A Friendship Lost

It's the first one. The first time since I entered recovery. I have lost a friend because they cannot support me due to my past. It won't be the last time. This is the same woman I wrote about yesterday, who I learned had broken my trust. I reached out to her to ask her why. Her explanation seemed to point to the idea that she found my indictment online, read it, decided I'm a monster based on the accusations, and that I lied to her. As anyone in the criminal legal system knows, an indictment is not filled with proven facts, but one sided evidence to see if there is enough to move forward and arrest/bring a defendant to court. More than half the stuff in my indictment was swiped out of my plea agreement. It doesn't matter though. People will choose to believe what they want to believe. I have lost a friend and I need to just let her go.

At the same time, I have no right to make any of my other friends uncomfortable with their friendships with this person. She has every right to feel however she does about me, and while she did not show any integrity by not coming to me or telling someone to google my indictment rather than just tell them to talk to me, I will simply just walk away from her. I will not waste my time and energy with anger, because I can't change her actions or the past or her reaction to my past crime. I cannot force her to understand addiction or recovery. I lost almost all my friends before I came into recovery, and now, being a felon, I'm sure there are closed minded people who will judge me in the future as well.

For me I learn a great lesson from this about passing judgment on others. So often we fail to try to understand "why" a person made a bad choice or a mistake. I used to be very judgmental. Since I came into recovery 5 years ago, I went from judgmental to incredibly curious. I'm curious on why a person makes the choices they do. I try to hold judgment to when I have enough details (the researcher in me). I'm going to really need this skill in Carswell.

I've read that inmates somehow find out the crimes of each others convictions, even though no one really talks about them. I don't know if that makes some people targets based on their crime. Mine being wire fraud is typical white collar, but the implications of my crime hurt a lot of people. I don't know how that could play out and I guess I can't worry about it cause it is an unknown right now. 

Anyway, the fact that someone violated my trust may make you think I'd question whether I would choose to trust someone else in the future. I have to say that it changes nothing. I still will not live the double life ever again and keep big secrets from my closest friends. Nothing has changed. I cannot stop trusting everyone because one person made a choice that hurt me.