimes when he gets like that.
so..... i know how sad it is when someone you really love is difficult and even self-destructive...... sometimes you have to disengage and let them walk their path.. but you can always be there for them if they will treat you (and themselves) with respect, and you can try to say to this woman, 'i am sorry you are hurting'. if she is capable of responding, she may respond. if she cant even respond to something like that - maybe she has a personality disorder and you will need to disengage even more. you can only do so much for someone no matter how cool they are.
i just felt like tossing that out becuase i know it really hurts to see someone beautiful who is trapped in themselves like that. sometimes bottom line, you have to step back and leave it to them. if they dont reach back.. that has to be their choice...
take care :}/
Anna
