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.
So, last night I was consumed by anger and the passive aggressive side of me came out. I tried to stay up on purpose to irritate him because I knew he was planning on continuing to drink after I went to bed. Finally I fell asleep at 2 AM and he left the room. I don't know if he drank or not but I made a snarky comment about the smell of beer this AM and I know I shouldn't have. So, here I sit alone in my room knowing that we need to talk about things but since I was snarky this AM, I won't have a leg to stand on. He's now on edge because of what I said. I need to tell him I'm going to a meeting tonight and that I want him to help with our son, but he's going to get all weird about it because I opened my mouth, UGH!
We all get The Blurts, 'xxxx' just falls out of my mouth sometimes. Helps if I choose the consequence before I do the action, but... I am not perfect.
Thanks to a 12-step program, I'm a little better than I used to be though, when I find my life feeling unmanageable, that's my cue to start working the steps, my guidance...
Perhaps you would've gone to bed had you admitted your powerlessness.... Then you might have laid in bed talking to your Higher power and had a peaceful night's rest as you made a decision to turn your will and your life over to Higher power's care....
There will be a next time, sweetie. The universe ALWAYS gave me another opportunity to practice something different. ((hugs))
-- Edited by canadianguy on Thursday 12th of January 2012 11:45:33 AM
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The prayer isn't for Higher Power to change our lives, but rather to change us.
Another thing, you are powerless over him and his dis-ease.... No matter what you blurted, his behavior is HIS responsibility.
For me, when my AH wouldn't help out with parenting or help take care of OUR home... I just had to suck it up and do what had to be done because it also fell under my list of responsibilities. I can scream, "it's not fair"(and I did!) but that was like talking to the wall. Life isn't fair, I had to smash the belief that it should be.
An active alcoholic is unreliable. I've had to ask and rely on HP to give me the strength to do everything that needed to be done. HP is soo good, that was the only way I could crawl out of bed some days.
-- Edited by glad lee on Thursday 12th of January 2012 04:08:52 PM
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The prayer isn't for Higher Power to change our lives, but rather to change us.
Thank you all for the kind words. I did finally talk to him and reminded him that we have a teenager whom he needs to set an example for. His only replies to me statements were, "I understand." He really had nothing to say for himself. I mentioned that he should talk to his psychiatrist and get his meds re-evaluated but I left the ball in his court. Only time will tell. And, yes, I kept telling myself to just go to sleep, put my ear plugs in, and forget about it. For some reason, I just couldn't do it last night. In the past I was able to let it go but I was just still ticked off about him being drunk when my son had a friend sleep over that I just couldn't sleep last night and decided to be passive aggressive. I also explained to him that he needs to understand that our son's friend comes from a very Christian conservative home and if they found out what was going on in this house, they probably wouldn't let their child sleep over. I was trying to get him to understand that his actions may have consequences that will impact other people in this house, not just himself. Of course, his response was, "I understand."
In my understanding, what his response (spoken and unspoken) is really is "Unless something has an immediate bad impact on me, I'm not going to change anything I do." That's sort of the alcoholic credo. (The later alcoholic credo is "Unless something has an extreme immediate bad impact on me, I'm not going to change anything I do.")
My ex-AH also had (I imagine still has) an attitude towards society: "Those people are kill-joys who don't understand that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a little harmless drinking. I won't be constrained by their insane judgmentalism." So that's how he writes off the fact that he ignores the bad effects of his drinking: "those people" are unreasonable and he bravely won't capitulate to their petty rule-making. The "petty rule-making" includes those rules about not driving drunk, paying thousands of dollars' worth of fines, etc. The ability of addicts to justify their addictions is pretty stupendous.
It's natural of us to feel frustrated with their poor decision-making. What rational person wouldn't feel frustrated? It's just a matter of choosing to do things that will help us instead of frustrate us further, the way I see it.
I hope you can get to your meeting. Is your son old enough for Ala-Teen, maybe?
I'm so sorry that you are going through this it's such a hard concept to get that we are powerless over addiction (and insert anything else you need to, people, places, things and the past). The only thing we can do is own our part of any given situation. What truly sucks is when our part happens to be more than the Q's. I know I hate to be wrong .. lol.
He's going to do what he's going to do, it's so more important to keep the focus on you. I understand so much the frustration and pain of the situation.
Hugs P :)
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Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.- Maya Angelo
