The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
For most of my time on this board last year I was fixed on the A's health. He had a skin disease, a muscle disease and it was really flaring up. He could not work. I have not been focused on myself much. I did not focus on my depression, my kidney disease, my skin disease, my ob gyn issues. No all there was room for was "him" and his needs.
His needs always had to supersede mine. Indeed how dare I have any need at all when he was so much more in need.
Last night I went over to knock on one of my room mates' doors. He has been at his mother's for 6 weeks, holed up there playing video games on the computer. He applied for one job and apparently is pretty upset he did not get the one job he applied for. I was met at the door by a angry, resentful, dishreveled man pretty unrecognizable from the one who'd left the house 7 weeks ago.
Needless to say he did not want to talk to me. As I have a "program" I am not personally offended by this.
What has really struck me since I saw him is that this dishreveled, depressed, isolated, resentful, completey out of touch with reality person was "me" when I spent a few years with the A. I became that. I went on that long dark road of depression and could not see my way out of it. If anyone offered me a hand I bit their head off. I was deeply deeply resentful that people did not reach out to me and at the same time full of despair. I cocooned myself in isolation and went nowhere. I could not summon the strength to go for job intervies as this roommate doesn't. I put it all aside and tried to numb myself in food, in the computer (I was on the internet day and night) and resentment. What a toxic cocoon.
I see my roommate as deeply deeply ill as I was. I don't know much what I can do. I am pretty much committed 100% to my own issues and my own concerns. I do know that I barely made it out of that state. I have spent so many years worrying about the A and his illness, his driving, his finances, his craziness, his "using". I lost myself somewhere along there and I almost did not survive that kind of depression and descent into isolation.
I think this room, therapy and finally being able to get a job, any old job helped tremendously. From there it was up and away to days like this weekend when I hope I will feel joy and peace and acceptance of where I am.
You are a caring individual, but as you know you cannot drag people kicking and screaming into recovery. One thing you could do is get to a f2f and pick up some free liturature, (they have lots of pamphlets that are very informative) and just leave them around the house. You never know if someone might read them and find help. This is a good form of reaching out without investing yourself. They can do what they want with it. You will probably find some of them in the trash, but darn you just keep loosing those things around the house. The bathroom is a good place to "loose" them as there is privacy for someone to read them where others can't see they might be interested.
Anyway its just a suggestion that I've heard so I am passing it on.
In recovery,
__________________
~Jen~
"When you come to the edge of all you know you must believe in one of two things... there will be earth on which to stand or you will be given wings." ~Unknown
