Hi Madge
I hope you got out of the bedroom – it’s not the best place to get the dinner.
We all hide in the metaphoric bedroom once in a while Madge and it is only when we accept that the bedroom removes our ability to move on and change things that we kick the supports away and set the wheels in motion.
Forget what all the rest of the world thinks. You want for the real ‘you’ to be recognised, for people to know that you are trapped but you are trying to break free. I know you Madge – I know the frightened woman who thinks she is falling apart and nobody cares, I know her fear and her bewilderment. I know she worries about her mental strength and her physical ability. I also know that deep in her is an untapped strength, a strength that will bring her out of the black hole she feels is engulfing her and she will know that her children care and need her to make their world secure. It’s a big ask but she can do it. I see a woman whose thoughts go round and round, faster and faster until she feels she is going down a plug-hole.
I know because I was the woman I describe and I did escape.
A massive coping tool I used was to write to myself, addressing my thoughts to my soul, typing all the painful incidents, committing each terrible memory to paper, in a file. I found that by putting those thoughts in a kind of external hard-drive I stopped that bad memory swirling round and round in my brain – the file held it – I didn’t need to. Whenever my thoughts were overwhelming me I would go and bash it out on my keyboard until I felt it had left me – usually once a day. I wrote angrily, aggressively, tearfully, whatever – I didn’t care about grammar, punctuation being politically correct or even making sense, I used capital letters, underlining, different colours and expletives I have never used in reality – I wrote smashing the words out to cleanse my brain before I thought it would explode. As each page was committed I said out loud that I was releasing myself from that particular pain and I remember being exhausted but relieved. I hid it all – it was never meant for anybody to see – it was private, it was mine – it was ‘my’ purge. The file was quite thick in the end. When I started my recovery I kept it. It was as though my innermost thoughts were locked away and no longer in my head. I couldn’t destroy it as I felt the memories would have returned to my head. A lot later when my CG turned his life around I gradually destroyed the pages without reading them BUT it was not his recovery that put those thoughts where they belonged – it was mine.
I don’t see the upstanding community member, I see the unhappy and addicted man who is afraid of what he has become. I hear his lies and I know he lies to cover for his feelings of failure. I know he is sick with lack of self-esteem and no confidence and all his life is an act. How similar the F&F feelings are to the CG but how far apart they are too, he has to seek his way out and you cannot do it for him – recoveries are on different paths.
CGs gamble to escape but his escape takes him round and round but it doesn’t bring him peace. I believe that the ‘running away escape’ you crave will only bring you back full circle because the only way forward and out of the cycle is to face the devil and tell it that you are going to take care of yourself. These are not idle words Madge, your husband is at present incapable of looking after you or his children responsibly but you are. I don’t include your husband in that because at present I don’t think you have the energy to keep looking after him – you need it all for you and your best intentions will not change him anyway. His addiction is totally selfish and only when he is selfish enough to change it for himself will he start on his road to reality. You have to be selfish too to find your way out. ‘Your’ life is important, ‘your’ future is important, ‘you’ matter, I care and I know who you are.
I cannot tell you what to do. I can tell you what I did and how I found my way out. F&F are not usually selfish – we are normally trusting, loving, giving but to find your way out of the abyss, into which you have unwittingly fallen, you have to put yourself first. It does work – if it didn’t I wouldn’t be writing to you now. If my CG hadn’t determined on his own future, realising that he help his own future in his own hands then he would not be living the happy, contented life that he is – I could not do it for him.
Stop living for other people – live for you and your children will have a mother who is strong. Live for you, learn to like and love yourself. You don’t like your life because you don’t feel in control. Start today, start now – retake control of the one person you can control – she is capable of great things and she is wonderful and unique and the world has yet to meet her.
Keep posting Madge. I am off on holiday in a few days but I will look for you on my return and I hope to see the seeds of your recovery being fed and watered.
Velvet
