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.
I'm writing this because I need help with me. It's not ( or maybe it is ) about my son or alcohol. I am getting sicker physically. I have COPD ( mild ) but it seems to be getting worse. I can't even walk across the room and pick up lint off the floor without getting out of breath. I can't take a shower and dry myself off without getting out of breath. I think my weight has something to do with it too. I'm up to 195lbs and I have never ever been this heavy.
My decision is to make a appointment with the doctor and get myself on a good balanced diet if possible. I have a new challenge and it's not going to be easy. I hate diets and love to eat. I think I eat more because of the worry where in the past I stopped eating when I had anxiety. No more anxiety just worry sometimes.
I wrote my son and enforced my boundaries because of the recent crisis with some other stuff:
Please don't call with your problems and crying
Please don't call when you are under the influence of anything
Please remember not to come here when you are homeless because I will not let you stay.
Response from son:
Yes I understand all the AA stuff and being selfish which I will never be able to do.
I was not under the influence of anything other than what my dr prescribed me when I called. I was however fully depressed and upset and have had the equivalent of one night sleep in 5 days. After exercising rightfully so I sounded upset. She is fully aware of my background.
I am in a safe place here, in fact too safe, trust me I have no money to buy alcohol ($2 and change) which would buy me nothing to stand against my tolerance level,My car is under lock and key anyway.
You are a hypocrite asking to not share my problems (is that not where family can help? It is history that children explain their problems and ask their elders for guidance right?) Yet you yourself told me about not wishing to wake up??? Now I am concerned for the mental sanity for both my parents. Dad: Alzheimer's. Mom: Very smart and lucid but depressed.
Won't mention my own issues.I will survive!
I was reading a little of the book Setting Boundaries with your Adult Children again and enforced my strength why I have to let go let God. Good book for anyone with a Adult Child with Alcoholism and Drug problem
Well here are some thoughts and problems I have right now and I'm grateful I have a place to go and tell somebody
((( hugs )))
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
I understand what you are going thru, it taking my physical health down the drain. Im learning to understand the disease and have educating myself in how I can help my husband who is a AA, learn that sober life is happier and healthier. My husband has not been home for three days drinking his life away at a buddies house and his wife permits her husband to drink every day and enables his drinking that its ok as long as I drive you around and do for you. Im not going to do that to my husband and enable him to drink in our home so he stays days at time at this guys house. Now, to let you know my husband is a retured navy seal of 25 years, is 44 years old and has been drinking since the age of 12, has done the same thing he does to me to his mother when he was that age. His mother and family are all passed away so that leaves him with only me, I have no kids and he was sober for two years until the last two weeks he wont come home.
I understand your thought, but take care of you and your health first! Im learning to do that for myself slowly but with time it will get better, so will you! They tell me that they need to hit rock bottom and really hard to make them go to AA meetings...
Nice passive aggressive guilt trip. he has been honing his craft for years, hasn't he?
Move as much as you can. it's not just diet, but exercise. Exercise doesn't have to be anything hard, just keep moving! As jealously noted many times before , you don't live in the snow where many of us do , so hopefully you can get outside and get some fresh air.
And have you been going to meetings? Now you are just bringing out the nag in me, sorry!
You can nag away with me Kenny I won't guilt you back I see the love and caring you bring to MIP
Thank you NavySealWie.....hey let your AH know we are grateful for his service....when he can understand it that is. I'm so sorry but your in the right place so keep coming back.
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Tough for you Cathy. It's just harder, I think, when its your kid. But he is sounding like the spoiled A that he is, now isn't he. I know what he says hits home, but guilt has no place in our recovery. You know you can't convince him. Only his own bottom being sore will do that when he hits it. Take care of you. That's all you can do right now. and pray for him, if you do that. That's what I do.
In recovery,
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~Jen~
"When you come to the edge of all you know you must believe in one of two things... there will be earth on which to stand or you will be given wings." ~Unknown
(((C))) It doesn't matter what we say or what they say. It only matters what we do and what they do. I am glad you are going to the doctor. I am glad you are going to find a way to exercise that fits you. I am glad you are you!
Thanks for sharing Cathy, now I see why you posted what you did to me... I have been at this place so many times with my son... and yes, it can get ugly.... but this time I understand it is his fear speaking.... he has lost the one thing he could count on , besides alcohol..enabling mom>>>> and he is scared... and so am I, for him.... but it is my turn to take care of me.... I understand too how selfish it is of me to try and do this for him... which cant be done anyway... that part is about me... wanting the pain and worry to stop... IF ONLY... he would......
So now it is.... If only I will..... makes it more managagle that I am not trying to fix someone who won't own that he needs help... but I do... and here I am.... thank you for sharing with me earlier... I appreciate your experiance....hugs from one mom to another..
So easy for a broke unemployed alcoholic to lash out at the 2 people who have helped him most and the only 2 left. Wow. What a tool. I would like to beat him with a big book. Just kidding (sort of). Cathy, I am sorry your son is so sick. Having no program renders his drinking vs. not moot anyhow cuz it is clear his thinking is soooo distorted and the drinking and drugging is a symptom of that. As for you, much love, prayers, and take care!!!
I'm glad to hear that you're going for a check up and have any medical issues better resolved. Planning the next 3 meals helps me.
I'm so sorry you're dealing with the harshness of your son's active disease. The distortions and manipulations are slung in hopes of getting under your skin to cause you to react and feed the disease.
((((Cath))))...this reminds me of my sponsor warning me "Do you know what you get when you poke at dog crap in the yard with a stick?...you get the stink back" and that was in response to me telling him that I initiated dialogue with my alcoholic/addict wife when I was needing my fix. I got the stink back!! Should have left the sleeping dog lay (only using metaphors). When I stopped "poking" at it the air got clear and I could smell the roses. Practice time for the slogan "Let go and Let God" and also not participating with the alcoholic in taking your inventory. Keep growing. ((((hugs))))
Your son is my son. Before he left my son said that no wonder he drank, it was because I kept telling him he had to move out. If they have no one to blame for their misery then the thing they dread most may happen, they may have to look inside and thats a place they have avoided for years. Theire words come from a place of self loathing, self pity, immaturity, all they lovely shortcomings that we ourselves are fighting. You and me, we are powerless and must never, ever give these words power or we begin enabling. Here we are in the same place again really. So glad your here, we need each other.x
The way I understand boundaries are that they are for me and not going to be understood by him or whomever a particular boundary is for/about. If I were to write out my boundaries to my ex A, he would send me the same kind of responses, blaming, guilting, poor me-ing, turning everything I tried to get through to him back at me and using it trying to hurt me, he would take my words and twist them up and throw them back at me. My boundaries are for me, if HE does this, I will do such and such; and my boundaries are my business, he doesn't have to approve.
And my health sucks too, weigh too much, getting old, don't walk enough - and I'm allergic to the dog so when she's inside too much (winter dust, dog dander, cat dander, no fresh air) my chest gets tight a lot, I get wheezy, and cough a lot. It could be the mild COPD is exacerbated by other things.
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I am strong in the broken places. ~ Unknown
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another! ~ Anatole France
, so hopefully you can get outside and get some fresh air.
