Angry: An Anti-Addiction Vent
There has been way too much stress in my life of late. As my therapist predicted, I am going through an emotional Rolodex of feelings right now. She told me to be sure to incorporate some “me” time into my day. And this is it.
I am here in San Francisco on yet another business trip. It seems that all I have been doing is either traveling for work or traveling to LA for my Mom. I haven’t had any time to just be in my own house and regroup, and I won’t for a while. From here I go to Washington, DC, then home for a night, then Chicago, then Austin, Texas. Maybe next weekend I can regroup, but I might have to fly back to LA. My head is just spinning.
I am having dinner with my sister tonight. We are both so exhausted with the stuff we have been going through with Mom’s illness. Jade finally left LA yesterday to return here to the Bay area, now that mom is somewhat stable. Thank you all again for your prayers and positive thoughts.
The plan is for her to have a tracheostomy performed on Saturday because her lung status remains bad enough that she cannot be weaned from the ventilator. So now she will be ventilator dependent. I can’t help but wonder whether she still thinks her stupid cigarettes were worth it. And the saddest thing is that despite all of this, she still will not acknowledge that her smoking led her to where she is right now. Of all the emotions in my emotional Rolodex, the biggest one right now is anger. I love my Mom and am blessed that she is still here on Earth with us, but I am also angry as hell with her.
Others have shared with me their struggles to stop smoking. I do recognize how difficult stopping addictive behavior is for an addict of any sort. I applaud those who have stopped using.
I don’t mean to seem unsympathetic to the difficulties of addiction, but in all honesty with all I have been through with my husband’s addictions and my mother’s cigarette addiction, I don’t have a lot of sympathy right now. Addiction just seems like trading one problem for another, in my book.
Anyone with addictions reading this message, please don’t take my words personally. I am just incredibly frustrated and need to vent. I hope I can be indulged in my blog.
People make choices to start these addictive substances, knowing full well how dangerous they are, but believing, in true addict fashion, that somehow they will be different. They will be the exception. It (cancer/emphysema/COPD/heart disease, etc) won’t happen to them. They will be the lucky one. It is maddening and it is stupid.
If one of my teens said that they wanted to jump off the roof of their house because it would be cool/give them a rush/excite them, my response would be to think about what injury they will probably suffer. Yet if they replied that so-and-so did it a million times and nothing happened, I would still think them foolish and reckless for ignoring the likely events that would happen with jumping from the roof. Yet somehow people who choose to start smoking have major denial about the negative possibilities. My aunt smoked 2 packs a day and lived to be 90. Yeah great. So you are willing to gamble that you will end up like your aunt and not like my mother and the myriad others with smoking related illnesses? Then don’t cry when your gamble doesn’t pan out. I’m not trying to hear it. As Mom always said to me, “You make your bed. You lie in it.”
I am reading A Million Little Pieces, James Frey’s book about his 6 weeks in rehab. Though I don’t like his take on the 12 steps (at least to the point I am in the book), he admits that he made his choice to be addicted in order to blot out the strong feelings that have overcome him throughout his life. But he chose this life. He doesn’t see himself as an unfortunate victim of an addictive substance. And he realizes that he must choose recovery no matter how difficult it is. And it is extremely difficult when you learn bad coping behaviors from your youth. You must relearn everything that you thought you had settled.
Yet my mother never chose recovery. She just wanted us all to get off her back and let her die by cigarettes if that was her choice. She said it so often: It is my choice! And now when death is looming, she suddenly has a change of heart and wants to live. I’m not sad that she wants to live. But I was surprised after all her talk about being OK with an early death as long as she had her cigarettes. I wonder what happened to all the garbage she used to spew about how “we all have to die from something and if this (cigarette smoking) makes me happy, I’m OK dying from it.” It was, as I have now discovered, addict bravado, something I have seen so often in my husband. He talks a good game but can’t walk the walk. And yes it makes me angry. Right now I am very angry. The anger doesn’t change anything, but I still must validate this feeling in me.
I live my life as a person who says what she means and means what she says. I loathe self-deception, denial, and self-pity. And as someone with horrible, treatment-resistant depression since my adolescence, I was a complete set-up for addiction. Yet I chose to avoid going down that road. I chose to own my pain (and it has been considerable during my life) whereas my husband chooses to avoid/escape his pain. Poor coping behaviors. And yes I am angry with his and my mother’s choices as they were selfish and caught me (and our whole family, in my mother’s case) up in their collateral damage.
I need to vent this anger right now. I’ve spent the past 2 years of my marriage dealing with my husband’s addiction and just when I decide that I am not going to deal with it anymore, I now have to cope with my mother’s illness, the root cause of it being her addiction. I just want to scream! I am coming undone with all this.
I need peace. I need happiness. I need freedom from the consequences of addiction in those I love. But my needs are not going to be met any time soon, I fear.
As we say in group, thanks for listening.
Facebook
Flickr
GoodReads
Twitter