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.