Old 07-10-2013, 10:01 AM
  # 11 (permalink)  
FireSprite
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Florida
Posts: 6,780
I'm another vote for self-responsibility.

Look, my father was an alcoholic before I was ever born. I have no point of reference for growing up with a sober father & never will. My mother had such a dysfunctional life before & during their marriage that (now) I can wonder at how she put one foot ahead of the other some days. She was as emotionally unavailable as my AF and more in many ways.

None of that defines WHO I am or WHERE I go in life unless I LET it, and that's not happening. There's no doubt that I AM impacted by it, but I choose not to let it rule my decision making whenever I have the awareness to realize that it "might" be.

My RAH's FOO is full of nasty dysfunction - compulsive lying, manipulation, the absence of any structure or true foundation, yet surprisingly, no alcohol abuse at all.

On the outside looking in one might expect me to be the addict & him to be the codie based on what we were raised around, but the opposite is true in reality. And even though his family seems to be a major source of his pain & issues that led him to abuse alcohol, it wasn't as direct as all that. They provided him no tools to handle life & the stresses that come with it, but they didn't MAKE him an alcoholic.... utimately he is the one that made the decision to use alcohol to numb his pain and isolate himself away from other solutions. JMHO.
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