Tags
12 step, comfort, compassion, debtedness, emotional continuity, housing, recovery, sleep, stability
Recovery, God, balance, sleep, trust, writing things down, and connection; it does work.
Resisting addictions in all their forms, for me, can be a moment by moment intentional battle. I have no internal middle road. I suspect most people don’t given the lack of compassion and permanent damage we inflict on one another. Black/ white good/bad, on/off, in/out, all/nothing, yes/no dichotomies permeate peoples’ lives. And this, I think, is the crux of addictions in the lives of individuals.
I tend to spend too much and wind up with housing instability, or not at all and keep myself from moving forward in jobs, education, and life. Recently, I have been gorging on burgers and beers with my pal, which has been emotionally stabilizing, and apparently I need the protein, but I am shorting my grocery budget and my sleep. My pal says that this is just how urban people socialize. Good point, but I’m an addict so my life depends on looking at it closely.
Here’s why. I am an only child of one parent who lost their mate. They lost what I now suspect was the one person who might love and accept them. Who might hear and feel their loss of love and belonging. My parent, probably with the loss of one of their parents, lost acceptance within the family. They lost the safety that home should bring a child, a young person. Not just that, but I think my parent actually fled tyranny.
So here you have somebody, emotionally on their own with their own child, bumping along in the world, damaged themselves, with less than a clue, fleeing their home, and no particular guidance. So they do the best they can in their starved state. They lack foundational components for setting up a safe life. My parent lacked emotional continuity. My broader family, as I see them from afar, are not compassionate people. They lack compassion for themselves and everybody else. They are generally not open and honest about what hurts them, and when someone is, they are immediately abused. This poisonous pedagogy has done permanent damage to everyone and has continued into the next generation.
My parent’s permanent damage, thus far, emerges in everything about them. Because they have no emotional continuity they lack middle ground most of the time. My parent lives full-throttle or nearly not at all. (Or the last time I checked, this was still the case. I’ve been away for four years.) My parent carries the labels of bipolar, borderline, depression, anxiety, PTSD, narcissism and “crazy”. My parent is broken. My parent is shattered. My parent’s hope for love, a life with a partner, children, and a home; was destroyed by an auto accident just as it was birthed. Their fragile grasp on “normal” disappeared into an Indiana night.
I think their many addictions are just ways to deal with this night and the left overs from a home where they were refused a voice, and abused by another family member who ultimately pushed them from the nest, changed the stories, and nearly obliterated them from the tree.