For the last four weeks I’ve been quite busy. During this time I have set to one side the task of blogging; it had to take a lower priority. And as is typical in life there are sometimes distractions or obstacles that get in the way of things we want to do, like blogging. I have had such a week; more like several weeks. Each time I wanted to continue and finish the humorous post I had started and planned for publishing days ago, life would throw a curve ball. Seven out of ten times I am able to easily manage the distractions or setbacks. But as many of you may know, life doesn’t always cooperate with our wishes and plans.
There are two significant factors that every single person alive must address and manage at some point in their life: family and aging elders, or death. The timing of both these factors is almost never convenient nor are they always pleasant when it is a family member. Family has the distinct uncomfortable privilege of reaching too often the deepest parts of our heart and soul. For the last 31-years I have had the “privilege” of witnessing my sister’s chemical-addictions, soon exacerbated with psychological issues, burden my mother and her usually huge warm energetic heart with every passing year – with every single perpetual relapse by my sister every month to three months – take off two, five years of my mom’s health and vitality each time. We have been a three-member family since my father’s suicide in 1990, and guess who is always counted on (by default) for strength, understanding, and eventually some comic relief?
I have to admit…it gets really fucking exhausting.
For the last thirty-plus years I have done a LOT of screaming; screaming at the sky, screaming at the walls, screaming at my dead father wherever he is, and screaming at my three different therapists who’ve had the “privilege” of helping me through the bad times.
But those screaming sessions cannot compare to the decibel levels I’ve screamed (mostly in my head) over and over when I listen to alcohol-drug support groups and leaders talk about “The Disease.”
I have no hesitation in confessing that I am apparently on the outside looking in. There are support groups for family members of chemical-addicts that not only offer emotional support, but also educate family members of addicts (often the issues of enabling and co-dependency) how to manage themselves around an addict’s pathology. What is taught and what is often embraced by these groups, sometimes makes me want to scream with my already strained exhausted vocal cords!
Is it right…is it best to give, to surrender so much power and control to the disease?
If I examine my sister’s 31-plus years of addiction and never-ending relapses, I would wonder. Fuck, who am I kidding? I do wonder…but from a very frustrating “disadvantaged” viewpoint. So I continue to scream, apparently until I have no vocal cords left to scream because apparently this fucking “disease” will never go away. Apparently it can never be cured, only managed until the day she dies.
Is that the way it will always be for the brothers and mothers of addicts? I have to accept it? I really have a serious fucking problem with that white flag! I have always had that problem, which for the last 15-20 years has sometimes caused my already aging, tired compassionate mother perhaps more stress than comfort and hope! And that makes me want to scream more!
When is passiveness or surrender unhealthy?
After three months in counseling soon after my father’s suicide, my therapist, with tears rolling down her cheeks said “You are one of the most remarkable Survivors I have ever counseled.” The four major life events I was forced to deal with in 1990 was blowing her away, let alone her clinical concern for my mental-emotional health. She confessed to me years later that she had considered diagnosing me with major depression with suicidal precautions. Apparently statistics show that immediate family members of suicide victims have an increased likelihood of suicide themselves. I understood all too well that concept play out on 9/11 when watching people jump from the top-floor windows of the World Trade Center towers to their death — sometimes it just seems to be too unbearable. I have felt their pain, but then I scream back at life with my best warrior face.
Laurel Land Cemetery where my Dad is buried & Mom has her plot. She & I have also discussed where to put my 49-yr old sister.
It seems with each passing month and each passing year a survivor-of-suicide has an exponentially greater chance of becoming a uniquely advantaged super-human, or so the clinical data shows. So what does it mean when one is also forced to support an aging 73-year old elderly mother – cut short of ten happier years by a pathological relapsing addict-daughter – who physically and emotionally has either reached or is damn close to her life-limit? How much are we supposed to endure? How much are we obligated to endure my sister’s 31-years of repeated insatiable relapses which are always around the corner ready to devour? How many more damaged exhausted victims have to fall in her wake?
I am one extremely pissed-off brother (again) as I watch my sister – who consciously chose to consume those chemicals as a teenager – inflict again on my undeserving mother, inflict again on her undeserving AA and NA support friends, and inflict again on society as a whole, who with their tax dollars or donations throw away give and give, and give to a disease that can only be partly managed with unpredictable results…always.
This is the way it has to be?
Signed angry, exhausted “Survivor” brother and son who doesn’t feel very super-human!
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The Professor's Convatorium 