appleblaster

A bit long of a post......thank you for reading.

No matter where I am in my recovery I really wish I was further along. It reminds me of when Luke Skywalker was training to be a Jedi and he was soooooo impatient. But he was encouraged to trust in the "force" to guide him. He fought so hard against it, thinking that he could do it on his own. It wasn't until he let go that things began to get easier and use his power. But really, the struggle becomes less of a struggle when you trust your HP (the force).

Brief history (and it's going to sound like a lot of yours): relationship w/alcoholic who is the same age as me. only child involved is mine (14 y/o boy) from a previous marriage. relationship w/alcoholic ended after a little less than a year but we always came back to each other for one reason or another but we never actually labeled what we were doing. we just kept saying that we couldn't be in relationships because he was an alcoholic and I was codependent. In all the back and forth i've discovered he's also an addict. I was excited that his drinking slowed down a LOT....we could actually go out and he has one drink! WOW! But I only found out he's been abusing prescription drugs.....something I did not know about before.

On the subject of codependence; i've found myself often wondering lately what life looks/feels like through the eyes of someone who isn't an alcoholic/addict nor codependent. While I pursue recovery, my world is saturated with alcoholism, addiction and codependence. Sometimes just a whiff of life minus all these things would seem like heaven but sometimes unobtainable. Like its the holy grail or something!!

Depending on my perspective I guess it is the holy grail. I stopped going to Al-Anon meetings a few months back because I was actually falling asleep in the meetings. I took that as a signal that I needed a break from them. Still, I read books (sporadically), wrote in my journal, documenting thoughts and realizations, and read this board. It wasn't with the regularity that it probably should have been but I was "okay". I was letting all this information sink in while I went about things.

Today I find myself right where i've been many other times with my xabf. I guess its denial because i'm actually surprised that these same codependent feelings and behaviors came back as naturally as taking a breath. Now, much like the addict, I feel shame and disappointment on top of those other feelings. Sigh.....

Needless to say i'm going back to Al-Anon tomorrow evening. Then i'm pondering what to do next. Right now the xabf and I are not speaking and i'm replaying the events in my mind as to observe both our behavior.....trying to do it minus my own opinions and bias but that's not very realistic. He is an example of my sickness. All I want right now is what I need the least....my xabf....but I only want him when he's in his good phase. Not the rest. That's like saying i'm gonna peel this onion until I find a diamond!

It feels like i'm back to square one or that perhaps i'm being tested and all of it causes me to realize that i've got a lot of work to do. That my thinking that using the tools i've learned so far on the already damaged relationship with the xabf will actually make it work is so wrong. It only caused me to see the red flags in more vivid color, larger.....but I still ignored them and played with fire anyway.

I rationalized my "use" (spending time with the alcoholic/addict) by saying to myself and others that I learned so much from him....I was able to use my newfound "jedi" skills as a recovering codependent. But still, i'm let down by his most recent jekyl/hyde bipolar outburst. I'm also let down by myself. So I feel like i've fallen off the codependent bus and scraped the heck out of my knees so back I go to heal.

I wanted to be better than this by now. I'm trying to hurry up my recovery and i'm playing with things I know I shouldn't. But, its really neat how this works because through my own sickness, i've come to understand addiction/alcoholism much better.....how the sickness works. This allows me to understand the concept of compassion and detachment much more clearly.

So in all of this back and forth i'm doing in this post, I can be glad that i'm still learning and that one day at a time really applies to me. I guess this is just some time spent in the dark part of the forest on my journey. It sucks and I really want to get into the sun again but when there's a fork in the road, I need to learn to take the right path the first time.

sketscher

Funny you use the Star Wars analogy. Just yesterday I began to refer to my xabf as "Darth Vadar". In all seriousness! He is as evil and out to drag me to the dark side. I am convinced of that.

yep your story is all too familiar.

Mair

I know exactly how you feel. i dont think i love my xab but a part of me is missing something. and like you i want the good bits back, when this happens it's a bit scary cos i know how wrong it.

I watched a film last night called "eternal sunshine of a spotless mind" and in it a couple in love who are going thru a rough patch decide to erase their memories of each other, and i sat there and thought if that was possible i would do it in a second, the good memories would be the first to go as they are delaying my recovery.

Sit tight it will get better, you will master your codependancy when you concentrate on you. Im still fighting it but i think im getting somewhere im making plans for me and keeping busy. Me and my xab have no future together ive accepted that now, so it's time to move on, as with any broken relationship it's heartbreaking but i'll get through it, and so will you. Head for the sunshine xxx

Mair

carolineb

The Sun never says to the Earth......you owe me......and look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.



You deserve nothing short of this. It's called a breakup because it's broken. In other words, what you're feeling is natural in a breakup regardless of the alcohol. Love lost is sad. Hang in there.

Mr B

That's one of my favourite films, although I think it says something different to me than it has to you. I saw an awful lot of my own relationship in that film - the big break-up scene, in particular, was intensely triggering the first time I saw it. I watched it again, though, and I started to see that the male character (Joel) was playing just as big a part in what was going wrong as the female (Clementine). That film was one of the significant motivators that led me to see my own part in the A/codie dance that I had been playing with XAGF.

As I see it, Joel and Clementine are, fundamentally, deeply ill-suited. It's questionable that either one of them, at that point in their lives, were in any fit emotional state to have a successful relationship with anyone. But the decision that both of them took to erase their memories only doomed them to repeat the same mistake over again. (There are even suggestions that this wasn't the first time that Joel, at least, had done that - why else would the doctor be so willing to let him jump the queue?)

As long as they went through the cycle of honeymoon, increasing dissatisfaction and resentment, explosive and destructive break-up and then erasing of memories, they'll never learn from the mistakes and never grow emotionally. Painful and difficult memories are not nice things to live with but they teach us powerful lessons. To give up that hard-won knowledge and experience seems, to me at least, to be doing a major disservice to oneself.

Mr B.