The material presented
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I keep reading "It's a disease." I think it's easier for me to think of it as a genetic condition, but that is way beside the point, which is around here someplace.
There have been so many good, thought-provoking posts of late and one that really helped me was Dolly Llama's about how all the alcohol changes the neural pathways....
Anyhow, I've been looking at AH (almost 40 years not drinking and nowhere near even trying to recover) with a more kindly attitude. And today it hit me:
If I just think of him as a very big for his age 8 year old with short-term memory impairment and a mental illness, then I'm better able to work around him/expect no adult behavior/overlook the crazies/not take it personally.
Some of us are a little slow.
Oh, I had a thought about that, too. When alcoholics decide to get well, I think it's pretty much because they know that stuff will kill you. We, on the other hand, are not in immediate mortal danger from being addicted to them,usually--it's more of a slow soul-killing.
Cheers and thanks!
Temple
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It's easy to be graceful until someone steals your cornbread. --Gray Charles
Welcome to Reality and that wasn't slow at all. Detachment isn't as obvious as "not taking that first drink," so, give yourself a break. Also, "knowing" the truth and "feeling it in your gut" are way different things. I think your recovery is amazing and I'm grateful to have read you. Hope to see you in meetings here too.
Alcoholism is also soul crushing aside from the other things you described. It's a disease that attacks mentally, physically, and spiritually. What really got me into recovery was that I felt like a total shell of a person. Alcohol robbed me of my spirit and that was worse than anything. I was somehow okay with the physical problems and hangovers and mental problems....Being spiritually bankrupt was what really made me hit bottom in retrospect.
It does sound good that your expectations are lowered. It makes it harder to be disappointed and allows you to put focus back into things you can control (the latter part of the serenity prayer that often gets overlooked while we are busy trying to accept things we cannot change - we forget to change things we can).
Hi Chips! I was about to PM you--you make such a contribution to this board and are sorely missed when you aren't around. I do know that as difficult as it can be if I let it to live with someone in that state, it must be Hell to be the subject. Yes--I went out and swept the deck (2 days in a row); something I can change. And when he snarked at me later over nothing, except that his leg hurts and whatever else is going on with him I let it pretty much just slide by. I still hold out the option to not live around somebody so--I can think of several adjectives--one day if I can get my act together at this late stage. It has been my experience with garden variety bullies that when I decide I'm not playing that game anymore they understand that at some level and back off. Whether it will work in this case I don't know. I want to be like Alice's mother--my friend told me that when her father who was Scottish and had grown up dirt poor would lay down the law about things like only one inch of water in the tub for a bath, Alice's mother would just laugh (out of his presence) and say: "I just don't pay any attention to him."
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It's easy to be graceful until someone steals your cornbread. --Gray Charles
HOLD ON!!! This Program has proven to me over and over again that IT'S NEVER TO LATE FOR ANYTHING. It's never to late for finding recovery, or for learning something new, or for starting over again and again and again.
My "act" will not be "together" as long as I am alive. I am a work in progress and each new step in a new direction is scary, painful but more rewarding that anything that came before.
Al-Anon is my lifeline as I take that step out from the spaceship of what is to the great outside of what will be. Luckily, my Higher Power has my back so there's nothing that isn't fun that isn't a lesson.
Miracles happen. They happen to beginners, the happen to oldtimers. So, just keep showing up and remember your lifeline.
Thank you, Fina-- A big part of getting me together is getting me in physical shape to take care of myself. Or enough staff to pick up the slack. And I hear you loud and clearly--hope always springs in me--I always believe things are going to get better--I'm going to get well--I'm learning how to handle things. We've both been sick for a longgggg time. And I can really feel myself coming around just the last few days. Maybe I finally read the same ESH spoken so many different ways enough times for it to start making a dent. I also asked whatever is out there to help me want to surrender, to change.
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It's easy to be graceful until someone steals your cornbread. --Gray Charles
LOL! My first higher power was a tree, then my home group, then the Program. The 12 Steps are my commandments and the 12 Traditions, my constitution.
Today, I speak to a God I can't fathom and that's okay. This "Whatever Is Out There" gets the job done for me. Every day, I do service to Program, I get better.
Funny, since I've taken care of myself spiritually and emotionally, I've gotten better physically. I don't need to hide in depression or overeating and I can pay attention to where I'm going, what I'm saying, the who I am and want to be.
Thank you, Temple :) That was helpful for me today.
Keep posting! My AH is one year in recovery, and increasingly angry and somewhat physical. After the last incident, I asked him to leave for a bit. It's been 7 weeks, his mom swears he is doing the work, and yet I hear nothing from him. She keeps telling me that it's on God's timetable. I'm struggling to accept, surrender, and let myself grow.
I must be addicted to him, to relationships.
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"The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself."
I hope if any of the "getting physical" involved you, or even the breaking up of things, that you are getting yourself educated on that.
I am sure it is hard not to miss a husband, even a bad-tempered one, if you are used to having him around. Mine quit drinking long ago and seemed fine for several years. Now he's acting like a newbie. Doesn't want to drink, just wants to blow up all the time and blame me for everything that isn't to his liking.
Thank goodness I'm getting some serenity about that from somewhere (I suspect Divine Intervention) because it was just tearing me to pieces. Nobody spoke like that in my FOO, and especially not my father to my mother. And so when I hear it, my normal response is: it is the end of the world and my husband hates me. And how Dare he act like that?
Well he dare because he is sick and he feels he can get away with it. He never did speak to any of he men he worked with like that, with the people whose work he was supporting, with neighbors, what few friends we've had, the daughter, the grandchildren, my sister. Only me. And his father, when he was in his 90s and about to die. I guess he likes soft targets.
I laugh, with my new thoughts about who he really is, at all the times I calmly or loudly explained to him how hurtful and unnecessary that was. He does not care. He didn't have a very good relationship with his mother and said one time that he handled her by making her cry. Nice. Wish I'd had That little bit of information before I married him. I think he's probably got me in the mother/enemy category now. Who knows? Doesn't matter, none of it. It's what I decide to do with what is left of my life--here or elsewhere.
I stuck around for so long partly because I caught it early on that if I didn't have myself evolved to the point I needed to be, I'd just wind up with somebody just like him or worse if I remarried.
Living with an alcoholic can scramble one's type--it's hard to know what to think about anything. I think it probably is a blessing that you aren't hearing from him. And I know it would be hard for you to see it that way.
Take care.
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It's easy to be graceful until someone steals your cornbread. --Gray Charles
