wanttobehealthy

EXACTLY! That's what I have thought, felt, said for years. Of course I should have just trusted what I knew and done something about it and left years ago but what's done is done...

I grew up in a house where we LOOKED like the perfect family. No screaming, no fighting, no acting out outside of the house-- over achieving, perfect family. Hardly. The palpable tension of not knowing what would come next, angry parents who took their hate for each other out on their kids in subtle but deadly ways showed me years and years ago that it's what is unspoken and felt that is often just as, if not more damaging than the overt fighting etc...

The anxiety my D's both have has lessened dramatically as mine has. As I've stopped making H the center of my world and have focussed on making my life mine with or without him I have been able to be the mother I knew I was but have struggled to be for the past few yrs.

I won't ever be able to make up for how distracted I was at times when I should have been 100% present for my girls but instead was worried about what AH was doing, thinking, where he was etc...

The day that it hit me that D5 (she was D4 at the time!) resembled me as a kid waaaaay too much, was the day I went to my first al anon meeting.

I lied to myself for years and said that bc the arguing occurred after the girls were in bed and that the worst they dealt with was silent tension, that that meant it wasn't "that bad". I'll have a lot of forgiving of myself someday for this-- I am no where near ready to even consider that right now. I feel like my mom card deserves to be taken away frankly bc of keeping the girls (or bringing them into a life with an alcoholic parent) in this situation this long. I can't do a damn thing about AH but the more I change what I can in me, the better off the girls are.