"The More you Suffer...
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Join Date: Jan 2010
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"The More you Suffer...
The more it shows you really care. Right? Yeah."
My brother in the last weeks before he went to rehab would sing this one line from the Offspring song "Self Esteem". Constantly. Aggressively. With Hostility.
I still haven't asked what it meant to him, but it felt like he was attributing that to me. Either way, it helped me look at myself and my own actions differently.
I saw that my suffering over his situation and his pain wasn't the right way to show that I cared. That martyring myself over his addiction was twisted. I was unknowingly making it all about me and I could suffer from here til Kingdom Come and that wasn't going to change a thing about his addiction.
And boy did that smart. In retrospect there I was prostrate at the feet of the universe in a hairshirt hitting myself with a stick, and it's not about me at all? I'm not Lord, God and Savior made flesh?
The rest of the story is that things came to a head, I backed off, he spent a couple of nights in a shelter then checked himself into a program. He's been clean 18 months now and gave his lead before a large crowd the other night. I have few regrets about my own actions because we had to go through what we did to get where we are, but if I find myself in those shoes again I hope I remember that's okay to care and to love, but my pain is not going to fix anyone else's problems.
My brother in the last weeks before he went to rehab would sing this one line from the Offspring song "Self Esteem". Constantly. Aggressively. With Hostility.
I still haven't asked what it meant to him, but it felt like he was attributing that to me. Either way, it helped me look at myself and my own actions differently.
I saw that my suffering over his situation and his pain wasn't the right way to show that I cared. That martyring myself over his addiction was twisted. I was unknowingly making it all about me and I could suffer from here til Kingdom Come and that wasn't going to change a thing about his addiction.
And boy did that smart. In retrospect there I was prostrate at the feet of the universe in a hairshirt hitting myself with a stick, and it's not about me at all? I'm not Lord, God and Savior made flesh?
The rest of the story is that things came to a head, I backed off, he spent a couple of nights in a shelter then checked himself into a program. He's been clean 18 months now and gave his lead before a large crowd the other night. I have few regrets about my own actions because we had to go through what we did to get where we are, but if I find myself in those shoes again I hope I remember that's okay to care and to love, but my pain is not going to fix anyone else's problems.
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