The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Following last week's surgery I am struggling harder this time to recuperate. I think two procedures of this nature so close together makes it harder to bounce back. Needless to say, when you don't feel up to par physically, it makes anything else nearly impossible to handle.
After weeks of sobriety, my son relapsed badly mid-week. One look when he walked in and I knew. We ended up screaming at one another because I just couldn't take it. No tools at my command worked in the heat of the moment. He, of course, is very remorseful, very apologetic. But each time the bonds of my trust are broken it is like two back to back surgeries......harder to bounce back.
Although I know A's don't need reasons to relapse, he has so many problems to handle himself. I know his pattern of medicating away that feeling of failure and despair...it has always been the way he deals since he began this path in college. Why is it that it looks to us on the outside that A's just SET UP their failures? I don't know. I don't understand. Oh yes, I know I need to step aside, to let him fight his battle. I am doing that I think. I don't call him. I don't ask anything of him very often unless absolutely forced. I daily ask God to release him from my concern and take care of him.
He is back on track, I guess. I don't ask about how he is doing with drinking or is he attending AA. I don't ask how his job search is going. I don't ask if he has food in the house. But it is the end of the month and the rent has to be paid, the child support has to be paid, the utility bill has to be paid....those are the realities as they have been for two months now. The future looks bleak. The unemployment rate here is pushing 6.7% and no improvement predicted until mid 2009 or beyond. When all factors are put into the pot, the chances of his pulling himself up once more look bleak.
I would welcome any ESH re: how to handle relapses. I was definitely not very successful in handling this one.
I remember the last major surgery I had, and you are so right. We seem to be more vulnerable emotionally when trying to heal physically.
As for handling relapse, well, neither AD is in recovery to begin with, so I can't offer my experience from a mother's point of view.
I can tell you that when I relapsed after 4 years sober, the guilt/shame/self-hatred was so much worse than the first time I went to AA and got sober.
What cut to the core the worst is I had moved to where I still currently live in order to start my life over in recovery, and I had taken my oldest daughter away from her dad in her eyes because we moved over 2 hours away from him.
She was furious that I had uprooted us to begin my recovery, and then relapsed anyway. That one hurt for a long long time.
Thank God I was only out there for two months before I got sober again.
As for your son's future, I know for me, I have to stay in the moment. I cannot let my head get into the future because I borrow trouble before it ever gets here.
As always, keeping you and yours in my prayers! (((((hugs)))))
__________________
"If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience." - Woodrow Wilson
I see great great progress. I live in a high unemployment area (I am working part time myself). There are jobs if you really really dig. Of course an A does not want to really really dig do they? That is really not what we want to face.
I no longer ask and ask and offer help. I used to exhaust myself doing that. Now I work on helping me.
Forgive yourself for the outburst we are all human.
Dealing with my son that just got out of the military on a disability. He is PTSD and now has a wife, baby, and baby on the way. He cleaned out our savings. How could we say no when he was on his way to Iraq? We didn't know what hit us. Now, I am learning to say no and no. I will buy milk/diapers for the baby and gas up his car but that is about it. No works but is hard to do.
You are responsible for your healing and your healing attitude...stay there and remind yourself that this and this alone is your responsibility. If you forget this and try to enter the war with your alcoholic son while you are sick you will only get sicker. Turning the alcoholic or whatever problem that is trying to consume me over to my HP means cutting it loose from me and not taking it back for any reason. I need to heal as well as the alcoholic. I am responsible for mine and she was responsible for hers. Since I learned this and then learned with constant practice how to do it; I heal faster in the other areas body, mind and spirit. I get well and they get well their own way. I can be supportive by passing on my recovery and my recovery story but not by taking over their recovery work. I give mine away without expectation and then I walk away and let HP have it (and me) all.
Learning this and pulling it off is hard at first (months maybe years) and daily practice makes it more efficient as a tool in my recovery. Loving them does not mean taking control. Most often for me loving them is accepting the fact of what is going on and my part in it and only managing my part then turning it all over.
It's okay to let God have total control over your life and everyone in it.
(((((hugs)))))
You have made great strides. You will never reach perfection so don't expect it ever.
Everything that everyone has written so far makes sense, and just have been through the mill again with my own daughter,who I now know has a real problem with drink and owning responsibility for the consequences of her own actions was a HUGE shock.
My own ill health has suffered, yet again because I did NOT put that first and I thought I could sort it ALL out, her problems, the children's problems and my own.
Wrong. I was angry, hurt, felt let down and very misunderstood. I had high expectations of everyone involved including my daughter, who is incapable of taking responsibility of her own actions and walked into a completely unacceptable situation that I could NOT control.
I have forgiven myself for doing this, however it has taken me three weeks to get to this place and a major fall, with HUGE physical setbacks for myself and my own health in order to get there.
Right now I feel for the FIRST time in my life, after being bullied and allowing myself to be bullied for the past 18 years by my daughter, and 20 years by my XAH that I have at last truly LET GO, LET GOD and accepted that first step:
I HAVE ADMITTED THAT i AM POWERLESS OVER ALCOHOL (AND EVEN MORE SO OVER MY DAUGHTER), AND THAT MY LIFE HAD BECOME UNMANAGEABLE.
Truly, I have now accepted that situation and I have walked away from my daughter's problems. She has cut me off yet again, and I do not have contact with my grandchildren and unless I accept this for what it is now I WILL NOT BE CONCENTRATING ON ME.
And that is what YOU need to be doing for your self right now, in my opinion.
You need to be looking after yourself, You are number one, You are not in a fit state to be rescueing anyone, You need to be rescued and the only way that is going to happen is if you LET GO and LET GOD.
I know only too well how hard that will seem and yet I can honestly say having managed it this time with integrity, it is not that hard to do.
Put you in first position each day, each hour, each minute. You owe it to yourself, and your HP to do just that.
Praying for you, and your family with mine at the beginning of each day and at the end. That is all I am prepared to do 'cos I need all the energy to heal my broken body. Right now that is my full time job and that has to come first. You only owe yourself at this moment in time, no one else.
Sent with love, across the waves.
Suzannah
__________________
Out of the ruin of my past I have found the fortress of myself and I know how to defend it.
Strive for WISDOM; Seek SERENITY; NEVER compromise your INTEGRITY.
