Shagged Either Way
I am going to make a meeting tomorrow. I am going to help pay the rent. I will do my fair share around here. That’s not mine! I love you, but just not enough to carry through with anything that I have just said. When it comes to gullible, codependents have got this category wrapped up hands down. Now before you get all defensive, remember that I have the unfortunate pleasure (?) of being cast in this great movie called Life in both the role of an alcoholic and codependent. It’s kind of like being Austin Powers and Dr. Evil, but getting shagged by both sides.
It seems strange that people like me and others who have been tempered by the repeated lies and shenanigans of our beloved yet diseased counterparts would be so easily fooled, especially with my PhD in evil! I guess if you want something bad enough, if you long for more than anything else that this time will be different, in the end you will allow yourself that inkling of hope that things will work out. Hope is not a bad thing, but being unrealistic doesn’t help anything either. Sometimes it’s not so much that we really believe the lies, it’s more that we just don’t know what else to do or have the courage even to do it.
Even armed with this knowledge and experience, there are never easy answers when dealing with addictions. Paradoxically, a loving and caring environment just worsens the situation. What am I trying to get at? I guess that when it comes do alcoholics and addicts you need to accept the fact that as a loved one you will be repeatedly “shagged”. Without a strong program they are capable of little else, but hang tough, because unfortunately you will be the only one capable of hope.
6 comments:
Well said. Thank you. Perhaps you can set that blog to repeat once a week?
I would agree as an addict with all that you say, all but the last line; That the only one left with hope would be the partner of such.
As an addict in early recovery I am capable of great hope, after all it is the promises of the program that keep me coming back to meetings. It's the promise of hope and the experience of sobriety in the program that edges me ever closer back to working it as I once did.
But even as an addict not in recovery, still it was hope that kept me strong when I knew nothing more than fear. It was the hope that once again I could and would succeed.
And even as an active addict, it was hope, hope that I wasn't sentenced to this fate, that I could indeed have all that I wanted, that I could recover if I chose. It was this active addicts' hope which kept me alive, which gave me the strength to endure prison and beyond.
I don't prescribe to the theory of a hopeless addict, nor is it a requirement of recovery. For without hope, I don't think that the program of recovery would ever work.
Yet, this is as an addict I speak, I can not say when the loved one's of an addict should relinquish hope, I only thank God that none of mine ever did.
When I was drinking I never had hope. I may have hoped that I could continue drinking without problems, but I never had hope for a life without alcohol.
My sobriety came not because of hope, but instead total surrender. It was not till much later in my recovery that I began to hope that things would be different.
Once a week would be good...I'm thinking of something, though...this will be a post dedicated to Mantra...
The perhaps it was always the hope of the program, they once the seed is planted that it the roots begin to grow. For me I was lucky, the seed was planted at a young age, although it took me years to blossom, kills and begin to water it again. For I have never lost hope. Nor have those who loved me.
Well said.
Peace,
Scout
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