Re-POST from 5-25-12:
She moved away from the curtain for the hundredth time that evening, having checked the driveway to see if my long overdue, undoubtedly drunk father had returned.
"I can't believe alcohol is stronger than love," was her resigned, almost-sequitur to my impassioned inquiry as to why she didn't leave him.
"I can't believe alcohol is stronger than love." She repeated the statement with a righteous yet zombie-like stubbornness that never ceased to inspire massive confusion in my child heart.
At twelve I adored her and desperately needed to trust a mother. At twelve, however, I was still sane enough not to embrace her masochistic philosophy of "love". At twelve I still retained a degree of emotional sobriety in terms of the merry-go-round of misery of an alcoholic home. It was only a matter of time until the pain would wash away my frame of reference, too, in terms of healthy living, let alone loving. I would ultimately become as masochistic and pain-oriented as she.
But then I sat there. Simply confused. Straining so hard to understand and to help. Part of me admittedly enjoyed the excitement and the privilege. My bedtime was long past, but once again, due to the extenuating circumstance of my father's drinking binge, I was promoted to confidante. My mother required an audience -- a shock absorber -- for her alarm.
I was a passenger on her roller coaster of emotions. The spectacle of her filled the living room. The wringing of hands and wailing. The foot-stomping fury. The panic. She'd turn on the radio to hear if there had been an accident. Every car on the street pulled her to the curtain once again. My father usually didn't come home on those nights until the early hours of the morning, but her ritual sustained its intensity all evening.
Perhaps these exhausting exercises were her way of playing out the pain or dealing with the suspense. Perhaps they were a way of revving herself up for the verbal, near physical combat that would happen upon his arrival.
She would entertain me with a rendition of possible ways he would get killed before daybreak. If a siren were heard in the distance, she would look at me knowingly. Sometimes, she'd send me to bed and sit up clutching her rosary, entranced in the whispering, as if that alone were the thread keeping him alive. I'd be in bed, unable to sleep -- too aware of him out there in the mysterious dark and her on the couch in the living room in feverish prayerfulness.
Usually, though, I would get to simply sit there, awe-filled at the impressive display of vitality of my so often depressed and exhausted mother -- the adrenaline coursing through her body. And I, so vulnerable in my loyalty, was sucked into her swirling hysteria. Feeling her pain -- her anger -- her fear.
Save one difference in us. I wish today I could go back to that poor, pajamaed girl sitting on the edge of the couch in wide-eyed horror, harboring the guilty hope that this time her father wouldn't come home. This time he would die and then they'd all be left in peace.
I'd like to save that little girl all the guilt, self-hate and future heartache from such trauma. To tell her that it was a normal, appropriate response not to want a crazed being, deranged by alcohol and too-long repressed anger, to enter the house and terrorize them all. A stranger who could change her mother into a scary stranger, matching his fiery raging with her icy vindictiveness. In a home where the children were changed, too, into hypervigilant hostages of the marital war.
Miraculously, however, my father always did manage to come home. More or less in one piece.
We would hear it. The car in the driveway. His cursing as he slammed the door.
And my mother would pull back from the curtain -- for somehow he must not see she'd spent the evening there. Even though he'd probably know, as she'd want him to know.
If I were still up she'd send me scurrying to bed. If I were already in bed, I'd be awake, struggling to listen beyond the pounding in my ears -- paralyzed with anticipation of the upcoming scene for, by that point, I had completely merged with that poor pathetic woman sitting stoically on the couch with her knitting, rosary beads or newspaper. Feigning detachment. Assuming the stance, justifiably, of an injured party. At the same time, girding herself for the inevitable attack.
My father erupted into the front hallway, slamming the door. Then came a terrifying eternity of silence as he stood crookedly, rallying a wobbly body and a dizzied brain -- struggling to assess the situation. Sensing through the drunken fog, her presence in the living room. The guilt and dread her presence inspired made the fire of his rage begin to roar.
I listened with my whole body. My lungs would ache from not breathing so long. I had to hear. Had to will my support for her. Indulging in a breath seemed an abandonment of my mother.
He would start. He would curse something or other -- trying to provoke her. Trying to show her and all the rest of them, the long parade of people in his miserable past, that he really didn't give a damn. That he wasn't going to put up with any more crap. The speech slurred. The body menacing. I could see the hulking shadow on the wall from my bedroom.
She would knit. Not look at him. Ostentatiously ignore him. Soon, ceremoniously, she would begin collecting her things to go to bed. Supercilious and silent, save for the sniping which would slowly but inevitably come. When he finally paused in his brutal and sloppy rantings, she would say it. That one sentence, caustic and cryptic -- with a point that never missed. Right to the jugular. God, she was good. Amazing.
And he would be off again. In an even more murderous fury. It was orgasmic, the levels of rage and anger they achieved in those first minutes of his homecoming. I'd lie there wondering if this were the night he'd kill her. They'd kill each other. We'd all be killed. A fitting climax to the horror of it all.
###
Rage and alcohol are often mutual addictions along with shame and blame. I'm much more familiar with them than I want to be. Very few manage to break that cycle. R&R
I think we all have forbidden thoughts from time to time, which would horrify people if we said them out loud. Or is it just me? Who hasn't wished at one time or another that someone we know would come to a bad end?
Hard to kill a drunk tho. I am so sorry you had to go thru this. Alcohol does trump love and I have had way too much of that sadness in my life too.
Thanks for this, Libby. It helps to understand that we are not alone in our desire for nightmares to end. A very well written story....it touches me too.
I missed this the first time. Heart breaking, but beautifully told. R
Harrowing recounting libby. You must wonder to what extent alcoholics appreciate the havoc they wreak on their families.
Harrowing and real. You tell it so vividly.
R
As you know there are many meters of research on bookselves about this problem. And nobody seems to know what to do.
I'm lucky, I've didn't need to go through that, what you are telling about, even if I have known many friends having problems with alcohol.
As you know there are many meters of research on bookselves about this problem. And nobody seems to know what to do.
I'm lucky, I've didn't need to go through that, what you are telling about, even if I have known many friends having problems with alcohol.
It is scary how additions destroy relationships. It begs the question of how we define love.
A wonderfully told tale of terror. Alcohol impairs the mind and destroys the body. A real nightmare for the family. Glad you survived. R.
Harrowing, Libby. well told and I am sorry.
“I listened with my whole body. My lungs would ache from not breathing so long. I had to hear. Had to will my support for her. Indulging in a breath seemed an abandonment of my mother.” Wow! This is riveting writing. The entire piece commands attention, and, in its keenly rendered fidelity to emotional consciousness, repays twofold, threefold, the attention it commands.
Hell, my dad didn't have a chance to attack, my mother would beat him to the punch. If he had even been so inclined which he wasn't. As one new bil said, "If I was married to your mother, I'd drink, too." In my house you didn't have to strain to hear. You couldn't miss it. Couldn't hide from it. It would wake you up and keep you awake.
Rated. I'm sure that what you endured seemed almost beyond endurance when it was actually happening. This is an exceptionally insightful and, dare I say it, compelling recounting of those terrible past traumas that, fortunately, you managed to survive.
Libby....
so brave of you to write about it, I think, and so tough a past to bring up for yourself, to write about.
Thank you for sharing this again.
Such a terrible wrecking of who humans can be - I hate alcohol !! ...but I can't say I've ever hated an alcoholic, what a nightmare to be caught by its seduction. Some of my favorite people are/were alcoholics, but when later stages have attacked their very core it is so tough....so very tough.
I am grateful every day that alcohol was/is not the siren singing to me....and also grateful I got my children away from the chaos of the loved one under its spell when I did. Horrible for children to be anywhere near, much less have to live with....and the scars last forever, for everyone, as you - sadly - know.
Alcohol wins, far too often.
Best to you, Libby, I admire your guts in writing this at all.
I hope writing, writing, writing, helps pin it down somewhere for you.
so brave of you to write about it, I think, and so tough a past to bring up for yourself, to write about.
Thank you for sharing this again.
Such a terrible wrecking of who humans can be - I hate alcohol !! ...but I can't say I've ever hated an alcoholic, what a nightmare to be caught by its seduction. Some of my favorite people are/were alcoholics, but when later stages have attacked their very core it is so tough....so very tough.
I am grateful every day that alcohol was/is not the siren singing to me....and also grateful I got my children away from the chaos of the loved one under its spell when I did. Horrible for children to be anywhere near, much less have to live with....and the scars last forever, for everyone, as you - sadly - know.
Alcohol wins, far too often.
Best to you, Libby, I admire your guts in writing this at all.
I hope writing, writing, writing, helps pin it down somewhere for you.
libby - i am very sorry you experienced this. not so dissimilar from some things i experienced.
i do just want to say, alchohol does not trump love. neither does heroin, cigarettes, or so many other things that can kill us, but which we do anyway.
those things dont trump love, but addiction does. addiction trumps self.
i do just want to say, alchohol does not trump love. neither does heroin, cigarettes, or so many other things that can kill us, but which we do anyway.
those things dont trump love, but addiction does. addiction trumps self.
Read and rated this earlier. Actually I have read it more than once. Extremely well written, Libby. It always breaks my heart to hear or read the memories of children who grew up with addicts. I'm so glad you grew up. I know one little girl who's mother killed her when she chose to drive drunk.
/r.
/r.
I'm married to the daughter of an alcoholic. An awful, awful way to grow up. I have had friends - definitely ex-friends now - who were perfectly enjoyable company when sober but turned mean and violent with a couple of drinks. Can't imagine living with them. Sorry you had to.
Thank you all so much for the generous and validating responses to this post! I hope to be back much later tonight to comment more. best, libby xxx
I'm back. I courageously posted this at the beginning of 2011 not long after I joined Open Salon. Looking back I am impressed how many blogs I posted without getting any ratings and even views at the beginning. How stubborn was I. I recognize how fortunate I am to get read and validated and noticed, sometimes thanked sometimes not so much.
With this one, it was so extraordinarily personal I assumed it would be noted. I was lucky in getting brassawe and vzn to take note and give me great validation. Then I think I posted it in 2012 and I remember jmac and then vzn coming back and some dear others.
Now it is 2015 and I was willing and interested in posting it again and am gratified for the hearing and validation. It is said in 12-step nation "we are as sick as our secrets". So by posting it I get another round of freeing from the secrecy mode I was indoctrinated into from my earliest years.
I figure the terror and horror from the alcoholic scenario gets kept secret by its victims from others and even in many cases especially when young kept secret in terms of denial and minimization in the minds of their victims that causes all kinds of problems for the psyche.
Another saying, "if we don't pass it back we pass it on." Yes, jmac, it is a cycle. I remember you being so supportive when I shared this in 2012. Thank you for then and now. The "shame" stuff I am always contending with. STILL!!! Like a big trap door below me opens up and I fall through. John Bradshaw has written extensively on shame. He says often when we experience any feelings as adults still we adult children of alcoholics we feel a kind of "shame parfait". Shame mixed in there along with other feelings like shame for being angry. Shame for being fearful. Shame for being happy. Shame for being sad.
Sharon Wegsheider (I think her name?) I read long long ago and she said the rules of the alcoholic family were profound, "DON'T THINK, DON'T FEEL, DON'T TRUST." jmac, certainly seems to be a cycle that travels mercilessly through families.
best, libby
With this one, it was so extraordinarily personal I assumed it would be noted. I was lucky in getting brassawe and vzn to take note and give me great validation. Then I think I posted it in 2012 and I remember jmac and then vzn coming back and some dear others.
Now it is 2015 and I was willing and interested in posting it again and am gratified for the hearing and validation. It is said in 12-step nation "we are as sick as our secrets". So by posting it I get another round of freeing from the secrecy mode I was indoctrinated into from my earliest years.
I figure the terror and horror from the alcoholic scenario gets kept secret by its victims from others and even in many cases especially when young kept secret in terms of denial and minimization in the minds of their victims that causes all kinds of problems for the psyche.
Another saying, "if we don't pass it back we pass it on." Yes, jmac, it is a cycle. I remember you being so supportive when I shared this in 2012. Thank you for then and now. The "shame" stuff I am always contending with. STILL!!! Like a big trap door below me opens up and I fall through. John Bradshaw has written extensively on shame. He says often when we experience any feelings as adults still we adult children of alcoholics we feel a kind of "shame parfait". Shame mixed in there along with other feelings like shame for being angry. Shame for being fearful. Shame for being happy. Shame for being sad.
Sharon Wegsheider (I think her name?) I read long long ago and she said the rules of the alcoholic family were profound, "DON'T THINK, DON'T FEEL, DON'T TRUST." jmac, certainly seems to be a cycle that travels mercilessly through families.
best, libby
Daniel, thanks for commenting. My father was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. All parents have higher and lower selves, but alcohol can bring out an extreme of recklessness and abusiveness. With both parents it was like living with multiple personalities. After that TYPICAL Saturday night above, it was followed by a Sunday in which my mother became the scary righteous and vengeful silent treatment monster and my father was withdrawn and guilty.
Only years later did I have to reframe my perspective that my mother was innocently my father's victim and all the stress from his drinking was causing her crazedness when I faced down she had borderline personality disorder which exacerbated no doubt my dad's drinking, as his drinking exacerbated her condition. it was a puzzle piece, a large one, that came pretty late in life considering the kind of intensive recovery work I had kept desperately trying to do.
With borderline personalities there is a kind of paranoia. The "tough love" advised in 12-step rooms doesn't work on paranoia.
The sad thing is, the children in the family, well, me, felt like we had multiple personalities we were on such a roller coaster at the end of shifting moods of my parents and parents do important mirroring to their children to help them form their identities but the messaging was so extreme in our family and other alcoholic families. You don't feel a sense of existential security. Of you-ness. Sometimes you are overpraised, other times you are over-vilified. You are wonderful You deserve an exorcism. Infantilized. Parentified.
Also, alcoholic families actually seem to divide up the kids into four different roles, mascot, hero, scapegoat and lost child. I was stunned to see that my identity in the family in my early years, mascot, was a typical textbook child of an alcoholic personality -- 1 of 4. I think I have had all the roles but hero in my primary family's eyes and my own during my life.
In 12-step rooms I have heard it called living in the "opera mode." Everything was over-reacted to (and then again sometimes even under-reacted to dependent upon post burnout phase after manic phase) by my parents. Sometimes it wasn't punishing, but one was always girded in case it was. HYPERVIGILANCE. Doesn't promote a sense of mastery. Walking on egg shells. The kids develop something called "false personalities". You have to be perfect not to catch fire from stressed out parents and you end up feeling that their self-esteem is on your back and God help you if you bring more shame and stress to them.
I remember a critic in a tv review reviewed a tv movie on alcoholic families with Martin Sheen. Martin Sheen got high marks for acting but the reviewer criticized all the actors that played roles in Sheen's family. They were too stiff like they had forgotten to take the clothes hangers out of their clothes before putting them on. But that was what it was like. That degree of tension. Those actors had been spot on. This stiff and phony readiness and nervousness. Waiting for the next outrageous outburst. Another awesome tv movie I saw years ago was one with Andy Griffith as the alcoholic father. It really showed the tragic truth and how it impacted everyone in the family. I t really is a family DIS-EASE.
Of course, the most important lesson is to keep all this misery and shock and horror A GREAT BIG SECRET AND PLAY HAPPY AND SHOW OTHERS HOW HAPPY AND TOGETHER YOU AND THE FAMILY ARE!!! Otherwise shame will descend. You will betray. And enabling and codependency are the rule of the day. Doesn't matter how miserable and frightened and angry you were. The mask was important. Disconnect from your real self.
best, libby
Only years later did I have to reframe my perspective that my mother was innocently my father's victim and all the stress from his drinking was causing her crazedness when I faced down she had borderline personality disorder which exacerbated no doubt my dad's drinking, as his drinking exacerbated her condition. it was a puzzle piece, a large one, that came pretty late in life considering the kind of intensive recovery work I had kept desperately trying to do.
With borderline personalities there is a kind of paranoia. The "tough love" advised in 12-step rooms doesn't work on paranoia.
The sad thing is, the children in the family, well, me, felt like we had multiple personalities we were on such a roller coaster at the end of shifting moods of my parents and parents do important mirroring to their children to help them form their identities but the messaging was so extreme in our family and other alcoholic families. You don't feel a sense of existential security. Of you-ness. Sometimes you are overpraised, other times you are over-vilified. You are wonderful You deserve an exorcism. Infantilized. Parentified.
Also, alcoholic families actually seem to divide up the kids into four different roles, mascot, hero, scapegoat and lost child. I was stunned to see that my identity in the family in my early years, mascot, was a typical textbook child of an alcoholic personality -- 1 of 4. I think I have had all the roles but hero in my primary family's eyes and my own during my life.
In 12-step rooms I have heard it called living in the "opera mode." Everything was over-reacted to (and then again sometimes even under-reacted to dependent upon post burnout phase after manic phase) by my parents. Sometimes it wasn't punishing, but one was always girded in case it was. HYPERVIGILANCE. Doesn't promote a sense of mastery. Walking on egg shells. The kids develop something called "false personalities". You have to be perfect not to catch fire from stressed out parents and you end up feeling that their self-esteem is on your back and God help you if you bring more shame and stress to them.
I remember a critic in a tv review reviewed a tv movie on alcoholic families with Martin Sheen. Martin Sheen got high marks for acting but the reviewer criticized all the actors that played roles in Sheen's family. They were too stiff like they had forgotten to take the clothes hangers out of their clothes before putting them on. But that was what it was like. That degree of tension. Those actors had been spot on. This stiff and phony readiness and nervousness. Waiting for the next outrageous outburst. Another awesome tv movie I saw years ago was one with Andy Griffith as the alcoholic father. It really showed the tragic truth and how it impacted everyone in the family. I t really is a family DIS-EASE.
Of course, the most important lesson is to keep all this misery and shock and horror A GREAT BIG SECRET AND PLAY HAPPY AND SHOW OTHERS HOW HAPPY AND TOGETHER YOU AND THE FAMILY ARE!!! Otherwise shame will descend. You will betray. And enabling and codependency are the rule of the day. Doesn't matter how miserable and frightened and angry you were. The mask was important. Disconnect from your real self.
best, libby
zanelle, I am sorry you have had your own sad experiences with this kind of stress. Some of the times I asked my mother why she didn't leave my father she would point out that when she had been my age she had asked her mother the same thing. That was her frustrating and incomplete response to me!!! It spelled DOOM. That I wouldn't appreciate the futility of my rational appeal for her to DO SOMETHING until I had grown up. Talk about my road to learned helplessness. And apparently hers! best, libby
Ande, thanks for stopping by. The ongoing nightmare a therapist once told me was like being on an ever moving roller coaster with no end as long as the alcoholic kept on drinking.
The ongoingness of it puts the "C" in "complex-PTSD" for me. The "complex" comes from the "captivity" of someone being hostage to ongoing and seemingless endles trauma, not a one time deal. That account above went out in varying forms some more violent some less for decades relentlessly with physical and verbal dimensions. With vicious things uttered.
Sometimes my Dad said in drunkenness stuff that my mother deserved to hear but his drunkenness was no way to communicate the truth, though drinking maybe gave him the proverbial Dutch courage, but often the next day he didn't remember what he had even said. And my mother shouted him down and dismissed what he said under the influence. It was so ugly their ongoing bickering. Having a front row seat to it was so punishing and depressing.
I believe most if not all children of addicts have some degree of PTSD with its profound problems of regressing into a more vulnerable and younger feeling state, hypervigilance, psychic numbing and survivor guilt. With my role as "rescuer", particularly being the "girl child", it was instilled in me it was my duty and destiny to commit myself to focusing on the pain of my parents' marriage and to use myself to get my father to stop his drinking, my mother from my early age kept insisting I could. He would stop for me. It was an exercise in futility, and my "fix him for my mother" mandate sabotaged my own relationship with him outside of their relationship. When I did volunteer work with kids from alcoholic homes during my adulthood I would be amazed how these little girls would launch into these sophisticated tirades about their daddy's drinking and I realized, like me, they were angry little parrots of their mother's bitter brainwashing rants against their fathers.
There is also something called the Karpman Triangle. Father: Get off my back! Daughter: Don't say that to Mom! Mother: Don't disrespect your father! Father: Leave her alone. The roles keep changing, the persecutor and victim and rescuer keep changing roles and there is no consistent loyalty. No relationship harmony that can be relied on.
best, libby
The ongoingness of it puts the "C" in "complex-PTSD" for me. The "complex" comes from the "captivity" of someone being hostage to ongoing and seemingless endles trauma, not a one time deal. That account above went out in varying forms some more violent some less for decades relentlessly with physical and verbal dimensions. With vicious things uttered.
Sometimes my Dad said in drunkenness stuff that my mother deserved to hear but his drunkenness was no way to communicate the truth, though drinking maybe gave him the proverbial Dutch courage, but often the next day he didn't remember what he had even said. And my mother shouted him down and dismissed what he said under the influence. It was so ugly their ongoing bickering. Having a front row seat to it was so punishing and depressing.
I believe most if not all children of addicts have some degree of PTSD with its profound problems of regressing into a more vulnerable and younger feeling state, hypervigilance, psychic numbing and survivor guilt. With my role as "rescuer", particularly being the "girl child", it was instilled in me it was my duty and destiny to commit myself to focusing on the pain of my parents' marriage and to use myself to get my father to stop his drinking, my mother from my early age kept insisting I could. He would stop for me. It was an exercise in futility, and my "fix him for my mother" mandate sabotaged my own relationship with him outside of their relationship. When I did volunteer work with kids from alcoholic homes during my adulthood I would be amazed how these little girls would launch into these sophisticated tirades about their daddy's drinking and I realized, like me, they were angry little parrots of their mother's bitter brainwashing rants against their fathers.
There is also something called the Karpman Triangle. Father: Get off my back! Daughter: Don't say that to Mom! Mother: Don't disrespect your father! Father: Leave her alone. The roles keep changing, the persecutor and victim and rescuer keep changing roles and there is no consistent loyalty. No relationship harmony that can be relied on.
best, libby
gerald, always love it when you stop by. thanks for listening and your validation
abra. thank you! You write: "You must wonder to what extent alcoholics appreciate the havoc they wreak on their families."
You know, abra, on some occasions when I was attending IRL meetings very often, I'd end up at an AA meeting if that was the only meeting available at a location or time and I would listen to the qualifications and pray the qualifier would speak with enlightenment of the incredible pain his or her drinking had consistently visited on spouses and children and it didn't seem to ever happen at those meetings. There was regret, guilt, gratitude to friends, etc., but the depth of the wound to the family unit never came close to being addressed imho. Maybe that was too much guilt to take on.
At some point during the AA meeting I would end up crying. Alanon or ACOA meetings didn't do that to me, but listening to AAers did. There seemed more vitality at AA meetings. More energy. A friend once said attending an Alanon or codependency type meeting was like a meeting with people oppressed by heavy winter overcoats, even in summer time. Heaviness and sense of oppression. The joke was if a codependent died, somebody else's life flashed in front of his or her eyes.
Also people from dysfunctional opera-mode homes. Normal people say when they get a flat tire call triple A. People from dysfunctional ones call the suicide hotline! Gallows humor!
I remember in my early days in Alanon a group of Alanon women approached me and told me I should leave their group and go to Adult Children of Alcoholics instead because the anger I was spilling at my non-alcoholic mother whose codependency with me was crazymaking was upsetting them. I guess they wanted me to only complain about the alcoholic and most of them were complaining about spouses not parents. I did go to more ACOA meetings then which were helpful.
First you focus on your parents' inventories, their issues that impacted you, then you realize you have a lot of issues of your own you have been in denial of that deserve a lot of recovery work. You have to go through the five stages of grief a lot of the time. They say recovery is learning to let go of what you never had.
When I went to my first 12 step meetings I wondered why those people were so angry. Apparently didn't have my happy childhood I was in such denial. I even said for years my dad had a drinking problem BUT was not an alcoholic. What bullshit but that is denial. The more I went back the more I got humbled and realistic and helped. As Bill Wilson, the founder of AA said, it takes an addict or co-addict to help another since they have walked in the same shoes and will call out the bullshit and have real empathy and can role model recovery themselves. Share their experience, strength and hope.
Scott Peck said a family is the base camp to climb the mountain of life. But if you have a dysfunctional base camp like children of alcoholics do, you might need a good base camp for that base camp. the 12 step meetings played a vital base camp for me. In my family base camp, re the mountain of life, first I wasn't allowed out of the base camp to do the climbing and then when I did get out of the base camp I was locked out in anger and didn't get to have it for me for a very long time. So my surrogate base camp became the 12 step rooms where I cultivated an identity of a survivor not a victim.
The subject of codependency is so profound. I see it in family dysfunction. I see it in political dysfunction with cronyism cultivating an anti-moral group-think and authoritarian-followship codependency type situations.
best, libby
abra. thank you! You write: "You must wonder to what extent alcoholics appreciate the havoc they wreak on their families."
You know, abra, on some occasions when I was attending IRL meetings very often, I'd end up at an AA meeting if that was the only meeting available at a location or time and I would listen to the qualifications and pray the qualifier would speak with enlightenment of the incredible pain his or her drinking had consistently visited on spouses and children and it didn't seem to ever happen at those meetings. There was regret, guilt, gratitude to friends, etc., but the depth of the wound to the family unit never came close to being addressed imho. Maybe that was too much guilt to take on.
At some point during the AA meeting I would end up crying. Alanon or ACOA meetings didn't do that to me, but listening to AAers did. There seemed more vitality at AA meetings. More energy. A friend once said attending an Alanon or codependency type meeting was like a meeting with people oppressed by heavy winter overcoats, even in summer time. Heaviness and sense of oppression. The joke was if a codependent died, somebody else's life flashed in front of his or her eyes.
Also people from dysfunctional opera-mode homes. Normal people say when they get a flat tire call triple A. People from dysfunctional ones call the suicide hotline! Gallows humor!
I remember in my early days in Alanon a group of Alanon women approached me and told me I should leave their group and go to Adult Children of Alcoholics instead because the anger I was spilling at my non-alcoholic mother whose codependency with me was crazymaking was upsetting them. I guess they wanted me to only complain about the alcoholic and most of them were complaining about spouses not parents. I did go to more ACOA meetings then which were helpful.
First you focus on your parents' inventories, their issues that impacted you, then you realize you have a lot of issues of your own you have been in denial of that deserve a lot of recovery work. You have to go through the five stages of grief a lot of the time. They say recovery is learning to let go of what you never had.
When I went to my first 12 step meetings I wondered why those people were so angry. Apparently didn't have my happy childhood I was in such denial. I even said for years my dad had a drinking problem BUT was not an alcoholic. What bullshit but that is denial. The more I went back the more I got humbled and realistic and helped. As Bill Wilson, the founder of AA said, it takes an addict or co-addict to help another since they have walked in the same shoes and will call out the bullshit and have real empathy and can role model recovery themselves. Share their experience, strength and hope.
Scott Peck said a family is the base camp to climb the mountain of life. But if you have a dysfunctional base camp like children of alcoholics do, you might need a good base camp for that base camp. the 12 step meetings played a vital base camp for me. In my family base camp, re the mountain of life, first I wasn't allowed out of the base camp to do the climbing and then when I did get out of the base camp I was locked out in anger and didn't get to have it for me for a very long time. So my surrogate base camp became the 12 step rooms where I cultivated an identity of a survivor not a victim.
The subject of codependency is so profound. I see it in family dysfunction. I see it in political dysfunction with cronyism cultivating an anti-moral group-think and authoritarian-followship codependency type situations.
best, libby
ps Abra, my parents were terrific people a lot of the time. There are joyful memories and good noble lessons they role modeled for us kids. That is why there was such denial and minimization of the tragic and painful and traumatizing stuff. Such confusion -- which means "confusion" "with". The older I get the more I see my parents were wounded like me. And their parents were wounded like my parents were!
Rosi, thanks for stopping by and your support!!
Hannu, thanks for coming by once again! I was lucky in joining 12-step nation during its hey day, especially in NYC. I also sought out counselors, did volunteer work with young alateeners, and read thousands and thousands of pages of self help books. I feel like a really profoundly whammied poster child now adult of the damage addictions in parents do to a child. They say don't compare your insides to other people's outsides. But for years I felt I was numb and as other people were evolving and maturing I felt regressing or stuck. I know the roles we played in the families impacted our futures to a great degree. And none of the roles escaped its dark side. Mascots suffer from fear and anxiety excessively, lost children suffer from depression and despair, heroes suffer from guilt and high physical anxiety and a sense of responsibility, scapegoats suffer from rage and anti-authoritarianism to a great degree.
jackie2 -- thanks so much for visiting. What a great comment. What is love? What is love to people who were children of alcoholics? How confusing it is in childhood and what we take with us into adulthood. So much of the role modeling comes from parents. I know I at times confused my own fear of men with love. I can't take my eyes off of someone and it reminds me of my primal feelings re my dad. But if those primal feelings had terror mixed in, that is not a good attraction. I can't take my eyes off said person because I am terrorized by him it is not sexual excitement and positive indication of love. Not safe to enter such a thrall but it is familiar and we trust the familiar at times even if it is toxic and stifling for us. We adult children of alcoholics also confuse pity with love. The people who need rescuing and elicit our pity we confuse with loving and we get enmeshed in codependently bonding with them and foregoing the mutuality of real love. We don't have sturdy boundaries.
Lyle, you certainly say a lot in that pithy comment! thank you for visiting once again!!!
rita, thank you so much for stopping by and your empathy!
jerry, high praise from you and I thank you. this is one of those pieces of writing that kind of channels itself through one though you try to give it your best as it pours out because it is so raw and real and deep and requires emotional courage and a sense of wanting to enlighten or comfort others in the writing. it also represents countless similar incidents throughout my childhood and beyond! often the horror makes one remember things so vividly. even the immediate physicality. this was written as a coalition of my inner child banging on the pipes for sanity for so many years within me and my ever-recovering self trying to peal away the layers of the onion of my reality. though it was written before I had to contend with the recognition that my mother was suffering from borderline personality disorder. As a girl child I was so enmeshed in a symbiosis with my mother and her plight and my horror at what drinking did to my father and her and then us kids and the psychological and physical violence that was so whammying and how it was minimized the next day and how it repeated and was minimized. A merciless roller coaster. My horror at not only alcoholism but codependency!
best, libby
Hannu, thanks for coming by once again! I was lucky in joining 12-step nation during its hey day, especially in NYC. I also sought out counselors, did volunteer work with young alateeners, and read thousands and thousands of pages of self help books. I feel like a really profoundly whammied poster child now adult of the damage addictions in parents do to a child. They say don't compare your insides to other people's outsides. But for years I felt I was numb and as other people were evolving and maturing I felt regressing or stuck. I know the roles we played in the families impacted our futures to a great degree. And none of the roles escaped its dark side. Mascots suffer from fear and anxiety excessively, lost children suffer from depression and despair, heroes suffer from guilt and high physical anxiety and a sense of responsibility, scapegoats suffer from rage and anti-authoritarianism to a great degree.
jackie2 -- thanks so much for visiting. What a great comment. What is love? What is love to people who were children of alcoholics? How confusing it is in childhood and what we take with us into adulthood. So much of the role modeling comes from parents. I know I at times confused my own fear of men with love. I can't take my eyes off of someone and it reminds me of my primal feelings re my dad. But if those primal feelings had terror mixed in, that is not a good attraction. I can't take my eyes off said person because I am terrorized by him it is not sexual excitement and positive indication of love. Not safe to enter such a thrall but it is familiar and we trust the familiar at times even if it is toxic and stifling for us. We adult children of alcoholics also confuse pity with love. The people who need rescuing and elicit our pity we confuse with loving and we get enmeshed in codependently bonding with them and foregoing the mutuality of real love. We don't have sturdy boundaries.
Lyle, you certainly say a lot in that pithy comment! thank you for visiting once again!!!
rita, thank you so much for stopping by and your empathy!
jerry, high praise from you and I thank you. this is one of those pieces of writing that kind of channels itself through one though you try to give it your best as it pours out because it is so raw and real and deep and requires emotional courage and a sense of wanting to enlighten or comfort others in the writing. it also represents countless similar incidents throughout my childhood and beyond! often the horror makes one remember things so vividly. even the immediate physicality. this was written as a coalition of my inner child banging on the pipes for sanity for so many years within me and my ever-recovering self trying to peal away the layers of the onion of my reality. though it was written before I had to contend with the recognition that my mother was suffering from borderline personality disorder. As a girl child I was so enmeshed in a symbiosis with my mother and her plight and my horror at what drinking did to my father and her and then us kids and the psychological and physical violence that was so whammying and how it was minimized the next day and how it repeated and was minimized. A merciless roller coaster. My horror at not only alcoholism but codependency!
best, libby
nerd cred, thank you for bringing this up -- the addict and co-addict merry-go-round of misery. My parents painful marriage was Strindbergian. My Dad had a tough childhood, his mom died when he was five and he was moved about and didn't learn how to become a father until he was an army sergeant (not the best training for empathy for children) and had PTSD and God knows what else from childhood and war trauma. My mother I eventually and late in life recognized was a borderline personality disordered person and that meant we were not only an alcoholic family but a borderline family tyrannized by her will. My mother's insane demand for control especially with me as oldest daughter, more than generic type codependency, was psychically tyrannical and damaged my cultivating a sense of mastery and set up a fluctuating self esteem and a glass jaw to ambushes of anger and shaming. I am sure it eroded my father's spirit and sense of competency as well. My father was always far happier away from our family. I always had more confidence away from my family. My mother gave generous amounts of conditional love but looking back neither parent had enjoyed unconditional love for themselves so how could they bestow it on their children. They at times projected their own self hate onto their vulnerable children.
best, libby
best, libby
Peter, I always love reading you in posts or in comments. Thank you for such empathy. Yes. The stress and craziness was mind-blowing. What the hell was with God to let such merciless pain and violence keep on reoccurring. It is a negative processing of learned helplessness to have kept being exposed to it. Reason I did so many years of volunteer work with young alateeners was to be an encouraging witness for them to go against the alcoholic family mandates not to think, feel and trust, and to PROCESS the trauma that witnessing the violence caused them. Often the parents dropping off or picking up the kids nervously explained some heavy stuff the kids were going through. They would have been shocked and relieved at how reluctant and loyal to the secrecy code the kids were in not spilling family laundry. Still being in a room with walls that did not have parental ears listening and controlling them I figured was a gift to a degree to them. You say I survived, and I guess I did, but not without not only scars but still albatrosses and baggage I continue to drag about seemingly gratuitously but ever helplessly even at this late point in my life.
best, libby
best, libby
Libby, I've read, reread and followed the thread. Your writing of personal experiences is beautiful, forthright and compelling.
JT, thanks so much for stopping by and offering your generous support once again! Thank you for helping me by reading it and validating it. You were there for me in 2012, as well, it sounds like. Bless you!!!
The "sick as our secrets" reminder helped encourage me to post it. For years after writing this -- it was a good long while ago originally though had some editing when I got to open salon -- it stayed in a dark drawer. I did read it on occasion to alateen kids I was sponsoring in groups to encourage them to open up their own experiences.
I learned the horror of alcoholism and its rippling impact of pain on others and I also learned that alcohol affected mainly the men in both sides of my family but there were addictions like food addictions or process addictions like codependency that affected the women. And my judgmentalism that became very crazed with my dad morphed into more understanding and even identification in my later years. Writing sure is a big help in asserting one's own truth and giving oneself permission to think and feel and trust!!!
You know at work the other night two coworkers expressed anger at me because when my work shift is officially over I sometimes go overtime to help a coworker or a panicking attorney. Since the firm is understaffed presently I am enabling a situation that should not be enabled and management should hire more people. They joked that I needed an "intervention" but their use of that word showed me that I was succumbing to codependency once again and how serious their "tough love" was!
best, libby
best, libby
The "sick as our secrets" reminder helped encourage me to post it. For years after writing this -- it was a good long while ago originally though had some editing when I got to open salon -- it stayed in a dark drawer. I did read it on occasion to alateen kids I was sponsoring in groups to encourage them to open up their own experiences.
I learned the horror of alcoholism and its rippling impact of pain on others and I also learned that alcohol affected mainly the men in both sides of my family but there were addictions like food addictions or process addictions like codependency that affected the women. And my judgmentalism that became very crazed with my dad morphed into more understanding and even identification in my later years. Writing sure is a big help in asserting one's own truth and giving oneself permission to think and feel and trust!!!
You know at work the other night two coworkers expressed anger at me because when my work shift is officially over I sometimes go overtime to help a coworker or a panicking attorney. Since the firm is understaffed presently I am enabling a situation that should not be enabled and management should hire more people. They joked that I needed an "intervention" but their use of that word showed me that I was succumbing to codependency once again and how serious their "tough love" was!
best, libby
best, libby
jane, thanks so much for stopping by and empathizing! I am sorry you had your own hard times. You are so very eloquent when you proclaim: "addiction trumps self." it really does. DEFEATS one's higher self. I have declared in some comments to people that recovery, and they say recovery is like a disease in remission, it must be vigilantly respected and the recovery work and awareness sustained or one will slip back, does make one stronger in the broken places and gives one a view of the good, bad and the ugly of life, a certain wisdom and resilience for challenges, and a profound gratitude for moments of hardwon serenity and peace and progress.
best, libby
best, libby
oit, thanks so much for stopping by!!! your comment breaks my heart re the death of a child with an alcoholic parent driving.
I remember careening down the highway in the back seat of the car with my father having had too much vodka at the wheel and my mother "pouting" in the front seat that he has been drinking and me wondering WTF ... is today the day we all die? What is wrong with him and HER for simply pouting and me in the back seat desperately trying to tell him to watch a passing car and my Dad's deaf war ear and his drunkenness not listening to me -- not able to hear me and jeopardizing our lives and strangers near us on the highway!
When I think of all the lives of children impacted. And the youngest generation of people in my own family secondary network I hear suffering and my own silence and secrets keeping when maybe my story could have helped them.
And all the kids who will pick up and become addicts since it was ferociously role-modeled for them growing up and the learned helplessness and passivity they will have from being too frightened in walking on egg shells to learn healthy and entitled assertiveness.
best, libby
I remember careening down the highway in the back seat of the car with my father having had too much vodka at the wheel and my mother "pouting" in the front seat that he has been drinking and me wondering WTF ... is today the day we all die? What is wrong with him and HER for simply pouting and me in the back seat desperately trying to tell him to watch a passing car and my Dad's deaf war ear and his drunkenness not listening to me -- not able to hear me and jeopardizing our lives and strangers near us on the highway!
When I think of all the lives of children impacted. And the youngest generation of people in my own family secondary network I hear suffering and my own silence and secrets keeping when maybe my story could have helped them.
And all the kids who will pick up and become addicts since it was ferociously role-modeled for them growing up and the learned helplessness and passivity they will have from being too frightened in walking on egg shells to learn healthy and entitled assertiveness.
best, libby
Maybe if that fool had come home to an empty house once or twice, but that's wishful thinking. Excellent work.
cranky, thanks so much for visiting and sharing. You must be a very special and patient man since the daughter of an alcoholic requires serious TLC in a relationship to reassure trust and a sense of serenity and safety -- spoken from a fellow one.
Sometimes one can see the public dark face of the alcoholic, other times one sees only the jolliness and uninhibited looseness and bravado but not the dangerousness. My mother used to say of my dad, "street angel, house devil." Of course, my mother had her own disorder to help escalate his.
I have known many alcoholics in recovery and I respect their strength and stamina. Some say one drink is too many and a million not enough. Sustaining the discipline not to pick up is so formidable I can only begin to fathom. I recognize it is often a form of self-medication!
best, libby
Sometimes one can see the public dark face of the alcoholic, other times one sees only the jolliness and uninhibited looseness and bravado but not the dangerousness. My mother used to say of my dad, "street angel, house devil." Of course, my mother had her own disorder to help escalate his.
I have known many alcoholics in recovery and I respect their strength and stamina. Some say one drink is too many and a million not enough. Sustaining the discipline not to pick up is so formidable I can only begin to fathom. I recognize it is often a form of self-medication!
best, libby
(((poetTess))) -- how kind of you to insert that positive message. I was questioning my pouring out all this, but I figure maybe something I say can enlighten or help someone, in addition to helping me getting it off my chest and out of my heart and memory one more time! you rock!!!
best, libby
best, libby
Damon!! Thanks so much for stopping by and saying that!!! Your simply saying that gives me a great lift and that inner child still in me who was so frustrated for so long loves you for saying it with that spirit.
I used to beg my mother to get help. Get counseling since she was so obviously enabling and my Dad needed tough love to begin to help jolt him!!! She kept saying back to me, I don't need a counselor, I HAVE YOU!!!
Agghhhhhh!!!
best, libby
I used to beg my mother to get help. Get counseling since she was so obviously enabling and my Dad needed tough love to begin to help jolt him!!! She kept saying back to me, I don't need a counselor, I HAVE YOU!!!
Agghhhhhh!!!
best, libby
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