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.
i think i am dreaming. who do i think/hope he will be?
my father is an A and i no longer am having contact with him. his behavior sickens me...anyway--he is on permenant social security disability (do to his drinking problem). i hold a bit of resentment for this b/c i have epilepsy(seizure disorder) and i cannot receive any benifits. yet an A gets them just b/c he is too drunk all day to go to work.
i used to pay his bills for him with his disability $$ b/c he could never remember to pay them and he would spend all his $$ the first week on booze. i got tired of having him hassle me a few times a week for more$$ b/c he had already spent his weekly alotment. finally got fed up and told him i would no longer do it. i was enabling him and decided not to. b/c i know his finances, i know he got payed yesturday. all i could think about was how he was blowing his $$, drinking and passing out, probably wouldn't pay his bills, and him being alone. i was so mad!
i had a great childhood. we went to church and were active in sports and church functions. my dad coached all our sports teams. we went on numerous vacations a year. i think i still feel like he is going to wake up and be the dad he used to be. he used to be so excited about being a grandpa and spoiling my kids rotten. now he barely sees them and when he does, he is trashed! so now, i don't let him see my kids.
he lost his wife. he lost his children & grandkids. he lost his job. he lost all his friends. he lost all our repect we had for him.
why isn't he waking up. why can't i accept that he will never be the dad i knew and loved? what the hell happened!!!
I'm so sorry that you are losing your dad. Remember that he is not doing this to hurt you, or because he does not care about you. He has a disease, which leads him to hurt other people, and to hurt himself.
It's understandable that you want to cry out against this, and to question why. However, this is reality. You are doing the only possible thing here, which is to take care of yourself, whatever that may mean.
One of the reasons I hate this disease so much is that we always tend to think that there is something we can do about it - that it is in some way somebody's FAULT. My husband's father has dementia - he is no longer the smart, reasonable, capable man he was. Instead, he sits in his wheelchair, not recognizing his family, and sometimes saying really hateful things that he never would have said in his right mind. It's horrible, but at least nobody feels responsible for it, nobody blames him. No one is thinking "If he really loved me, he would get out of that wheelchair and be the man I used to know and love". With alcoholism, we are always thinking "If he really loved me.....If I had only acted differently......If, if, if,....why, why, why....
I think that getting social security for alcoholism is harder now. I know I intend someday to go to see a disability counselor to see about getting social security and what the terms are. I have a lot of different conditions. Have you thought about going to a Center for Independent Living they may be able to help you find out. Sometimes we have to really find out the fine print. I know for example there was one drug I took that totally debilitated me and social security does not consider that a disabling condition anymore. Well I took that particular drug for decades and found it totally disabling on many many levels.
I am seriously considering going to the Center for Independent Living for future reference. The only thing I would say about going for help and clarification is to expect to go through lots of dead ends. Not everyone who says they will help is helpful.
My younger sister has been an alcoholic for decades. In some ways I can see how progressed her conditon has been by our conversations. I think we have to remember that it does progress. Her thinking is definitely out there. I used to take it very personally now I keep reminding myself of that fact.
I think its very difficult when we have enabled to be in a place where we need help. I know it causes a lot of resentment for me dealing with my boyfriend and his relatives. I no longer deal with his relatives because it had to be on all their terms and there is nothing in it for me. I think that is one of the few times I set a limit in a relationship. I have a friend right now exploring whether he has a disabling condition. I am being emotionally supportive but not over supportive at the expense of myself. He has tremendous funds (he inherited millions) and family support and friends. I do not have that. I have to remind myself all the time of my limited reosurces. I think that was some of my boundarylessness when I saw someone in need I went to any lengths to help them. I certainly did for my boyfriend but the relationship was not reciprocal. Now I look for reciprocity far more in relating.
6 years ago I renewed contact with my mother because I knew her time was very limited. I did not have al-anon then but the distance between us (she lived in another country) was part and parcel of some of the limit setting I did. I did try to give her a few things. I instigated contact with her grandchildren for instance (she never thanked me for it neither did anyone else in the family acnowledge it). At the same time I set a lot of limits on my availability and my ability to care for her emotionally. I am very glad I did that. I could say without guilt that there was not much I could do. When my mother died I did not have any regrets that I had been estranged from her. At the same time I have to say that when my mother died the kind of emotional chaos and vindictiveness that she had lived through her life totally ensnared me once again. It took a long time for me to pull myself out of that one. I was not in any really supportive relationships at that time (my boyfriend was completely absent emotionally). I wish I had been in al-anon. I hope the program will be there for you as you negotiate this difficult time. Having a dysfunctional parent age is a whole other stratosphere of stress there is grief, chaos, guilt, anger and more. I think it is one of the last paradigms of grieving a dysfunctional parent. Mine were not there for me as a child or as an adult on any level. All they knew how to do was "take".
