Hi Truth-be-told,
A huge, huge cyber hug to you. Welcome to GT, the place where many have gotten their lives back when all seemed lost. As I read your words I was taken back to when I first started my recovery three yers ago, that I became teary eyed, because it hit me like a gust of wind, how important it was to hang on to my recovery (I’ll explain a little later).
Where you are now, is an awful place to be, feeling incredibly scared, helpless, hurt and let down by your mom. Especially when you have been there for her doing as she asked, bailing her out when ***** were tough; by using your college fund and she repays you by siding with her addiction and behaving like a monster. I was just as angry as you. I said, that I hated my father for what he was putting me through and the life he was living, not caring about anything but his next bet. I was literally a ball of anxiety, fearing for my emotional and finanical health and it didn’t help that I worried that he would get in an accident or that he would get in a fight. Irrational thoughts kept filling my mind worrying about him and when I would share this with him, he didn’t care. He said I was getting worked up over nothing.
Reading posts here and going to group therapy opened a new world to me and I started to see hope in my situation. Everyone here is because of this awful addiction, and after reading their suggestions and insights helped me plot my recovery. Ok, recovery, was not a word I thought I needed. I thought it was my father who needed gambling recovery, but it was the other way around. If we don’t work on our recovery nothing will change. How we react to a cg is what is important and is truly what sets us free from their addiction. We become the ones that call the shots, not the addiction. The roles become reversed.
One thing that has helped me more than anything is the strategy of seperating the addiction from the cg. This was suggested by Velvet, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t my father that I hated but the addiction within him. So I set my boundaries with him, just like you should (you don’t even have to tell your mother what the boundaries are). They are yours to stick with. The main one is not to give enablement to the addiction. This basically means you don’t give money to bail them out of their responsibilites and if they don’t have it, they have to figure out how they will or they will go without. Also, you really don’t hate your mother. It is best that you let that anger out because hate is not good to have in our hearts. It will only harm you.
There is no doubt that your mother’s addiction has her pinned down, feeding her line after line, saying her sweet nothings. There is nothing you can do about it and I wouldn’t even pay it any mind. I am not saying that she is not responsible for her actions because she is. She knows what she is doing is wrong but again she is siding with the addiction.
It sounds like you may be around 18, as this is the typical age of an incoming freshman. If you are younger, your mother is responsible for you and your safety and being homeless is not an option. She has to take care of you. If not, I would talk to someone that could help you like a school counselor or teacher. I know this is tough but you are still a child. If you are over 18, do you have any friends you can stay with until you get better. I know there are agencies for disability that you would qualify for.
The key to changing your situation is focusing on you and your recovery. Your mother has got to want her recovery. There may be a time that she may, or she may never want to stop gambling. My father never stopped, yet I am living a very happy and fullfilling life, one very different that I was for decades but I stayed true to my recovery.
During my recovery I wrote a novel, here it is. http://www.amazon.com/Please-Girl-ebook/dp/B009FOGR3Q
Hope you are feeling better knowing there is much support to be gained by being here.
XXXTwilight
"Forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you."– 8/13/2013 8:09:15 AM: post edited by harry.
