My mother says, "He's no help to you." BHP says, "He's not pulling his weight." His mother asks "What is J**** doing?" Me "Laying down." Her "hmmm." Everyone knows and realizes that he doesn't do much of anything around here. Yeah, he works. Yeah, he's been sober for 11 or 12 days, but am I asking too much? Help me with stuff.
I guess what got me really boiling about this is a phone call from my mom yesterday. "Well, if it wasn't so HOT today, your daddy would have come up there and MADE J****..." There is a pickup truck that we need to junk, sitting beside our house. Mama/Daddy are convinced that the city is going to fine us because it is sitting there. J**** just piles junk up in the back of it. It looks pretty bad. I have asked him to move it too. In front of it -- there is an '88 mustang GT that has been sitting since we moved in. It's for sale - cheap - if anyone wants it. Then she says, "Well, honey, it is looking really trashy around there." I tried to explain to her, I know it and if we get fined -- it is his fault. I can't do it all and maybe he will see that he needs to be more responsible. I was brought up that the outside of the home reflects on the type of man. Well, I'm NOT covering for him.
No, it's not a withdrawal thing, or a guilt thing, or a depression thing. It is a him thing. He has always acted like his home is his castle and he shouldn't have to do menial household or just any chores. I know his mama didn't teach him that. However, until I told him that was just plain wrong - his stepfather and his mama did pay him to do stuff for them. Now a little credit -- if I ask him to do something simple like "while you're up, will you get me...?" Or, "Honey, grab me a diaper please -- because I've got a poopy butt to change." he will do it -- grumble a little (which I hate) but he will do it.
So here's fuel to what has got this bugging me today.
He went to Jail Friday night, now honestly what do you do in jail? You eat, sleep, watch TV, shoot the bull. Don't kid yourself the detention center here is considered the "Mayberry" of jails in this area. They let them order delivery Pizza - how tough can it be? One of the inmates gave him a haircut and drew a portrait of our children for him.- Came home Monday - boss said no work today since Holiday tomorrow. He claims he has a migraine headache and stays in the bed all day. Mows about three strips in front yard, but doesn't feel up to it. So I have a half mowed front lawn.
- Tuesday - 4th of July - admittedly - it's a holiday -- we had a family day - so nothing productive happened other than being with the kids. A good thing.
- Today - I'm playing hooky from work. He got rained out at work. He's in bed asleep, I've taken care of kids, got D***** down for a nap, fixed big breakfast (J**** did eat), and am on my second load of laundry and am trying to clean and do all them little things kids can't do for themselves.
I used to do even more and would mow lawn and try to keep all of that up. But, it was more than I could handle. BHP said that by my doing it all I was enabling him to act the way he does. So I stopped doing as much. But today it is really getting on my nerves. I work full-time at my job, and don't stop until I fall into bed each night. And, right now it's not because he's drunk. Am I asking too much?
How this makes me feel. This makes me feel second rate. Like the children, me, our home, our needs are unimportant to him. That his comfort and his wallowing are the most important things that there are too him. When he gets home on Mondays, he looks smugly at me -- like "Is that all you got done?" With both adults working - both should work at home. Am I asking too much?
I've spent the day with the kids, went to church, my mom came over and visited, IM'd my sister and called my brother. I sat in on the online Al-anon meeting and have been very introspective today.
In the Al-Anon session we spoke of powerlessness. To a control freak, anal retentive like myself this is hard. But it seemed that for everyone to "let go and let God" even the non-alcoholic had to hit a certain rockbottom. That rock bottom for me was when I realized that no matter what I did, he wasn't going to stop because of me. I have called alcohol his mistress. I can't control him, he can't control the alcohol and if he can't control it -- then definitely I can't control it for him. I have to focus on my sanity and raising my babies. This is STEP I.
In church today, the children were "wiggle bugs", D***** was very rambunctious and realized that he was getting grins and giggles from others in the congregation, so he put on a show. The one thing that I did hear (guess it was because I'm in tune to the talk) was one comment the preacher made and that was "...doctors and psychologists today try to explain away alcoholism as a social disease. We should tell it like it is, it is a sin." There are three categories of sin in the Bible -- "Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life." If you are calling alcoholism a sin, then yes it is -- because the alcoholic lusts after it. A drunkard is a sinful man in this aspect, but so is the wall-street broker going after that almighty dollar, the wife that puts her husband before God because she is addicted to him, can't we say that anything that you put before God is a sin? I'm not trying to diminish drunkenness -- BUT there are other things just as bad. Any time we have no self control we are in someway hurting ourself and others, nicotine, overeating, workaholic, overprotective parenting, and the list goes on... many of these apply to me.
I communicated with both the Sister and the Brother today and seems like we all three have a problem. Well one is we are all having a hard time making financial ends meet, in so doing we have all borrowed money from mama/daddy. In this, I started to think about the borrowing and laughed at us, because Brother and I probably asked mama, who in turn told daddy, and then she wrote the check. Sister probably told Daddy. But one thing all three of us can admit to is the pressure it put on us to ask our folks for help. One of my greatest hangups in life is, I don't want to disappoint them. Now as a mother of three, and living with an alcoholic, I realistically know that it would take a whole lot for me to be truly disappointed in my children. So why the hangup? I'm doing the best that I can and that is all anyone can ask. Again, this is where BHP says -- you put too much pressure on yourself.
Now I'm going to sound like an "old fogey." "Kids today don't know how good they have it, well in my day..." Sister said her day was long because she went to visit her young'ns and she said they were all just "whiney." Her children are my husband's age. J**** is 10 years younger than I am -- good for sex, but bad because of the generational gap. The difference that 10 years can make in the values of an individual - See this post from my sister's blog. She and I have suffered and endured and worked hard for what we have. I think today we try too hard to GIVE, GIVE our kids everything that we never had, but then we don't instill in them the appreciation of getting it. Remember the old TV commercial, "we don't make money, we EARN it." I think we need to go back to that motto with our kids and maybe there won't be that selfish generation of folks like J****.
All in all it has been an enlightening day.
Okay -- so I've placed all the blame on my alcoholic. This is hard to say, I'll admit it. I am sick too. I am addicted to my alcoholic, to turmoil and drama in my life, to taking care of anyone and everyone that I come in contact with. I need to be needed, who better than an alcoholic. I've got to fix me, I can't fix him, and if I don't fix me -- I can't keep my children from needing to be fixed.
I can't fight the alcohol. I must decide to live with it or without it. I choose to live without it.
J**** has said that he will get a sponsor and go to AA meetings. I so very much want us to live together without alcohol. He has been sober for 8 days now and yes he is in jail this weekend, three more to go. But, damn it -- if you know him, you know why I love him when he's sober!! Please, God my Higher Power, help him to choose to live without it.
Here's the Twelve Steps of AA and Al-Anon
Study of these Steps is essential to progress in the Al-Anon program. The principles they embody are universal, aplicable to everyone, whatever his personal creed. In Al-Anon, we strive for an ever deeper understanding of these Steps, and pray for the wisdom to apply them to our lives.
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditaion to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awkening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I guess if I have to analyze it -- I'm on step 4. Stay tuned for a "fearless moral inventory."
