Live and let live?

A popular saying in AA & Al-Anon circles is "live and let live."  I personally have a whole lot more problems with letting live than with living.  

I left Al in early May.  I'd been threatening (don't we all know about those empty threats?) for some time, and indeed took a 5-week sabbatical from him and home in March/April.  I'm fortunate to have a family home to which I can retreat several hundred miles away.  (It does create challenges for my work, for my staff, for my boss, but in March it was I escape or my sanity would have escaped.)

When I left in mid-March, I truly thought that when I came home, Al would have taken the cure, and all would be well with the world.  'Twasn't to be.  The night I left, I told him my hopes, although I had to awaken him to tell him, as he was passed out.  I hugged him and departed tearfully.  When I returned, my hope vanished in 3 days.  No cure, and my world was falling in around me.  I stayed at hotel one night - he was drunk and I didn't care to share the bed, and he refused to move.  The next day I found a condo/apartment for sale, talked to the owners, and they agreed to let me rent it for a year.  Fewer than two weeks had passed since my return from my self-imposed sabbatical when I signed the lease.  He was considerate enough to stay in the spare bedroom, but he was anxious for me to leave (mainly, I think, because the spare bed is horribly uncomfortable).

But since I've been gone, I find myself wondering about him - and not just his major struggles with depression & alcohol.  I wonder if he's changed the sheets, washed the towels?  I wonder if he's taking adequate care of the many animals we have - mammal and avian?  I wonder if he's brushing his teeth, washing his clothes?  I wonder, wonder, wonder about all those things that I would have either done myself or would have reminded him to do.

And then I remember that the corollary to "live" is to "let live."  I have to let him live - let him make his own decisions, bear his own consequences.  I have to learn that distasteful consequences for me may not be distasteful to him - he may not care about dirty sheets.  I have to remind myself - repeatedly - it's no reflection on me if he's sleeping on dirty sheets, or if the litter box hasn't been clean in weeks.  I'm not his mother, and he's not 8 years old.  He makes his own choices, and those choices - good and bad - reflect on him and him alone.

Blessings to my higher power for allowing, encouraging me to live.  Now may my higher power give me the strength to let live.