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 have so many beginnings of letters drafted in my head or on little scratch pieces of paper in the past five days. Trying to purge my emotions from my soul so that I can continue living my life and focusing on my goals. But each attempt is interrupted by Ive said that before, and the rope I am leading myself out with to safer fields is yanked back with ha gotcha. And I am stuck in turmoil, in distress.
I dont think there is any one letter better than another. My letters run the gamut of possible feelings from intense pain to intense anger to intense indifference, and everything in between. Each boiling up or festering underneath at different, or often at simultaneous, times. Sometimes I want to share them with you but most of the time I feel like you dont deserve to hear my heart again.
All of these feelings and I am left isolated. Because loving an alcoholic is isolationary. After 15+ years, my few close friends and my husband have got to be tired of hearing the same god damn story again. I know I am. So even when I do finally reach out, it feels like such a needy and weak move to ask for an ear or a shoulder for the same song, different verse.
I tried to ignore my inner need to write it out. Because why. Because its all been written a thousand times already. But I just cant focus. And then little things happen, like Samanthas broken heart, and I am right back to square one with all the emotions raging out while I feel like a helpless insane heap.
So, new plan. I will write.
I will write without an agenda. It doesnt have to be addressed to anyone, or it can be. It can one day meet your hands, or one day the recycle bin. I will write what I feel in that moment and it doesnt have to connect, it doesnt have to help, it doesnt have to even make sense to myself.But this is my therapy, as it always has been it will continue to be. And maybe, maybe one day I will write happy letters.
Welcome Frenchie. I've found letters I've written over the last 3 years and time and program really help me see my ' then' thoughts from a new perspective. I can relate to feeling like an insane helpless heap........ Today I am mostly sane, often powerless but never help less. Fifteen years is a long time, but 20, 30 50 or never are much longer. May your today be beautiful and touched by a sense of your own wonderful divinity, however you conceive of it. Keep coming back, it works if you work it.
Frenchie Welcome You are correct," loving an alcoholic is "isolating". Alcoholism is a chronic , progressive, fatal disease over which we are powerless. Because we attempt to live with and deal with the insanity of the disease with worn out tools we too be come frustrated, angry and sad and so need a program of recovery of our own. You are not alone .
Alanon is that program. Face to face meetings are held in most comuntiites and it is here that I broke the isolation caused by this disease, learned how to express my feelings in a healthy manner, to people who understood as few others can. and was given the support I needed so as to release the negative thoughts and build new constructive feelings to feel and write about/We cannot do this alone
Please check out a meeting schedule by calling the number you find in the white pages and keep coming back here as well -- There is hope
What you have written has touched my heart with recognition, you have written so beautifully about our turmoil. I too write a lot, it helps me to understand what I'm feeling and to be able to set those feelings down on paper releases my mind so that it can move on.
One day I brought myself a beautiful leather bound notebook, I used the last of a small inheritance from my mother to buy the book and I promised myself that I would only use that notebook to write down positive thoughts. I journaled in it every evening, listing my three best things of the day and used it to make notes about the nature that surrounds my home. It is my go-to notebook now and it helps me to find the positive in amongst the mad, crazy making world of alcoholism.
Hey Frenchie - I too welcome you to MIP.....I am a huge believer in pounding the keyboards to brainstorm and clear out my brain. It's therapeutic for me and I always feel as if I've purged when I do some writing/journaling/letters. I am sorry for what brings you here - but you are not alone and there is help & hope!
Keep coming back!!
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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
