Sunday, October 16, 2011

Don't Look At Me!

To the partner of an addict, the easiest thing in the entire world, the thing that comes most naturally to us, is getting angry with the behavior of the addict. Especially when they are laying in the yard passed out, or miss an important engagement because they are drunk. Or worse yet, go to an important engagement and act like a fool. It's so easy to point the finger at them! Everyone is on our side! They all agree that the addict is the bad guy. The addict is the problem. We are WELL within our rights to bitch, complain, and even walk away from the drunkard.

But you know what's not so easy? Making the decision to take a stand when things are a little more gray. When the roller coaster is up and running. Bad days mixed in with a lot of good days. Stretches of using mixed in with some really good periods of sobriety. A far cry from the way things used to be. Do we really have a right to be angry? After all, they haven't done anything that bad...right?

So when things are gray like this and we decide we've had enough, the finger pivots around and now points to us. We are the ones who are rocking the boat. We are the ones who can't leave "okay" alone. Us codependents.....we don't like that feeling so much.

1 comment:

Mystical said...

Hey girl...so you've mentioned the roller coaster in a couple of posts now and it brings to mind a scene in one of my favorite movies, circa late 80's. It's called Parenthood and you can view the scene i'm talking about here:
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=VW2ebN3PWT0

Hang in there Mary...or should I say hang on! ;-p
M