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.
Someone told me a story about As and how they bend the situation that I thought was too good to not share.
She told me about a friend who was heavily pregnant, with an AH, who'd recently moved house. The house needed work, and with a new baby coming as well, they needed to paint and decorate. The pregnant friend called round to her friends to ask them to come help. They did. And while this heavily pregnant wife and her friends hung wallpaper and painted, the able-bodied AH sat on the couch, drinking a beer, having a smoke, not lifting a finger to help, happy to let someone else decorate his house while he drank. The person telling the story was fuming about his behaviour, and the next time the friend asked for help with decorating the house, she said she was busy.
I don't know why, but this story resonated so strongly with me that I cried in recognition. I've been that woman, and I've been her friend - struggling with a heavy, hot, sticky mess while someone else sat on the couch in comfort, chilling out. I'm usually the person who helps someone in a crisis. I'm so used to being the person who's being strong for someone else that I had no idea how to ask for help for myself, or where to turn. I knew something was wrong with ABH for a while, but I chose to ignore it and justify it, and to muddle through. Since my realisation that my partner is indeed an alcoholic, I've started branching out, asking for help... for the first time in my life, really. I am meeting with a support worker next week, plus a counsellor. ABF has decided to engage with the community-based medical support option where we live, and is seeing his own support worker next week as well. I'm happy he's making progress, but I am determined to change myself as well.
Anyway, this story made a light go on in my head, so I'm sharing it in the hope it will help someone else, too. Look around you. If you are doing all the work, all the worrying and being upset, making all the arrangements... where are they? Sitting on the couch? Or working alongside you?
While we work to focus on ourselves and be first in our own lives, I do believe that just because there are slackers in this world, doesn't diminish who you are.
A caring , compassionate woman, never stop being less than, because there are people in this world who don't do their part.
It takes all kinds of people , even alcoholics have different values, My X A was not one of those who sat around, he was a great worker and always pitched in.
The great thing is that you are reaching out and branching out and making you first in your life.
I think its important to share our awareness because most of us who have lived or live with alcoholism can relate and get something out of it. I was that woman, decorated, gardener, parented all by myself. I was a martyr and a control freak which suits an active a really.x
-- Edited by el-cee on Friday 2nd of May 2014 03:54:14 PM
