Flashes

     I walk briskly down the sidewalk, my small Al-Anon book in my right hand.  I throw the book out into the street.  Step after step, moving in time with the music pounding through my headphones.  I stop and I launch my fist against the nearest tree, feeling the rough bark scrap against my tender knuckles. Finally I reach my destination, my Al-Anon meeting.  I yell and scream out, my screams drowned out by the rush hour traffic.

     Inside I find that I am early.  “How was your week?” my Al-Anon friend asks.  “Good,” I reply.  “It’s been good.”  I see the Al-Anon table and overturn it in a rage. I head to the bathroom and wipe off some errant tears from my eyes.  I can’t stand the person looking back at me.  I smash the mirror and watch the pieces fall and sparkle.  I look down at the shards.  I return to the meeting room and grab myself a cup of soda, and settle into my favorite chair in the circle.  I clench my fist tightly around my cup, soda erupting up and down my hand, my arm.  

     The meeting starts and I find my focus goes to tracing the patterns in my jeans with my eyes.  I grab the empty chair next to me and hurl it against the far wall. I sit with my arms and legs crossed.  I find a point on my jeans and focus on it until my vision turns black.  Though my eyes remain unfocused, my ears follow each word that is said.   I rip out books out of the bookshelves and then pull the shelves down.  They crash to the ground resoundingly.  I can feel their eyes on me, pondering why I won’t look at anyone, why my face is emotionless, why I haven’t shared yet.  I stand up quickly, pushing my chair back behind me.  I run out the door, and keep running, and when I can’t run anymore I walk, and when I can’t walk anymore I sit.  I stare up into the night sky and pray for peace.  After the meeting I grab my book, stand up and leave quietly.

Entry from Courage to Change

     “Al-Anon has helped me realize that no one readily knows what is in his heart, mind, and soul.  I can’t expect my needs to be met unless I first explain what those needs are.  Nor can I expect any one person to meet all those needs, even if I make them clear.  If the first person I ask for help is unable to provide it, I can ask someone else.  This takes the pressure off all of us.

     Before I began my Al-Anon recovery, I expected those closest to me to know what I was feeling without my telling them.  When I was angry and wanted to argue, I silently fumed.  When I was hurt and wanted comfort, I pouted.  When I wanted attention, I talked non-stop.  I couldn’t understand why I rarely got the responses I expected!

     I no longer expect anyone to read my mind.  I also accept that I can’t read the mind of a loved one.  Today I treat the people in my life with more respect because I am learning to ask for what I need and to encourage others to do the same.”

-Courage to Change, p. 66

     Easier said than done, but I'm working on it little by little.  Last night I casually talked about Al-Anon and going to meetings with one of my new friends.  It reminded me that coming out with my ACA story doesn't have to be this momentous event with tears and lots of feelings.  Sometimes it can just be a conversation. 

My Lenten Promise

I vow to give up self-hatred and slothfulness.  And in an effort to better my relationship with my Higher Power, I will pray/converse with my HP everyday for the forty days of Lent.

Moments in the life of an ACoA

     Sometimes I wish I could give people a chance to live a day in my head, just so they might understand what I struggle with everyday.  I can’t so I thought I’d write out a few different scenarios and show how ACA thinking affects everyday life moments.

     You’re out with friends.  Hanging, actually enjoying yourself, but then someone makes a joke, one single stupid joke about the joys of booze, and then all that fun you’ve been having?  It’s done.  You try hard to have a good time, but you just got reminded of all the fun with booze you had growing up.  The yelling, the anger, the fear.  In a single instant you just got consumed.  You can’t wait to leave, because you want to run to your bed, fall asleep in the hopes it resets your mood.  But these are your friends.  To run away now would raise questions.  So you sit and stay and pretend to be having a good time, and wonder how screwed up a person has to be to hate hanging out with their friends like this. 

     You’ve made the decision to go to this group meeting.  You’re eager and excited about going, because you like the people in the group.  Everything is going well, until you hear someone else share something personal in their lives.  You want to share as well.  But what do you say?  You’re struggling and hurting and close to tears, but you can’t figure out what to say about it.  So you stay silent.  Doesn’t matter anyway.  Even if you did figure out what to say, you can’t.  Despite your best efforts the words stay stuck in you.  You get so frustrated, because you know that if only you could ask for help, it would be given to you.  You know this, and still can’t force the words out.  So you become angry at yourself, and upset, and when you are alone you feel the tears well up.  You wonder whether or not you should go to that group meeting anymore.

     Things aren’t exactly going super in your life right now.  You accept this, because you know that your life is destined to suck.  When things go wrong sometimes you don’t even know if you’re allowed to be upset about it.  You look to others to gauge how you’re supposed to feel.  And because things go wrong, you blame yourself.  Even if you did your best, it doesn’t matter, because you failed.   And because you failed you get angry at yourself.  You start listening to that voice in your head that says you’re worthless, that you don’t matter.  You get struck by depression and then find yourself doing nothing for days on end, because you don’t think you can stand one more failure.  And you just know if you try and go after what you want you’ll fail.  Because that’s how your twisted mind works.

     And God.  You struggle with God a lot.  For a while it was okay.  You accepted what happened to you as a kid because it made you stronger.  But then you realize just how weak you actually are, and that you are forced to recover in Al-anon/ACA due to what happened.  So now you struggle to find another reason why God let that happen to you.  And you wonder if God’s plan is for you to be broken.  You end up concluding that you can’t understand things right now, but surely in time it will all be clear.  You hang on to this hope desperately, because Al-Anon and ACA are spiritual programs.  And you need a relationship with a Higher Power to recover, so you feel trapped by your inability to let God in. 

     Truly the mind of an ACoA can be a troubling place.  I battle self-hatred every day.  Some days I come out ahead, and others I go to sleep hoping my life will reset itself in the morning.

“Coming Out” with my ACA story

     Like being gay, being an adult child of alcoholic is something that isn’t immediately obvious to others.  It can be a secret, even to the individual.  Such is the power of denial.  The secret can evoke shame and holding on to the secret can cause the person undue pain.  The individual holds on tightly to that secret until either they are exposed or they come to terms with the secret.  

    

     Additionally, the secret can be very hard to share with others, even friends.  It is a struggle.  The first people I came out to with my ACA story were a close knit group of friends I had in college.  The group of us met at orientation and became really close very quickly.  They were the first people I have met whom I felt genuinely cared about me.   Even still it took me five months before I got in depth about my being raised in the home of an alcoholic.

     When I finally told my friends they more than supported me.  They showed me what love is.  My group of college friends loved me more than I had thought possible for people not tied together by family secrets.  Things were good.  I had a core of friends who knew my story and who I felt close to as well.  The problem?  College ends eventually.  I moved away and soon new friends came into the picture. 

     Because it’s never enough to tell your coming out story just once.  Different people are going to come into your life, and you have to make the choice whether or not you choose to tell them your story.  You don’t have to tell them.  In fact it’s probably not advisable to go up to people you’ve just met and say, “Hey, my mother drank a lot and her pastimes included screaming, breaking stuff, and making life miserable.”  Yeah…not going to fly. 

     You have to be choosy about who to tell.  I am friends with this group of really great people and have been for about a year.  Even after that year I still feel like I have trouble connecting with them.  I think to myself, "Connecting with my college friends was never this hard."  But that’s me, simply remembering the time after I had let go of my secret shame.

     I really do want to tell this group my ACA story, and I struggle to find reasons why I stay silent.  “They seem too perfect.  They won't understand.”  "They’ll think I’m attracted to crazy or drama or something if I tell them this after everything else that has happened.”  “The timing/atmosphere is never right to share this.”  “If I do it, they’ll drop me quicker than a flaming sack of potatoes.”  “They don’t care about your past (which then translates to ‘they don’t care about you…not enough at least to listen to you whine about the past’).”   

     Not helping is the fact that I had a dream where, after a violent confrontation with my drunk mother, I seek asylum with a college friend, who turns into one of my new friends from the group.  I tell my story, but he is unsympathetic.  He kicks me to the curb.

      All this leads to this question: “Why again do I have to?”  I too easily answer my own question.  Because, I know they care about me.  Also perhaps it would help explain me and my occasional idiosyncrasies to them.  I’m not sure how I’ll tell them.  Maybe I’ll share during a group meeting.  Or maybe I’ll just send out the web address to this blog post.  I do know that I will tell them…eventually….some day.