The first thing they teach you in lifeguard school is that there is nothing more dangerous than a drowning person. A drowning person can only think of one thing: survival, and if they have to make you go under the water for them to go up in the air, well sometimes that's how it is.
Sometimes the drowning person listens to reason, enabling you to help them save themselves.
Sometimes you have to knock the drowning person out and drag them back to shore, unconscious, in order to save them.
Sometimes you can't save them at all, you just have to let them go, lest you drown yourself.
And you can never tell which one you're going to get. Because none of us knows how we are going to be when we are drowning, until we are.
Drowning people can be found everywhere. At school. In your church. At the office. In your neighborhood. And while they may not actually be drowning in water, the peril is real. Emotionally they are being sucked under by a vortex and if you're not careful, they can take you with them.
And they will.
I learned this lesson very young. And I learned it over and over and over and over. Not because I'm a slow learner, although there is probably a case to be made for that. No, I had to relearn this one because fundamentally I'm a fixer. If something is askew, I get right into it. Since I was a kid. Having a fight with your boyfriend? Let me talk to him. Boss not listening to you? Here, I'll set up a meeting with her. Fix, fix, fix. And yes, of course it would inevitably bite me in the ass. I would get in the middle of something, get in over my head, not have all the facts (as if that would make a difference) and voila, make things worse. So after a while I learned to hang back, give advice only with caveats and to mind my own business.
Unless you were family. Then there was no other choice, I had to get involved.
Nothing drowns a person like drug and alcohol abuse, and if/when you couple that with legitimate mental health problems it makes for a molotov cocktail that always, and I do mean always, explodes in your hand. This is bad. You need your hands. Hands are good.
Growing up, my mom was a full blown alcoholic, albeit a functioning one. She would save the really bad stuff for after hours - when it was dark. You didn't want to venture near her bedroom at night, especially if you were in trouble. She would begin an inquisition that would last for hours. The talking, of course was the harmless part and we probably don't need to get into the other parts. Suffice to say that she only ever physically hurt herself.
And she was drowning. Even as a kid I could see it.
So I tried to fix her.
Be a good girl (soooo obvious)
Lecture her on her destructive behavior
Hide her stash
Tell on her
Hide her car keys
Call the police
Make dinner
Clean the house
Cry
Beg her to stop
Be perfect perfect perfect
But none of what she was doing had anything to do with me and eventually I realized that I was letting this drowning person take me under with her. As much as I wanted her to be well, in the end I would not, could not actually sacrifice myself.
Still, I would make other futile attempts to save her: get her a job, invite her for dinner to meet people. She would lose the job, not talk to the people. She would go on a bender and stay in her apartment for weeks. She would lock the door and refuse to answer. I would climb over the balcony to try to see through the apartment windows, always terrified of what I would find. But she was always fine. She would eventually emerge and pish posh my worried scoldings.
It wasn't until I was 30 that I finally understood that she might die, might actually kill herself and there wasn't anything I could do about it. That was a very hard time. I felt helpless and guilty. But this need to fix her, this constant attempt to help, was sucking up a huge part of my life and affecting my interactions with other people. The creepiest part: sick people were constantly attracted to me, innately sensing my pathological need to "help." I had to break the cycle.
So I gave up.
And guess what? She's still alive. For how long, I cannot say. It is not in my power to control it. And this will have to be okay, because I need that positive energy for myself and for my family.
The moral of this story, if there could possibly be one, is that it's sometimes okay to let go of someone in order to save yourself. Even if you love that person more than anything else in the world. Maybe especially if you love them more than anything else in the world. It's a matter of self preservation. The drowning person has already made his/her decision and now it's time to make yours.
I hope you don't mistake me for the heartless bitch others have claimed me to be. I'm not saying you can't try to help, after all, sometimes you do find a person who will listen to reason and save themselves - which at the end of the day is the best you can hope for. But if you find yourself with the other kind, and you can't knock them out and drag them to shore (and really, most of the time you can't), you have to know when to let go, and save yourself.