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.
today i just feel like i have posted a lot. i think i am thinking more about my dad today than usual. i don't know why. maybe it's b/c the super bowl is coming up (i know he'll be watching), maybe it's b/c i miss him, maybe i just feel a little more angry than normal. yep i think it is the angry thing. how horrible of a person am i to think this...
sometimes i just wish my dad would die. just to get it over with so we all can move on. i mean, he's killing himself it's very clear (he's only 48yr), and he sees nothing wrong with it. it's how he wants to live. i think he just has a few more years, but knowing him-he'll probably out-live all of us. i feel bad for saying that, and if he died tomorrow i would feel like it was my fault for wishing it.
anyway-i just feel horrible for saying it and thinking it.
((((flint)))) thanks for being here and thanks for posting - you're in the right place.
I have thought the very same things about my dad. I remember feeling that way when I was 10, and I felt that way until just a couple of years ago (I'm in my 30s).
You're not horrible for feeling how you feel. And this is a safe place to share how you feel. Have you been able to get to any face to face alanon meetings? That is where I finally started to work on how my feelings were affecting ME. Where I realized what my dad chooses to do or not to do is his own doing. And where I learned for all the worrying I have done about him, he has a Higher Power (just like I do) who is looking out for him better than I can. I've been working at this for a little over two years, and in many ways I have been able to let go of him. And the way I feel about him has changed, too.
Flint, you are NOT horrible for having feelings. Acknowledging those feelings is a wonderful and freeing step. Denying those feelings is not healthy.
I read yesterday that anger is the second stage in the grieving process. We don't just grieve the lose of death but the lose of anyting. Change usually means that something has changed, and we are losing something. Even if it's an unhealthy comfort zone.
I shared at my f2f meeting last night that instead of stuffing and denying my anger until I blow up like a volcano, maybe I should be acknowledging it and allowing myself to feel it. I can use the anger, as not a fuse to ignite an explosive outburst, but as a fuse to spark change. I need to look at why I'm getting mad. And not just because my A drinks, but why that makes me angry. If I look at why it makes me angry and what I can do about it, I can now being to implement changes in myself and/or my behavior so that it doesn't have to be what rules my day.
Elsewhere yesterday I read From C2C (courage to change) pg 193 July 11: It seems to me that many of us deal with out anger in innappropirate ways. Denying it, we stuff it , or we go off in fury, directing the feelings outward. I, for one, opt for avoidance of any conflict, and then I turn into a doormat. The Al-Anon program encourages me to acknowlege my feelings and to be responsibile for how I express them. The problem is not tha tI get angry bu ttha tI do not know how to direct my anger appropirately............... I'm learning ot communcae my anger too. I may not do it greafyully and my workds may not be well received. It means facing the awful discomfort called conflict, but I can't run away any more.
I posted that cause it totally resonated w/ me when I found it last nite while we were sharing on anger.
Keep coming back flint.
Bob
__________________
You are a perfect child of God and God and I love you just the way you are! (added by me...in that special alanon way)
You are not horrible...I thought the same thing, when I saw my dad beating my mom, when I was a child..he was holding her captive in the bdroom, slapping and slapping her face over and over... I did't know what to do, I was so scared...I wanted to call the police but they had often been at our house for domestic disputes and he always sweet talked his way out of being arrested...then things became 10 times worst, as he punished us for calling the police..I remember wishing I could shoot him or that he would just die...and I was only 13.
Now my dad is 78. He is living a good life, quit drinking, but is a "dry drunk", still abusive but not physical. I look at him as a frail old man, thinking, how could he have instilled such fear in me for all these years. He says ugly things to me. He tries to get me to argue with him. He works all his dramas, tries to get me to respond in a negative way.I refuse. He has power over me, over my dead brother's estate and he knows it, and is so horrible that I wish now he would keel over and die. He goes to the dr every wk, and is healthy enough..to out live me. Only the good die young, so he will live forever..too bad for my brother , he was only 44, and dad didnt even know what he looked like..and of course he looked just like him..I offered him a photo..he didnt want to see. guilt maybe who knows...
keep strong, focus on you.You survived. and You can make it..Don't be hard on yourself, this is a great place to empty out those feelings..I do..and feel better, I know Im not alone...I am working on forgiving him..which is hard, on detaching..harder still and finding myself and boosting myself through this ...not easy...keep on, you are worth it...take care, kat
Please don't allow the horrible disease to take away your feelings flint. Once we find ourselves here we start to feel things we never felt before. Guess what...sometimes those feelings aren't ones we want to face or deal with! When we begin to feel again we don't get to pick and choose the feelings we get....we get em ALL!! That is overwhelming for me as well but I don't ever want to go back to that place where I don't feel anything again.
Keep talking things out. There is obviously something very valuable for you to learn. I have heard here that change is changing. That doesn't mean that it will always change the way we exactly want it to. When I find myself binding up with any one particular emotion I try to do the first three steps on it and then take a breath.
I can't speak for anyone else, but you are not a horrible person. I have oftern felt that if my husband would just die, I could move on and the pain would end for all of us.
Everyone is entitled to have their feelings - usually feeling a bad thought is merely just frustration, and it is a way of getting that frustration out of your system...nothing wrong with that!
Well there is nothing wrong with wishing someone would die because their behavior is so hurtful. Both my parents are dead and i have to say in some way it is a relief. I no longer have to wait to hear the news. Both my parents died very difficult deaths. Their dysfunctional stuff continued till they were old. They both lived long lives and made the lives of those around them very very difficult. I do not have guilt about having wished that they would die.
I think feeling rage at my parents dysfunction was very healthy for me. I did not address it to them much. I do know that going to groups where I could share what it brought up for me as a child and as an adult helped a lot. I still have issues around some of my fathers abuse and still have to confront denial around it but I do not regret having worked on those issues. It is tremendous work but the more I work on my childhood the less I seem to connect with men who are like my father.
I am glad that you are here and sharing this very difficult stuff. You cannot kill your dad by being angry at him.
