I like the checkers/chess comparison…While both games of strategy chess looks so far beyond one or 2 initial moves in hopes to pin point (almost force) how the other will react to each one to come, seeking the end result…so much like the dance of addiction.
And I am sure like everyone else (myself include) that you played a fair amount of head games with yourself stuck in the…if I do this, don’t do this, he might/will do that, and then I will maybe do this, or that…in hopes that they will respond with….
Future tripping is a conscious tomb…
But to the question you asked, which I can’t answer at all. I think I did what I did and everything made sense based on how sick I was, not how sick those around me were. And now I make healthier choices for myself in all my relationships it seems so much more natural, and I don’t need to know what the answers are before…still learning always, and I love all the exceptions to the rules…
On a more personal note, I hated what I had allowed myself to become. And I so knew better at each step I further went down…From my reactions to what I knew I couldn’t control as I was on the receiving end at one point so long ago and none of the reactions to me ever prompted a change for the better….to where I so perfectly used my resentment to make it all to easy to do just what my husband was…use.
Some days I wanted to kick my own ass, and I am so grateful for those closest to me who always did, but with this patience in letting me be who I was….It is funny I don’t know how much I changed, I see it as more going back and picking up the parts of me I left behind, at times unaware and at other times purposefully because I couldn’t find where I fit together anymore.
Take good care of you….