bragi

GiveLove,

Thank you for validating what I'm doing. It gives me strength

Sometimes people who didn't experience what we went through will feel bad for the alcoholic, like we're being mean or harsh to them or something. So it's good to talk on here and have people get when I'm going through and support it.

And personally, I agree with you and my attitude is this: The person drinking is making a choice, and that choice has an extremely negative effect on the people around them. Especially once someone outright tells the alcoholic that their drinking has negatively affected their life, the onus is (as it always was) completely on the alcoholic. People call alcoholism a disease, but that doesn't relinquish them from responsibility, or make us responsible for fixing them. If they won't figure out how to fix it themselves, then they're making the choice to be disconnected from those that love them.

Of the Ten Commandments, I think the one I have the strongest feelings about is "Honor thy father and mother." I think this is an extremely idealistic commandment, and I'd go so far as to say it should be "Honor thy children." Having children is a responsibility; children aren't slaves, and they aren't less than total people because they're small. They're pure potential, and parents should constantly make sure that they're honoring the gift of being in charge of helping them into the world.

I'm with Sidney Poitier's character in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner when he says (as he's talking to his father): "You tell me what rights I've got or haven't got, and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you're supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another."