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.
My name is Alycia and I have been lurking on these boards for a couple of weeks now. I plan to attend one of the online meetings soon!
1 month ago my AH decided to drive our car while intoxicated. He is very sneaky with his drinking and me nor our friends had any idea he was drunk. He hit a parked car and flipped our jeep. I was in the car, too. We had to crawl through the sunroof. Fortunately, neither of us were severely injured. I have a scratch on my leg and a sore neck. After the accident, I was convinced I was going to divorce him and moved out for 2 weeks. Ultimately I decided that I was not ready to make that decision.
2 weeks after the accident, I lost my job. My performance at work is a direct result of how sick I have gotten over the last 4 years. I am critical, judgemental, gossipy, and unfocused. There were issues of professionalism as well reliability. I worked with kids with disabilities, which I have always considered myself to be very skilled at. This opened my eyes to the fact that I have not been competent at my job for a very long time.
Ultimately, I believe that these things were meant to happen. I can say this because neither of us were severely injured. My AH needed something like this to realize how bad his drinking had gotten. And I needed to be fired to open my eyes to how sick I am. It has been a lot to handle- legal fees, court dates, job hunting, and a torn relationship. I have taken steps t take care of myself during this time. Instead of staying at home all day and wallowing, I have started going to yoga every morning, doing step work and journaling each day, and spending a significant amount of time studying for my new career (decided to go into IT!)
I am struggling to set boundaries. I drive my AH to and from work as there are no busses going that way. I am financially dependent on him so it's important that he keeps his job. I figure it fills some time during the day and gives me some time to catch up on the news on NPR. I told him that on the way home the "alycia bus" makes its final stop at the AA house and then he is on his own from there. He is not happy about this but I feel like since he almost killed me in the crash I get to have some say.
I don't like who I have become. I used to be a positive, happy person and now I am mean, cynical, and critical of everyone around me. Fortunately I found a wonderful meeting that I can go to during the day. I am hoping to find a sponsor in the group (I have a temp one right now) who can help me long.
Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read all of this!
Hey Alycia - fellow Newbie here! Welcome and congrats on moving forward ODAT. I understand the whole my-life-oozed-its-ugliness-into-my-career-how-did-that-happen? I hope to remedy that myself. I think feeling critical and judgmental means I'm not focused inward on myself and my own wellness - and I'm busy being ticked off about someone else's stuff. I also know I've been busy with that for a long time and that busy-ness has kept me from doing the work I need to do. I'm glad you're here :)
Hi Alyce, welcome to Miracles in Progress, I am certainly glad that you found this forum and have reached out with such honesty. The situation that you described is familiar to myself and to many of us. Living with the disease of alcoholism is extremely destructive to all who interact with it. While we are attempting to live life and cope with the insanity of the disease, we lose focus on our own lives and ourselves.
Al-Anon is a recovery program for family members who have experienced such pain and loss. Face-to-face meetings are held in most communities and I urge you to check out the white pages and call for a schedule.
It is at these meetings that I reconnected with my true self, learned how to keep the focus on myself, live one day at a time, trusting a power greater than myself, and receiving support from like-minded members.
Alcoholism is a progressive chronic fatal disease, over which we are powerless. The best we can do is to begin to take care of our lives so that we can live with courage serenity and the wisdom.
Please keep coming back here as you are not alone
.
Aloha Alycia and welcome to the board. It sound like you still retain some clear thinking where a lot of us loose most of it. This disease is a fatal disease...be grateful that it didn't include you this time. Not only the alcoholic/addict get to die from it...innocents do also. You made it here!! Yay and you'll be find out what family you have in the face to face fellowship. You know how to inventory what the disease has done to alter the real you and have kept you focus on the who you want to be...very good. That took me years to learn as I was pretty well diseased when I got to Al-Anon. Sorry you lost that career...my grand-daughter is moving into that field of work. Keep coming back here to MIP and participating with the support we give each other to staying sane and healthy. (((((hugs)))))
It is very positive that you are seeing the situations for yourself as a springboard to move forward out of sickness. Glad you found this place! A lot of support and understanding here. The online meetings helped me a lot, as did face to face meetings, readings and working this program for myself.
The way you described how you thought things were in your job, and how they actually are...sounds very aware to me, in spite of how difficult that is. I remember having to face that my own sickness was getting in the way of my life as I wanted to live it also.
Hi Alycia, welcome to Miracles in Progress! I'm so glad you and your husband made it out of that accident alive! My wife had a number of fender benders when she was active. At first there was always some excuse, someone forced her off the road, etc. but after awhile they weren't adding up. And then came the time when the police had her on a red light, and she cut a corner stopping and ended up partly in someone's front yard. Then the authorities got involved.
Dealing with the authorities can be rough for both her and me, but the nice thing is that there is pretty much no denial once they get involved. They had objective evidence of BAC, and couldn't be talked out of it with lame excuses that I would accept.
The bad part is that freedoms get quickly taken away. Such as when she had to stay in jail for 10 days without bond for her 2 DUI because she was caught while she was still on probation from her first.
I can tell that you aren't taking any of this lightly, and I'm glad you aren't. I'm also glad that you haven't boarded the train to Pityville, as I tend to do sometimes. Working on yourself now is more important than it has ever been!
Keep going to meeting and you will start to get boundaries, and what is fair and what isn't. this is all a process, so we say that we are always aiming for "Progress, not perfection", because none of us have yet hit that perfection point, so we keep coming back here and trying.
Thank you everyone! It's good to hear that you guys think I am reasonably level headed- it doesn't always feel that way, thats for sure!!
Husband had his first court date. It was essentially to schedule his real trial. It will be 2 months out, so there will be a lot of wait time until then. It's hard to always have the future be uncertain, but I have to remember that it is out of my control and thats okay. My yoga teacher said today, "Fortunately it's out in my control." I think that will be my mantra for the new few months.
