Stone Soup: The Push and Pull of Life

Last night at 2 a.m., I heard a couple arguing outside. “Get back in here!” he shouted.

“Leave me alone!” she barked. I crept out of bed, peeking around the curtains to see what the commotion was about. They argued and shouted, she walked away, and he pulled her back gently. Eventually they calmed down, he put his arm around her and they walked back inside.

The push, the pull of life. It’s something I think about a lot.

A friend of the family has been doing drugs for years and suffers from a form of mental illness. She calls at times, and pops up here and there, always a bit incoherent. As others her age have moved on with their lives, with school or jobs, she remains stuck in an alternate reality where time stands still. She compromises her mental health by doing drugs, and watching it is like a witnessing a slow motion car wreck. Over the years we have tried to get her help, point the way, offer our love. We pull, she pushes. Though it is heartbreaking to see her like this, we have learned to set limits about how much we will extend ourselves to her and where we will draw the line.

I was shopping recently and saw two young men sitting at a folding table clearly hawking some service. As I got closer I saw that it was a recovery center in town. I walked over and introduced myself to the men. The one was clearly older, a mentor, the younger a man in the program. I held out my hand to the younger man and shook his holding eye contact. I said “I am happy to write a check for this organization because it saved the life of a dear friend who I love very much. He was addicted to heroin and at the bottom of a really deep hole. This program helped him recover and now he’s five years out, clean, sober, married, happy and doing great!” I handed him the check and told him to hang in there and do the program that he really can recover and get his life back.

My friend truly did recover and I couldn’t be happier, but before he got help for his addiction I told him he could never visit my home again until he was clean and sober. I pushed him away then, but I’m pulling for him now.

There is a shop I love that makes homemade taffy. I love to watch as the the candy is thrown out on the cold slab. They work the sugared concoction back and forth, stretching and folding the taffy to get it to just the right consistency. If they didn’t continue this process over and over, the taffy would seize up and crack.

Looking over the many relationships I have with my grown children, siblings, friends I can see there are times when I pushed when I should have pulled. I think it can take years to learn to know your own limits, and have enough respect for yourself to set them. I guess it’s just good to acknowledge that life is sometimes messy, trying to know when to give, when to take and when to just walk away and let something be.

I’ve left friendships because the pushing and pulling was too exhausting, and I’ve found that sometimes this is the right thing to do. Life is full of choices and sometimes the decision to walk away from an unhealthy relationship can be empowering. I’ve seen children setting limits with toxic parents and parents setting boundaries for difficult children. Each of us knows when our own teeter begins to totter, and only we can say where that specific spot on the fulcrum is. It’s our job to decide within ourselves what is healthy and good, what to take and what to discard, even if those choices are not always popular.

The flotsam and jetsam of life that continues to wash up onto our lives each day has to be sorted. When we have what we need we can keep walking, letting the tides rush up and carry away those things that aren’t essential.

Pushing and pulling are part of life, part of relationships. I’ve decided that the trick is to realize how to be flexible and strong, choosing what we want and need thoughtfully, without getting caught up just doing the taffy dance. It’s not always easy, but it is sweet. It’s life on a stick, take a lick.