Congruency = Peace, Security & Happiness

While I've had the flu recently, I wake up at odd intervals and stumble out of bed and wander around the house looking for clues of what has transpired while I've been sleeping. The house is an absolute wreck. Now, granted, it usually is a mess, but it's one step closer to pandamonium now. I go to the refrigerator, open the freezer door, put a toaster waffle in the toaster and wait. When it's done, I butter it and gobble it down, go back to my room, take more meds and fall back into a coma-like sleep. This has been my routine for a few days now.

I wake up from time to time and read a few blogs. I read a post recently that really struck a chord, about needing time and space and just normality. I just want a little bit of peace, a tidy home, to not feel like I live in a powder keg. During my feverish sleep, I have been awakened by husband yelling at the kids, and then the kids running into my room to be comforted. My son ran in most recently to tell me that daddy had hurt his hand...indeed he had, it was red where he had grabbed his arm - and for what you might ask did this 3 year old do to deserve such treatment? He wouldn't answer his father when he asked where his milk cup was. Dad has a big booming voice and I doubt very much that my son even recalled where he had put said cup, but that didn't seem to be factored into husband's mind. I got out of bed and went to ask husband what had transpired, and it was clear that he felt justified in his actions. I asked him if he realized that he had hurt his son, and he actually said, "does he realize that he hurt me?"

Wow. I wanted to strangle him in the worst way right then. I wanted to tell him to get the f***out of the house, away from me and the kids. Forever. To quit poisoning them with his self-pity and immaturity. He's 47 years old for heaven's sake! What could a three year old possibly do to hurt him? He really, really doesn't get it. He is so busy stewing in his own pool of pity that he can't step up to the plate even for his own beautiful son. And to think that I had a hand in creating this awful situation for my children makes me weep. That in trying to fix within myself a need for love and acceptance born from my own father's neglect, I have put my children in very much the same situation.

I want peace, security & happiness. My husband says he wants these things but does not demonstrate behaviour congruent with that statement. He talks about it, as if he knows that those are the right things to say, but he does not live in a way that makes me believe him. He is still frozen in fear, just where I found him many years ago in his cave of an apartment when I met him. He may have stopped drinking, but he still refuses to get in the game of life. I have made it possible for him to stay on the sidelines. I don't want to do it anymore, but I have to dismantle this situation with care, it seems, for my children. There is no way to shield them from the hurt that will inevitably come, but I want them to have something real to look toward, and to fall back on...and the only way to do that is for to make my words congruent with my actions. That will create real security and peace and happiness.

Boy Am I Sick

Hard to believe it's been almost two months since I last posted. I have been in survival mode during that time. Today finds me sick as a dog in bed; my body and the universe are telling me that I have got to find another way. While I haven't been posting, I have been reading blogs of folks who seem to have become my closest friends in that there is an deep understanding of what my life looks and feels like.

Since my last post, my step mother passed away. This was not only difficult for the obvious reasons, but it also exposed some truths that I hadn't been able to face. Dad and P. (stepmother) were both alcoholics, with my father also playing the role of codie. Some things transpired during her last days and then her funeral that highlighted the sad role he had played his whole life. Dad hung on to P. with all his might; he seemed to think that if he spent enough money, that she would love him the way he hoped. And spend he did, in their 13 years together, he spent hundreds of thousands on trips, jewelry and home improvements for her house. When she passed, his name was not even mentioned in the obituary.

Now, I live in a small town and people notice this stuff. I had lots of questions from people as well as quiet whispers of "I'm sorry". I felt so awkward when folks would say this because I saw it as the manifestation of dad's illness, not his alzheimers, but rather his codependancy. How pitiful to stay with someone who didn't even want to mention you as part of their life for over a decade? Mercifully, because of Dad's state of health, he didn't seem to "get" this. For him, recovery is an impossibilty now.

I have lived a life devoid of anger. I never developed that emotion, and I really still don't even know how to identify properly when I should be angry. I am pathologically tolerant, letting my world revolve around an alcoholic, any alcoholic! So what a strangely wonderful surprise it was during this time that I recognized, maybe for the first time, how angry I was with my father for his neglect of me and my brother and sister during our lifetime. During his time with P., he neglected not only his children but also his grandchildren, developing no relationship with any of us. Now that he is in a nursing home and P. is gone, he is so utterly demanding of me and my siblings; he wants to be entertained all the time and becomes angry with us when we aren't at his beck and call! I will care for him as best I can now, but I don't have the least bit of guilt for not being up at his room all hours of the day and night.

I believe I am learning about detachment in a very real way through these situations. I love my father and I don't want him harmed, but I am so grateful that I am not trying to fix myself by spending all my time and energy on fixing him. I have already spent nearly all my life doing that. That part of my life is over and I'm glad.

Everywhere you go, there you are

I have avoided new posts the past week. I didn't really know why until today. The sadness deep in me is suddenly palpable; if I put it all down in black and white I think I've been afraid I might just lay down and cry. But I can't give in, can I? I fantasize about a vacation by myself where I could sleep and write and cry as needed. As the sole financial support for this family, a caregiver to my father, and chauffeur to daughter's speech therapy twice weekly with a one hour drive each way...it just seems irresponsible. Besides, as my mother so famously says, "Everywhere you go, there you are". Would a few days away by myself give me a break from my brain? Unfortunately not.

This past week husband has been so strange. I think he realizes how thin the ice he's skating truly is. This behaviour not only confuses me but makes me mad as hell. He hasn't been yelling at the kids, which is great. But then he wants to cut up and joke with me like nothing is wrong. He actually tried to kiss me as I pulled out of the driveway the other day...it felt so foreign, so wrong. We have not slept in the same room for the better part of a year. We hardly speak most of the time, and when we do it's about the kids. About once a week I try to "check in" with him to see where he is on finding a therapist or treatment or a job, but it always descends quickly into him being angry and defensive. So this last week or two makes me want to crawl out of my skin, but even more it makes me question myself, and that feels worse than anything!

I want a divorce. I just feel guilty for wanting it, like I haven't tried hard enough, or that I am not thinking of my kids enough. When I have some clarity, I can let go of those issues. But my head is so cloudy right now and I'm just really tired.

I Believe

I have enjoyed for many months now several blogs by folks in recovery in both Al-Anon and AA. As I was perusing blogger today for new sources of wisdom, I wondered if my own blog could be as cathartic as reading about other's experiences. So here I am.

I am a mother to two wonderful children. I am married to an alcoholic. I have a wonderful but stressful career. And last, but certainly not least, my father is an alcoholic who is now in a nursing home.

My experience in the last handful of months can best be described as awakening. It's been both frightening and exhilerating, and I have no idea where it's all going to take me. I want to say that it's OK that I don't know, but the controlling part of me wants very much to know what the next hour, day, week, month, year and lifetime hold for me and the kids. Thankfully, at least part of my brain knows not only does that stuff (i.e., what the future holds) not matter, but that I have very little control over the world in general. Boy, it's tough to really embrace that idea.

It's Christmastime and the stress levels are wicked high. It's all self-imposed, but so much of what I want for my kids are memories of things done together...making cookies, being part of a community at church, helping others. This is where a big part of the anger I have comes in: I resent like hell that I am the only one who cares about doing anything but surviving in my home. My husband hates Christmas, and most other things too, by his own admission.

Husband is just shy of two years of abstinence. I carefully worded that sentence. In my estimation, he is a dry drunk. I'm sure on so many levels that my assesment of his situation is all wrong (as far as taking someone elses inventory), but as I have to live under the same roof and we are all subjected to his behaviour, it is my way of describing where he is in recovery terms. He is angry at the world and has frequent child-like outbursts. This would not be such a large problem, save the fact that he is a stay at home parent to our two smallish kids.

I am most concerned with the effect his anger has on our children. I grew up with a father who drank and still drinks. I am just now seeing how that has changed me. I always knew it was a factor, but I have finally been able to drill down to a very micro level, and to see how insidious this disease is to a family. I do not want my kids to live this way.