You guys are amazing. Incredible to wake up and read all your posts. All that insight, shared experiences, clarity and honesty. I don't think you can put a price on any of that. Thank you.
Plenny, I totally get your feelings of frustration regarding your sister and I agree with everyone else who said blocking her number is a good decision, at least for now. You need to protect yourself from triggers. My birth family is a huge trigger for me. Probably the biggest trigger actually. In my family we were all given a label from birth and it didn't seem to matter what any of us went through..... bereavement, divorce, mental health issues, surgeries etc, those labels stuck. My label was "difficult" and I sure lived up to that one on many occasions. What I've started learning is that when one of my sisters, brothers or my mum is feeling bad about themselves, that's when I'll get a phone call. The phone call will start out ok but pretty soon, I'll start feeling attacked. When I was drinking, this would trigger my drinking and once I was drunk I would get so wound up about what was said during the phone call there was nothing on earth that could stop me from phoning/texting whichever family member it was to express my anger in the most emotionally charged way imaginable. After this there would follow weeks of other phone calls from other family members telling me how "difficult" I was; how much I'd upset my mum/sister/brother/whoever. They'd also let me know that they'd met up to discuss me and I would feel left out, filled with remorse and self loathing and turn to the only thing I felt understood and gave me any support - alcohol.
Now that I've been sober for a while, each time I've felt attacked, I've been able to recognise that maybe not every issue in the world concerns me and continue the conversation without reacting. I think one of my brothers and a sister is coming round to the new "me" and I've started rebuilding my relationships with them. I don't think my mum and another sister are so keen on the person I'm becoming and I don't hear from them anymore but I'm ok with that. In my idea of a perfect world, one where I've been sober for years and there's rainbows and kittens everywhere, I'd like to think that I could have a great relationship with my birth family but if this doesn't happen, I'm not going to let it throw me off course. I know that my sobriety isn't a cure for everything and to be honest, a world with rainbows and kittens everywhere would irritate the hell out of me anyway. Living life on life's terms; that's what I aspire to.
Kev, so glad things are better with your bf and hope your tonsillitis gets better soon. Great that you are seeing positives in everything. Inspirational. Wanted to reply to everyone's posts but as usual I've let my brain go to places it hasn't been to for years, maybe ever and got carried away. Have to go to work now. Hope everyone has a great day and thanks again for everything. It really does make a difference knowing that there are people like you lot in the world.