[dothi]

Hi StellaBlu, welcome to our corner of SR and thanks for sharing your story They really reassure me about the patterns alcoholic families follow (and makes me feel less guilty about the decisions I've made with my own family of origin, when those doubts come creeping up).

I played the Hero in my family, and my sister played the Scapegoat. Out of the three children, I believe my sister always had the most clarity as to how dysfunctional we were. That's probably what distinguished her scapegoat - although she couldn't articulate it as a child, she was constantly prodding and calling attention to the faultlines in our family system. So what better way to deal with a child who isn't helping the system work (whose prodding ultimately threatens the supply of alcohol) than to make them out to be completely wrong/stupid/unworthy/ungrateful/etc.

I was in denial for many years longer than my sister, and I see now how much more damaged I am in some ways because being the family Hero lulled me into accepting the alcoholic rules for much longer. There's a "reward" for being Hero - it's the promise that if you play Hero well enough, that you can "fix" your family and finally be happy. My sister never bought into any of that - she saw the dysfunction and wanted out.

I used to re-hash too - thinking of how to say things just right to get everyone to see how to better themselves. What helped me accept that I don't need to do that anymore was to realize for the alcoholics in my family is that they think this lifestyle is normal. My alcoholic father thinks it's perfectly normal to keep women at home, deprive them of socialization and hobbies, guilt them for wanting things for themselves (because they're at home and not bringing in the dough, right? so how are they contributing?). When I look at his family history, his father was like that, and his grandfather was probably like that. So it's partly a learned family system. That doesn't dismiss anything, but it helped me realize that I'm not going to change the alcoholic in my family because he believes there's nothing wrong with what he's doing.

This forum is a rare treat for people like us because in the midst of the isolation, many of us are finding that we are finally not alone in what we are going through. The lessons we can't put into words can still be shared through our stories.