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Identity in Addiction, Accountability & Letting Go
Posted On: 09/27/2007 16:24:12
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At the insistence of a friend, she had accompanied her to a local bar to meet someone. Although her friend had interests in this particular fellow whom they had gone to meet, he and my mom ended up hitting it off instead.
I was about 6 or 7 at the time.
Little did anyone know, my parents and the rest of our family would be in for a rocky ride with alcoholism and everything that goes along with it. Secrets, dysfunction... You name it, it probably existed within our family.
Until examining my own unhealthy behaviors, I realized that I learned the patterns of 'stinkin thinkin' at a very young age. Although this December would mark 16 years since my dad passed away, these said patterns are still ever present in my life and in my mind, and I'm watching these same learned habits being passed on to my grandkids.
When I was 10, dad nearly died from a heartattack that destroyed 1/3 of his heart.
It was a miracle of God he even lived.
This happened shortly after my brother and I returned from spending the summer with our biological sperm donor... Which we didn't go by choice, but rather we had been sent out there because dad's drinking had gotten so out of control.
Dad's drinking was by no means, normal. Even after he had nearly lost his life, he'd still go on drinking binges that would last for days at a time.
In a child's mind, I simply could not understand... Did he love his bottle more than he loved us? Was he trying to kill himself?
I did everything a child was capable of doing to get their parent to stop drinking. From dumping his booze down the drain when he wasn't home - risking his wrath in the process, to ignoring the acknowledgment of his presence whenever I smelled the stench of liquor on his breath. I'd even fall asleep on the livingroom floor, provided he decided to come home after binging, in hopes that he'd wake up from his stupor and see what his drinking was doing to us.
From second grade up until the 8th grade, my academic life and my social life was a living hell. Before his heart attack, he was notorious for quitting jobs, and taking his paycheck to disappear on drinking binges. Since he blew all the money on bars and booze, we were forced to move again and again.
The shortest attendance I had for one school was 2 days.
I considered myself lucky if I could spend one semester at the same school and that I never had to repeat the same grade, despite all the academic differences in schools within the same school district.
Not only that, I had an extremely difficult time socially. I never was able to stick around long enough to meet anybody, and when I did, I was yanked out of one school and into another.
Other times, where I actually did make a new friend, I ended up doing what I could to sabotage the relationship. After all, what was the point to have anything lasting when I knew I wasn't going to be around long anyway?
This is probably why I find myself not being a very social person to this day.
As much as I have a distaste for disclosing my personal life on a public forum, which I may end up deleting after a few days, I guess the point I am trying to make is this...
Many of us may have chosen 12 step recovery, not because we are drug addicts or alcoholics, but because we have become slaves to addiction in our own right. Addiction to control and modifying the addict's behavior being one of them. As I have come to discover the hard way, living with an addict can turn us into codependents.
Yes, we were hurt by the addict's actions and I don't argue that. It's taken me a long time to step out of the victim/martyr role and recognize that my learned habitual ways of coping has spread into every facet of my adult life like a cancer, even though my dad has long since died.
Since I've come to discover the origins of learned passive aggressiveness as a mode being able to control and manipulate another person's addiction, that I too, have to become equally accountable. The blame of addiction shouldn't be rested squarely on the addict's shoulders, because the addict isn't the only person in the situation that had a role to play.
Tags: Reflective
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