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.
