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.
The A is my son. I can have compassion for my child. I understand the disease alot more now that I have been reading all of your posts for several months. My father was an A. I never had any compassion for him until I knew more about the disease. There are alot of "isms" in my family. I can have compassion because I truly believe now that it is a disease. The anger comes from all the lying. Lying even when you don't need to lie. Little things that don't mean anything are lied about. That makes me angry. I don't have the compassion for that. I am getting to the point that I don't believe anything he says. It is not only things that would keep him out of trouble...I just don't understand. I see in his eyes that he is a lost soul. He doesn't want to be like this but will not admit that he has a serious problem. I told him last night that he could stay in my home for as long as I could take it. I don't know how long that would be. He is dealing with a dui, starting a new job, feeling the guilt about leaving his wife and 2 children and just seems lost. The only thing I can do is give him to HP and ask HP to take care of him. Then, I just need to ask HP to help me get through one day at a time to not feel anxious and fearful for him constantly.
Thank you all for being here and posting things that I need so much to hear.
I have a sister who is an A and I think sometimes I can have compassion and anger towards her. Now that I am in a place where there are fewer ties with her (our mother is dead) I can separate out a lot of things. I can choose when to speak to her. I do find however her lies and denial are staggering. She lies about our childhood makes it pretty when it was ugly. She also lies in particular about our father. She has all this fantasy stuff about how he would feel if he was alive today. I choose not to argue with her about them. I do think that lying and denial is part of their active disease. I once lived with a recovering A - he had tremendous denial about his family of origin issues. He would not even go there about his father's cruelness towards him. So for me personally their denial and their "lies" seem to be part of the condition of alcholism. After all its pretty difficult to go about destroying oneself without a fair level of denial isn't it?
I do think it is a tremendously difficult task to live with any active A. I am not sure I could really say I would choose that on many many levels. I know on some level I may have to deal with alcoholism for ever in my life as so much of society is perfused with it. On the other hand I don't think I can say I would actively choose to be residing with an A again. I actively work every day not to have to make that choice anymore to have better choices. Of course I do not know what life will throw at me. I know now if I were in a dysfunctional job I may not choose to leave so I can't really project ahead. I don't much like my choices these days I hae to admit that. I would rather have other choices but it is my life and part of my recovery is admitting to what I have chosen and the choices I have right now whether I like them or not. I know that some of my life's choices are not necessarily what we would like. I want life to always be on my terms and it is not. In fact very very little of it is on my terms. I think if it were on my terms it might actually be a lot worse than it is now.
I feel for you dealing with a son who is active and dealing with his mess. I also feel sad that I have my own mess to clean up. I would rather not clean it up I would really rather not be responsible to it at all. I am willing these days but I have to say I need a lot of support to maintain that willingness and I need recovery partners to help me with it because there are moments when I have no idea what to do or how to do it.
I would rather put all my mess on the A rather than own my part in it. Cleaning up a mess is tremendously hard work day in day out.
It just shows you that we all help each other. I get so angry at my A and the last thing I want to do is show compassion for someone that treats me so poorly (martyr). I know that my husband struggles and that the only way he knows how to take care of himself is to be selfish. And he doesn't realize the cost to others.
