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matilda36I was reading Pru's Asunder http://rageprufrock.dreamwidth.org/tag/asunder .
In this story Dean, after years of estrangement, meets again with Sam. Sam was a drug addict, Dean had decided to move away after one attempt too much at helping his brother.Now Sam has apparently cleaned up his act, and everybody is putting pressure on Dean to forgive his brother. I love this story, but when reading about people trying to persuade Dean that everything was in the past, I got angry and started crying.
My mother was an alcoholic. I grew up in the shadow of her alcoholic daze. And one thing I have learned is that you cannot put it in the past.
You may do a lot of things. Resume contact, live new and emotional times together, some good and some bad, even go back to showing love (because you never stop loving, even when the addict is shoving knives in your gut), get back in the familiar arms of codependency but can never let it go.
Living with an addict in your family changes you forever. You need to be in control, all the time, because you spent too much time living according to some body's else whims. You never allow people too close to you, because you have been burned one time too much. You live with anger, a seething, sleeping anger that never goes away and that nobody understands. You survive because that's what you have learned to do, because living looks like something you don't deserve. Because for a long time another person has been the focus of your life. Because you woke up and don't think: today it's going to be a good day, you think: what kind of mood will she be in today? How much will she drink? In which ways will she embarrass me, insult me, make me feel like nothing?
After my mother reached a certain level of sobriety, she got cancer. And once again I did put my life on hold for her. I wanted her to die in peace with me and with the world. And I think I did it. I was more successful with her death than I was with her life.
She never got sober for me, because she saw how she was destroying her only daughter. She got sober because my father told her he wanted a divorce. Then everybody rallied because they thought it was the best thing.That a family needs to be together. That a daughter needed her mother. I needed a mother who loved me, not a mother who needed me. I didn't need a teddy bear and a pair of leggings for my 18th birthday. I had stopped being a child long time before and I was fat, didn't need to feel even more self conscious.
She never got me till the very end, when she saw what she had done to me. And then she left me with a"When you will really want something, you will get it". I have reached a point in which I don't believe she did hurt me on purpose, she was just careless with me, she was selfish with me because she could be. Because she had shaped me to be this way.
And I am still her daughter. Very few people in RL know about my illness. I have left a few people hurt by my anger, but most of them ended up forgiving me or even better forgetting me. Now I have a couple of friends who know, but whose idea of caring is to leave me alone while I deal with my moods, to not put too many demands on me, and my father, who just doesn't get it, but love me all the same.
Where my mother had an army of people , I do it mostly on my own. I have psychiatrists and therapists to help me, medication that's helping me, but nobody gets hurt by my illness. That's good, but doesn't change the fact that I am alone. That she shaped me alone. That she shaped me. Even more than my illness she shaped me. She shaped me scared, shy, control freak. She shaped me hiding, she shaped me not mattering. She shaped me a foot soldier in her war. Expendable.
I get why people think Dean should celebrate Sam's sobriety. Everybody wants to celebrate the end of the war. But very few visit the VA hospitals where those who have fought the war hide, mutilated in body and soul.
In this story Dean, after years of estrangement, meets again with Sam. Sam was a drug addict, Dean had decided to move away after one attempt too much at helping his brother.Now Sam has apparently cleaned up his act, and everybody is putting pressure on Dean to forgive his brother. I love this story, but when reading about people trying to persuade Dean that everything was in the past, I got angry and started crying.
My mother was an alcoholic. I grew up in the shadow of her alcoholic daze. And one thing I have learned is that you cannot put it in the past.
You may do a lot of things. Resume contact, live new and emotional times together, some good and some bad, even go back to showing love (because you never stop loving, even when the addict is shoving knives in your gut), get back in the familiar arms of codependency but can never let it go.
Living with an addict in your family changes you forever. You need to be in control, all the time, because you spent too much time living according to some body's else whims. You never allow people too close to you, because you have been burned one time too much. You live with anger, a seething, sleeping anger that never goes away and that nobody understands. You survive because that's what you have learned to do, because living looks like something you don't deserve. Because for a long time another person has been the focus of your life. Because you woke up and don't think: today it's going to be a good day, you think: what kind of mood will she be in today? How much will she drink? In which ways will she embarrass me, insult me, make me feel like nothing?
After my mother reached a certain level of sobriety, she got cancer. And once again I did put my life on hold for her. I wanted her to die in peace with me and with the world. And I think I did it. I was more successful with her death than I was with her life.
She never got sober for me, because she saw how she was destroying her only daughter. She got sober because my father told her he wanted a divorce. Then everybody rallied because they thought it was the best thing.That a family needs to be together. That a daughter needed her mother. I needed a mother who loved me, not a mother who needed me. I didn't need a teddy bear and a pair of leggings for my 18th birthday. I had stopped being a child long time before and I was fat, didn't need to feel even more self conscious.
She never got me till the very end, when she saw what she had done to me. And then she left me with a"When you will really want something, you will get it". I have reached a point in which I don't believe she did hurt me on purpose, she was just careless with me, she was selfish with me because she could be. Because she had shaped me to be this way.
And I am still her daughter. Very few people in RL know about my illness. I have left a few people hurt by my anger, but most of them ended up forgiving me or even better forgetting me. Now I have a couple of friends who know, but whose idea of caring is to leave me alone while I deal with my moods, to not put too many demands on me, and my father, who just doesn't get it, but love me all the same.
Where my mother had an army of people , I do it mostly on my own. I have psychiatrists and therapists to help me, medication that's helping me, but nobody gets hurt by my illness. That's good, but doesn't change the fact that I am alone. That she shaped me alone. That she shaped me. Even more than my illness she shaped me. She shaped me scared, shy, control freak. She shaped me hiding, she shaped me not mattering. She shaped me a foot soldier in her war. Expendable.
I get why people think Dean should celebrate Sam's sobriety. Everybody wants to celebrate the end of the war. But very few visit the VA hospitals where those who have fought the war hide, mutilated in body and soul.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 07:56 pm (UTC)*hugs tight* I just hope one day you find your space
no subject
Date: 2009-10-16 08:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-17 01:06 am (UTC)Can't understand what you went through as it wasn't something I've ever experienced. Though physically you may be alone, spiritually you aren't. You've got us.
*hugs*
love ya sis and keep on.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-17 08:24 am (UTC)*hugs*