Scared but ready #7

[25yearsmlc]

Breakaway,

yeah I also cringe...I grew up in an alcoholic home with a highly functioning rageaholic father. It was hard to admit he was an alcoholic though it was obvious, b/c he didn't drink at work and was a public official, with a great job, (stressful one though).

For years our happiness at home (there were nine kids in our family) was determined almost exclusively by the moods of my father. We'd be playing wildly and when he came home we'd immediate hide and shut up waiting to see what his mood was like. THAT determined how the evening went.

Then we got older and would fight back and it was tumultuous to say the least.
Yes, years later he went into recovery and I actually got close to him (this was AFTER my mom left him btw....and was the ONLY reason he went to AA as far as I'm concerned) and that was a big important thing to me. Then he died from liver cancer, and that is related to drinking.

Don't let your life, and the lives of your children, be run by him. Who cares if he has a good day now and then? Sure, it makes THAT day better but it also makes life even more unpredictable and that does some werid things to your psyche. I know my little sister felt so unsure of her decision making skills in life b/c she could not trust her perceptions, so if dad got drunk and violent one night but "forgot" it the next morning...it did not get discussed. So you had to kind of wonder as a kid, if that had actually happened and whether it was so bad after all, cuz no one was discussing it...make sense? Always walking around the elephant in the living room. FWIW, my dad was brilliant and well educated and made a good impression when sober, and always had a job with prestige, etc. Mom didn't want to call him an alcoholic b/c she thought that gave him "an excuse" for his moral failings to call it a disease. Great. Whatever. Just stalled us and slowed us down in our own growth.

If your life were a novel, who would be writing it? How is it going in this chapter and what would you like to happen in the next chapter?

From my view, you should be the author of your life. I hope you choose to be. Make it go the way you want it to go. Show your kids that they are to be the authors of their lives.


((( j )))