Smarie78

This is something I have long struggled with, even in my deepest anger and frustration of life with the alcoholic. I know there is a great post out there about Compassion for the A, and honestly it is one of the most beautiful things I have read. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

I find that when He disappears to drink I feel more sad for him than anger. The last few weeks have been rough as expected as we all but called it a breakup. I am pretty sure that the combination of things ending and my coldness leading up to it, the recent 'slips' and his disappearing act being due this time around, made slipping back into a binge all but certain. Actually, it was certain because the same things were following the pattern. Dry for maybe a month, have a couple incidences, then an all out binge. Almost like clockwork right at the two month mark. It was coming. I just feel very sad for him. Today was his very first payday on the new job and he was going to finally catch up and pay his debts, get to a good spot. I guess I knew better, but darn it if he is always so hopeful, so convinced that this is it this time. He was sending me Big Book quotes and daily reminders again, so gung ho that he is going to win. But alas he will lose the job, be without income again, and life will turn upside down....only difference is that the consequences are getting worse now as the disease progresses.

Maybe it's like that compassion thread stated, maybe some people are too fragile for this world and can't find their way home. I feel that way about him sometimes. I think about him when he drinks, when he falls deeply into it. The way he holes up into the dark motel or under the viaducts with the homeless, dirty clothes and just becomes this shell of the person I typically see when he is sober. I think about his desperation to cling to the bottle, even if the bottle isn't even meant for consumption. I know and have accepted that I cannot save him, but it is hard to sit with. I've detached pretty well and have made great strides to where I was just a couple of months ago, but the sickness still haunts me.

I now think to myself that it's okay to feel sad for him, to feel empathy of the disease and the depression that worsens it. And that it's okay if others feel my empathy isn't deserved for him. I don't have to do anything with that. It's there and that is okay too. It is okay to just sit with those feelings and put them somewhere in a box. That they are there and while I can't will them away, I can leave them there in that box and I don't have to open it or do anything with them. I can just leave them. I can just go forward the best that I can because my life needs me now.

Soulful

A lot of goosebumps reading this. It's kind of like a clockwork here too. Payday comes and roughly every 5 weeks, he binges. I too have visualizations of my AH snorting lines and losing his mind and making out with all these coked out women too and I decided just like you, to allow them to surface, because just like anything in life, everything is transitory. These emotions too, shall pass.

I am feeling numb lately though. Sad, but numb. I spent today the entire day by the beach, just collecting all my thoughts and at one point I kept telling myself: why am I not crying like before? I used to SOB, like cry heavy. With hiccups and everything. I couldn't even force myself to cry, and I tried to do that today, thinking that maybe it will release some of this numbness. Nothing.

It's hard to sit with it, and I find it even harder now, not feeling anything.

PuzzledHeart

I was talking to my therapist just the other day, and I confessed that the only time I really cry is when I'm in his office.

I am very comfortable with being angry, because anger gets stuff done. Anger allows me to make smart decisions. What I'm not so accustomed to is being sad for my sister, because sadness and empathy only makes me want to open my heart to her, which leads me into getting smacked one way or another.

The sexual abuse she suffered from my cousin was horrible, and intellectually I understand why she acts the way she does. But I hate the way her life has become a twisted testament to him (I don't want to go into details, but when I told my therapist about it, he was agog), to the point where all I see is him and the marks he left behind and not her at all. And it hurts to know that she chose that for herself.

But at the end of the day, I remind myself that she is choosing to make her pain the priority over everything else. Her pain takes priority over her family, and until she chooses to do the hard work of self-examination instead of her toolbox of quick fixes there isn't so much I can do at all.

So my question is, can you have empathy with your qualifier without remaining vulnerable to him/her? How can you have room for both the sadness and the anger?

Soulful

This is a very good question that I ask myself daily and I would really love some input in it as well.

dandylion

Soulful.....after we have intense emotions for a long time, we become very used to it and it becomes our "normal". It doesn't even matter if it is negative emoition, like sadness, heartbreak, yearning, etc. It is our familiar and a link to the object of our "love".
This happens with people when their partner passes...at a certain stage...feelings of odd discomfort and so metimes even "guilt" when the sadness starts to lessen. they will often feel bad if they "can't remember the voice", or can't "remember their face, anymore". It is like, even the grieving, is still a connection to the lost one.....
It makes it even more real.
I think that you may be experiencing this in a way...
This phase passes...even for those who have lost someone t hrough death.....