Roles in the Family
I've been reading through some of the stickies and I also have a couple of the books that I've glanced through from time to time. We have no meetings in Australia (well certainly none for ACOAs and to be honest, when I went to one in South Africa, I hated it and never went back. It sounded like a bunch of people blaming others for their own mistakes and I wasn't prepared to be 'one of them'.
In my family, I was definitely the hero / overachiever, but I've recently started wondering if I was / am also some kind of enabler, by accepting it and not telling others what was going on? My sister (4 years older than me) was very vocal with my parents (both A) and challenged them on their drinking, whereas I just wanted to keep the hard fought for peace that we sometimes woke up to. Where my sister would want to talk to them about their behaviour the night / day / weekend before, I just wanted to pretend like it didn't happen and instead revel in the 'normal' time that was so rare for us to have. Looking back, I feel huge guilt for leaving my sister out there - there is no doubt that I'm the favourite daughter and I'm scared i caused this by being the 'easy' one. I can barely type this without literally crying with guilt. Did I abandon her and make her the scapegoat, by playing my own role?
My parents often talk about how much the worry about my sister but that they know they never have to worry about me because I've got everything so well under control.
My sister and I are very close now but she has gone through 3 divorces and is always looking for someone to complete her and make her feel worthy. She always chooses younger men because I think she feels this validates her worthiness in the world somehow, and it kills me to watch them use her and leave her when they've sucked her dry.
She has huge anger towards my parents for our upbringing (as do I, but I try not to let it invade my life - they genuinely didn't set out to destroy us), and as such, has achieved emotional detachment from my parents, seemingly without trying, whereas I am still struggling with it. I still play the perfect daughter and avoid conflict whenever possible. I only ever talk about their alcoholism when I'm angry and they're drunk - in the morning, I revert to the little girl that took comfort in a 'moment of normalcy' instead of risking shattering the peace.
Does this make me an Enabler? Codependent? Both? Should I be more confrontational in my dealing with them, and if so, to what end? It would just hurt them and then I'd feel guilty, and what's the point in that?