Posted by lucie lu on December 7, 2008, at 18:22:16
In reply to Re: Memories (triggers) » lucie lu, posted by Wittgensteinz on December 7, 2008, at 17:48:24
Hi Witti,You are always so perceptive in your posts. The twin issues of validation and accountability can be so complicated when the problem is/was substance abuse. Unlike someone who is merely a bad, evil person, the addicted parent can be loving and well-meaning, and yet terribly destructive. I guess for my own selfish reasons, I prefer to have my mom seen as she is now, that my husband and kids see the best in her. They do not disbelieve me about my childhood, thankfully, and I think that makes all the difference. But all of that happened a long time before any of them were on the scene, and I love that they all have such close relationships with her now. The only bad relationship that remains is in a buried part of me, with the mother that she was - sometimes- about forty years ago. I don't like to revisit that, at least outside the therapy room and even then only when it is pertinent or unavoidable.
I don't know what happened to me this weekend. I should have been able to handle it, she was just being somewhat more irritable and demanding than t=she usually is now and - poof - I was falling down the rabbit hole of childhood. I have been pretty fragile recently.
Her owning of her alcoholism, and its benefit to me, also is complicated. When I was growing up, I was the oldest and parentified child. I would come home from school and she would be drunk and weeping, and I would have to (for my own emotional survival) comfort her and make things right to the extent that I could. So I never wanted to upset her applecart because I would have to clean up the apples! She still drinks occasionally, she is not officially a recovered alcoholic, but not to excess or to self-medicate any more. I have not seen her drunk for decades, literally. But after she stopped, she would go on self-excoriating trips when we were together and I learned soon to stop those quickly. I do not need her guilt and remorse because again, I do not want to have to deal with it. If I support her, she is the best that she can be. Was that OK when I was a child? Lord, no, and I am still cleaning up the mess from that. But that was then, and now is now. It was more than forty years ago. And, when I'm feeling fragile, still feels like yesterday, so I try not to feel fragile.
Thanks for your posts, Witti. And happy Sinterklaas :)
Lucie
poster:lucie lu
thread:866883
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081205/msgs/867346.html