100% permission

A letter to a friend of mine this morning:

A caveat here: when I refer to "her" and "she" in this email, I am not
referring to the real person out there somewhere. I'm referring to
your story of her, your version of the her and the she. This is
*entirely about you*. Clear?

What if you had 100% permission to ask her whatever you wanted? Now
*that* would be a relationship worth having, IMO. She is managing you
in the interaction (not her fault!) because she sets you back on your
heels and gets you to thinking a lot about what to do next and how to
do it. There is a thin line (or a huge canyon) between you taking your
inventory in a growth way and you strategizing and ruminating and
perhaps even obsessing a little bit. I totally understand, by the way,
as we are dogs of a feather (haha) in this regard. Always "mind
reading" and trying to figure stuff out. But what if you had 100%
permission to be yourself? How would that look? Would she be able
to do that, give you that gift of complete acceptance? I want to have
people around me now who give me that utter freedom. If they don't
want to be around me exactly and precisely the way I am, what do they
want? Why spend time with me if I'm not the way they want a person
with whom they spend time to be? I am interrogating this like a
warrior these days.

I give you 100% permission to ask her anything you want and say
anything you think is true. Anything you are curious about. This is
you doing for yourself what you can do for yourself. Open honest
communication is what keeps me sober. If people aren't into it, then I
usually can't be bothered. For example, where I am now, I want to be
able to say to someone (if it's actually true!) "I would love to be
physically involved with you. I can't offer you a long term
commitment, but I'm attracted." Honest. No shenanigans. That is *only
where I am right now*, however, and I realize everyone is on a
different path and learning/growing differently. I do not intend this
letter to contain any musts.

It doesn't bug me that she said she was overly saturated
regarding recovery. It bugs me, in part, that she *blames you* for that! It
bugs me even more that she wants to set the terms of your
conversations. Nobody gets to do that with me anymore. If they can't
hang with my spiritual talk and my program and step talk then they can
hit the highway (unless I am consciously "working with others," in
which case my Higher Power is the one setting the terms anyway, not
them. That is, I don't want to lead with the chin or be an AA
Fundamentalist or whatever and "ruin a chance to be helpful," but I
can't manage that, that is in the Universer's hands. And friends need
to be WITH ME and me WITH THEM on this journey or they need to find
another person to resent! haha).