My Life Became Unmanageable

I am powerless over the fact that I saw MANY red flags in the beginning and I ignored my instincts.

How has it affected your life?

The fact that I stayed in an abusive relationship for so long has caused a deep rift between myself and the person who should be my biggest advocate and friend-- myself! I wanted the good parts of the relationship: the laughter, the fun, the adventure, at the expense of my safety. A part of me hate myself because I knew all the facts and I still pressed forward. Before we were even officially together, while we were only roommates, I took a 24 question test about whether or not I was in an abusive relationship and if the way he was treating me could qualify if we ever did end up getting together. Our relationship-- even just as roommates-- screened very high. I still decided to get involved with him anyway. Even after our couples therapist told me pointblank in a private session that he was too angry to have a relationship with anyone at that point, I still didn't want to leave.

I now doubt every move I make and that leaves me feeling helpless and paralyzed. I am a damn social worker for heaven's sake and I would have warned any client of mine to stay away, but I still pressed forward. In the beginning of the relationship, I was kind of wishy-washy on being together, I liked the attention but I didn't know if I was in love with him. It was convenient and comfortable, but I wondered why I didn't feel like I was in love right away. By staying with him longer, it gave me time to push my intuition aside and fall in love and give myself to him in a way I've never given myself to anyone before. Even though we were so tumultuous, there was a part of us that felt like we were soulmates. I soon was in love without realizing that was a bad place to be, like the frog getting boiled alive in the water that got hotter and hotter. It was a nice jacuzzi that would eventually fry me alive.

I always told myself that no matter what happened I would NEVER be with an alcoholic, because I didn't want to live in a marriage like my parents did. I wasn't going to be one of those girls who dated their parent because they still had childhood issues-- and I thought I wasn't because he wasn't an alcoholic. But he was definitely a rageaholic, which caused the problem to come at me sideways in disguise.

I wasted two years of my life walking on eggshells, afraid all the time because I knew the signs of when his behavior would get worse and I looked for them daily. I lost myself in those two years. I forgot how to think about anything but the big mystery of how to keep him happy. I felt like I was wearing a body that didn't belong to me and my skin didn't fit.

I used to think of myself as the stupid person who buys an exotic lion and then keeps their 'pet' in their house, even though they tell everyone it's so majestic and beautiful and they are so lucky to have this lion, there's still a part of the lion that wants to rip the person's head off and probably will in the future. You can only keep a killer pet lion for so long.

It was probably worse for me than someone who could live in deeper denial, because I knew what I was doing to myself the whole time and I deep down knew it was an abusive relationship. I knew all these facts and still I didn't care. And that makes me accept it a little bit more when the victim blaming occurred because I did it all to myself. I gave him exactly what he wanted until he was done with me. And even now, something will trigger a memory for me and I'll miss him for a moment until I hate myself all over again. I wonder if this contributes to my self-care problems-- it may be a major reason why I'm not gentle with myself anymore.

The past is the past now though and there is absolutely nothing I can do besides wishful thinking and fantasy delusions (both of which I've entertained quite a bit) to change anything. This is a fact that I accept in small pieces, a little at a time, but I always seem to return to the self-blame and problem-solving thinking.

How have you contributed to it?

I shut my brain down a lot of the time and split myself off from the angry or the loving sides. I compartmentalized. I would be angry for a brief time, but then cool off and automatically start apologizing even if it was his fault and try to clean up and make the house nice or make him something to eat so he would be nice to me again. I tried to buy his love and affection with shows of grandiose love, anything to make him treat me better. He once told me I was training his bad side to be bad by doing this and a part of me wonders if I made him worse. I enabled his behavior to such a degree, I wonder if I turned him into the person he eventually became.

I learned to anticipate his moods, which caused my hyper-arousal and hyper-vigilance from childhood to deepen into a near post traumatic stress disorder degree. Once I moved out of the house we shared, it took me a long time to realize that I didn't have to rush around trying to appease my roommates and I was shocked at how much time I had to myself when I wasn't worried about the other shoe dropping.

I used to spend so much time trying to fix the problem-- trying to fix him. I also tried to fix the environment around us. I remember when he was visiting me in the hospital, the nurse bumped into my bed in the middle of the night and she said she was sorry she was so loud. My thoughts immediately went to worrying about him, because I knew he hated getting woken up in the middle of the night and I didn't want him to throw a fit in the hospital. This all happened the night right after my surgery. It was all about him and making him happy. I was never allowed the time to be happy, or the means.

I cut myself off from support when people told me I should leave him. I stuffed my feelings until I didn't feel like myself. I tried to save him instead of just leaving. Even now, after everything he's done to me, I still wonder if there was anything more I could have done to make him happy all to the detriment of myself, my sanity and the relationship I had with my intution and Higher Power. I wanted to save him but I didn't want to save myself. I wasn't worth anything if he wasn't happy-- and he never let me forget this fact.

Two To Tango

I've found a new sponsor who is taking me through the steps. I've been in Alanon for ten years now, but having a sponsor has been eye-opening. I can't believe I've waited this long for something so beneficial! We're tackling a particular problem through the steps because there is SOOOOO much in my life I need to change, but I am trying to learn to keep it simple and easy does it. The issue I'm working the steps on is the abusive relationship I just got out of with my ex-fiance of two years. This was the exercise she had me do this week:

I am powerless over what my ex, my ex's friends and my ex's family think of me.

How has it affected my life?
In the beginning of our friendship, even before we were dating, he told me that if I didn't do what he wanted (and I'm sure he was suggesting sexual things with his tone of words in that conversation), he would turn all our friends against me. I stayed in the relationship for far too long, not just because I was afraid of losing him but because I didn't want to be completely alone. I didn't want to get abandoned by our friends. I was scared I would have no one after my family died. I wanted everyone to just like me so I didn't rock the boat.

They all hate me now anyway, because their opinions are theirs and theirs alone. I feel kind of paranoid, but I think everyone in our social circle back on Long Island believes I was the wrong one because I stood up and said I couldn't take it anymore. The hate has spiraled me into a very deep depression where I feel like everyone is either a liar or an outright asshole. Not having people to turn to when going through something like that was one of the most heart-wrenching things about the situation. I did lose a lot of friends through his lies and the rumors that spread about me. Some of these people I had known for over a decade, so it really hurt to have them turn against me.

I've heard people call me “crazy” or say “you must have done something to cause him to be this angry” or tell me that the bruises on my body were not that bad and I was over-exaggerating and other misogynistic things. It dragged me back to the 1950s. It made me feel helpless, like even if they knew they still didn't care. And then I wondered how much I should care about myself then if so many people seemed to think it was okay for me to be abused. It made my self-esteem plummet.

The one girl who did stand by me very fiercely, because she had been in a similar situation and knew enough about victim blaming to see what was going on and had seen how he acted, was brought down right along side of me. She lost a couple of friends because she stood by my side and even if these people were jerks and she says she doesn't mind losing them, I still feel terribly guilty for having them cast her out alongside me.



What did I contribute to it?
I've turned the victim blaming internal, rehashing old memories to see if it was really all my fault and if I deserved to get abused-- not just by my ex, but by every single person who has ever hurt me-- giving their words power to hurt me even now.

I've fought against the tide of everyone else's opinion by throwing verbal temper tantrums, trying to get other people to see the truth and do something about it, writing message after emotional hangover message to try to get them to change their mind about him, me and us.

I make it affect me-- if I hear he's happy and he's hanging out with his friends more now, I take that as a testament to my own happiness. I don't believe we can both be happy at the same time. Someone has to be wrong, someone has to be right and there is black and white sides to choose from. I've made some of our mutual friends choose between us because I didn't feel safe around them because I thought they believed him.

When everyone was telling me I was over-exaggerating, it brought me back to so many other people who had disbelieved me too-- friends that I lost because of rumors and the gossip mill in years past. Shaina, one of my best friends, tried to explain to me that I have a very low charisma score and I don't always say things in the right way even when I'm correct, so that was probably why I didn't get along with so many people. I lose it sometimes and once people cross over my threshold for idiocy, I tell them straight to their faces exactly what I think of them-- which was another problem in the social group at the time. Once my ex got them to disbelieve me and I knew they weren't going to listen to me anyway, I was a raving bitch to them which did not prove my point that I was sane.

After one fight with my ex, when I finally said I might call the police, I was so strung out by his physical abuse (this was the time he pointed an “unloaded” gun at me), that I lost it. I cut myself in front of him, and he called the police and had me sent to the psych ward. I was released within the hour when I talked to the doctors there and they realized I was a cutter and not suicidal-- but I did this to myself. After he told everyone what had happened, which is why I think he called the police in the first place since it made him look like the good guy, no one wanted to believe me about anything. We were both pretty crazy at the time, but I was openly crazy. He kept his crazy behind closed doors. I did overly dramatic things to cause people to look at me. I'm a bit of a drama queen. That hasn't changed all that much. I recently deleted everyone off my Facebook and sent everyone goodbye notes just because I wanted to test them to see if they were 'mutual friends' or just 'his friends'.

There were other times when I forced myself to pretend to be overly sane and happy, just so people would think I was well-adjusted. I was going to make everyone think I was a good person if I plastered a fake smile on my face and drove myself crazy doing it. If I could get everyone to think I was the sane one, obviously then he would be the crazy one. It was all or nothing thinking, black and white-- we were both pretty nuts in different ways. He was abusive, but I was depressive and drama queen-esque.

I shouldn't let what other people think or say about me affect me as much as it does. It only gives them more power. It allowed him to hurt me more once he knew my friends and social group were so important to me. It allows him to hurt me now even when he's not in my life because I take things in and ruminate on them for several hours, or even days, at a time. I can never be free if I let people control me-- if I give them too much time out of my day, then I'm handing them over the power to ruin my day.

Right Thoughts Follow Right Action

Gratitude used to be something that I thought of passively. I knew when I was thankful for someone or something, because I would just feel it in my heart. I would have to wait for those moments though, the ones that caught me by surprise and made my passive life much more enjoyable.

I have since tried to become much more pro-active in finding the joy in life. Abraham Lincoln said, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” This is a much more involving way of looking at gratitude. The process of finding something to be thankful about in life every day can be very hard at first. Eventually, it does get easier, or so I'm told.

When I get caught up in my own depression and anxiety, it seems I'm always waiting for the next shoe to drop. That's how it was when I was a child. There was always some form of chaos in the house, something that I would have to hide from or defend myself against. Two of the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder are hyper-awareness (being preoccupied with studying the environment for possible threats) and hyper-arousal (a chronic state of fight or flight complete with the tension that goes along with that). I have those things in spades. It's hard to have gratitude when you always think that something bad is going to happen and you're always preparing for the worst possible outcome.

When I grew up and got out of my alcoholic childhood home though, it was up to me to find both a safe place to reside and the gratitude that had gone missing in the chaos. It was up to me to build the kind of life that I could be happy with and to be happy with a life that strives for progress and not perfection. There must be action behind my complaints if I am to make them. I can't be one of the people who doesn't vote in life but complains about who wins the elections.

At the moment, I'm stuck with trying to find the good in many of the things that have happened to me. There has been so much bad in the past few years that it's easy to just choke on it until I can't breathe anymore-- but there have also been wonderful times of joy. I was able to get out of an abusive relationship because my friends graciously offered me a room in their apartment when I finally asked. There have been people standing by my side through court appointments, scary doctor visits and trips to the very confusing accountant. I have a roof over my head, a bed of my own, food in my stomach and for the first time since I was ten I'm living in a home where there is no violence. No matter what happens, I have those things to be grateful for and I must start remembering them and actively seeking out the rest of the pieces to fit the puzzle of my life.

Not So Easy As One, Two, Three

As someone coming back into the rooms of Alanon after a long absence, I'm trying to ascertain where I am in regards to the steps and what progress I need to make. I'm an old-timer and have been in and out of the program for a decade now, but I keep coming back to the first couple of steps. I've worked them them so many times but I still feel like a complete beginner at times.

Step One brought me to Alanon, when I knew deep in my soul that my life was unmanageable. I had tried in the past to stop my family from falling apart due to alcoholism but in the end all of my qualifiers died. I lost my sister, father and mother all to alcoholism so I realize there's nothing I can do. It's too late to do anything. I've watched the fallout and by now I know I can't control it and I didn't cause it, but sometimes I feel like I should have been enough to cure it somehow.

I think it goes into Survivor's Guilt a bit for me. I'm the only one to have survived my family situation without dying (though, I have one more sister who is still alive but she's on her last legs with a cocaine addiction). I know it was Alanon that saved me over the past decade or so, watching everyone die but knowing that I just had to work my program. I abused alcohol a little, as it ran so deeply in my family, but never went as far as to get an addiction. Step One remains confusing to me, since I have these visions of me saving everyone. My father had a cabin up in the woods and I keep saying that I should have kidnapped my sister, brought her there and refused to leave until she got sober. I know it's silly, but I still think I could have helped in some way.

I know I have Step Two down, because I truly believe that the program can restore me to sanity. Though, when my "friends" start talking about how I've come from an insane background so I'm always going to be crazy, sometimes that step gets a bit hard for me. I've really latched onto the program lately, because I really want it to work and need it to work as a lot of things have been brought up for me lately that keep trying to drag me back to the world of the insane.

Step Three is pretty easy for me at the moment. I'm not doing much with my life right now, so I feel like maybe my Higher Power will run it better than I can. Though, when I get hints and signs of what I should do I usually just say its too much work. I often forget to use the program when I'm in the middle of a problem because I just want to stay in my little bubble of depression. My Higher Power can be screaming at times, but I just tune it out and stay with the thoughts that make me miserable.

I'm attempting to find a sponsor, something I've never done in all my years of program. I had a sponsor for a day once, but I couldn't find the strength to pick up the phone and actually call them. Now though, I'm ready to work the full program. I'm ready to work the steps. I'm ready to climb the mountain to the top. I have to start somewhere and these first few steps are my jumping off point. I keep reminding myself that it's progress and not perfection, but each step seems so nuanced that it's hard to know if I comprehend it in my heart or just understand it in my head. The latter is more easier; the former will take a lot of work and faith.

Safety Found In Anonymity

I've started doing a 90-in-90 again. The last time I tried doing 90 meetings in 90 days, something miraculous happened and I was able to find the courage to get out of an abusive relationship. I have been blessed with wonderful friends, both in and out of the program, who've given me a place to stay, food when I was hungry, ears to listen to me and shoulders for me to cry on. My Higher Power continues to bless me every day with this program.

One of the meetings I attended today was on the idea of Alanon being a safe place when our lives get chaotic, and how there is so much safety in the rooms and member to member. I'm finding this to be very true.

For the two years when I lived with my ex, I was not allowed to talk about certain topics because I knew they would set him off. He would scream at me, punch holes in the walls or tell me I was worthless. He also told me not to talk to anyone about what went on inside the house. "Mutual friends" also said they didn't want to hear it or said I was lying when I even had photographic proof of the abuse that was going on. I just had to shut my mouth and keep the peace. And I did that for so long I stopped talking to anyone. I felt really alone at the time, just very scared and very alone.

Then I moved a couple of states away, and eventually wound up back in the program and all these things started pouring out of my mouth. I couldn't keep them bottled up anymore-- and the amazing thing about the program was that I didn't have to anymore. I could talk as long as I wanted (even if it was after the meeting if my sharings ran too long). I was encouraged, hugged and shown such love and patience that my hungry soul had been lacking for so long. I have started to feel safe again. For once, kind people like my home group, listened and didn't tell me I was lying and didn't tell me they didn't want to hear it or to "just shut up already". They just let me share while they listened. I've heard it said that all anyone really wants is someone to be a witness to their life. Alanon is the witness to my own.

Other than trusting me to tell my personal story my way and encouraging me to do so, I also have the added benefit of anonymity. As such, I don't have to worry about anything I have said in the rooms or member-to-member getting around the social circle, or back to my ex. The Twelfth Tradition states that, “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles above personalities.” This allows me to feel safe again and has begun to make me start trusting people again.

It's like I'm finally coming clean and replacing my ex's brainwashing with a program of my own making and choosing. There is such great healing and truth in these rooms.

We Are Just As Sick

One of the important parts of doing Step One is in realizing that we are as sick as our alcoholics. It says in Step One that OUR lives had become unmanageable. This program is about us but for many years, while I was still living with active alcoholics I would rationalize it in my head that I was going to these meetings because of them. THEY were sick. I need to learn how to live with THEM. If THEY hadn't done all these things to me then I would be a perfectly fine and functioning person in the world. Even though we are taught that it is a family disease, I still placed all the blame on their faults and what I saw as THEIR disease.

After my alcoholics weren't with me anymore though-- after they had died, I was still here and I was still not managing my life to the best of my abilities. I was still displaying codependent thoughts and behaviors. I was still stuck in everyone's head but my own. I still didn't listen to my Higher Power. I still let my character defects run rampant through my life where they created chaos and disorder. I left Alanon for several years and jumped head on into many slips because I was sure that with my family of alcoholics gone I didn't need to do the work anymore.

I still would rage on about how if they hadn't left me when I was in my twenties that I would have a better life now. I still blamed them for the chaos that enveloped my life in the wake of their disease. I still was in so many people's heads that I couldn't think straight. My depression and codependency was a result of their problems, obviously not my own.

I was thinking today though how it's impossible to blame them for anything in my life anymore. It's been a year since my mother died, three since my father died and five since my sister died. I have discovered the ultimate detachment. They're not here anymore. They're not doing anything to me actively. They don't even know the problems I face now or what my life has become so the idea of me blaming them for anything that I have created in my own life seems to fall very short now.

I'm still sick.

I have all the problems that this FAMILY disease has instilled in my brain. I am standing here on my own, alone with no alcoholics in my life and I am still living in many of the same ways that I did when they were here. I, and I alone, are recreating the same patterns that I lived before because I lack the knowledge and know-how to create anything else. I need the help. I need my Higher Power to guide me. When you're locked in a room by yourself, which is somewhat what it's felt like since I was left an orphan in my family, you discover in that silence what really goes on in your own brain and what kind of person you are.

I am a person in need of recovery.

I find that recovery in Alanon.

Concept One: Responsibility and Authority -- Two Sides of the Same Coin

CONCEPT ONE: The ultimate responsibility and authority  for Al‑Anon world services  belongs to the Al‑Anon groups.

Concept One came about because Dr. Bob, one of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, became terminally ill. This was someone who the groups of AA looked to and entrusted with many policy decisions. Though the years had been fruitful to AA and many thought it would continue throughout the future unharmed, Bill W-- the other main co-founder of the fellowship-- needed to ensure that the fellowship was protected in case anything happened to those like him and Dr. Bob who had first created it. He wanted to make sure that future generations could benefit from the strength and hope of the program they had established.

Bill W had fought in World War I. He had seen for himself that many dictatorships crumble under the ultimate power of one authority figure while other governments were made too weak with complete democracy to do anything to ensure their futures. He needed something more to sustain the spiritual program of AA. He did this by passing the responsibility and authority to the groups themselves. They would then be trusted to conduct their own group conscious meetings through their own higher power and Tradition 2 which states “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.” The trusted servants in turn would serve the groups in higher offices but they would be accountable and responsible to the authority of the Alanon groups themselves. He said this was possible because it was a spiritual program and because the love of a higher power was behind the program.

Alanon kept this model. We received the Twelve Concepts from Alcoholics Anonymous when they were first created in that fellowship in 1962. We adopted them just as we did the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and they helped to strengthen our own fellowship. Many people who come to these programs are confused about how to work well with others and do service that is helpful and orderly. These concepts give us practical rules to live by concerning the fellowship as a whole but also show how we can work well with others. They describe how best to do service, both in the program and in our own lives. Through Concept One we created group conscience meeting, the upside-down triangle of authority of Alanon with the groups maintaining responsibility and authority in the program and a basis for which to allow our trusted servants to serve but not govern us. The program now had a way to to carry out it's service.

The main message of Concept One is Unity. It also shows how we have to serve the group in order for the Alanon groups to serve us; we have to give it away to keep it. Bill did this in AA when he gave his baby-- his program that he created out of the blood, sweat and tears of his own life-- and gave it over to the groups and their authority. He saw that there was so much more the groups could do that a few authority figures could not. One person can not do as much as the whole group.

We must remember that we recovered through the program. It's not enough to recovery and have unity with those in the program, we must also uphold the responsibilities that are given to us with the many service opportunities in the program. We may have the authority within our groups for Alanon, but without continuing to fulfill the service positions there will be no Alanon anymore and future generations will not be able to benefit from the program as we have. Authority and responsibility are therefore two sides of the same coin. We can not have one without the other.

This translates to our own lives as well. When we allowed other people to become our Higher Power and bent to the wishes and whims of the alcoholic many of us hid from our responsibilities. We stopped taking care of ourselves as we should have and with that lost much of the authority over our own lives. We ended up with lives that were unmanageable and out of control.

On the other side of things, how often did we think that we were the ultimate authority for our Alcoholics? We took their responsibility away by trying to become their Higher Power. We paid their bills, did their chores, made sure they were happy and they forgot how to manage their own lives because we were there to enable them. We forgot that we were part of a team. We forgot that the unity of our own relationships should be about two people coming together equally. We tried to control that which wasn't ours in the first place and took on way too much for one person to handle. We needed to delegate like in the program when we place some of the duties of Alanon in the service boards. We needed to give some of the authority away to keep our sanity. No one person or one group can do it all.

To truly work this concept in our lives we have to remember that we are part of the group. No man is an island and if we try to do it all we will surely drown. We have to also be able to dedicate our new found sanity and peace to serving the group and it's collective conscious, as it says in Tradition 1: “Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity.” We must seek to serve the groups in our lives-- our families, our marriages, our work environments and our family groups at Alanon. We must give it away to keep it and continue to do service where it is needed, in this way we serve the group but we also make sure that the groups continue to serve us. By doing service where it is needed and warranted we will pass it on to the next generation and ensure that we all get healthy.