My pot is brewing

Life has been busy lately.  How can it not be while raising four kids?  I love my life as a wife and mother, so much that I find it hard to take time to work on myself.  It is very easy to put off what's brewing inside to read a book out loud to waiting little ears or to help my daughter make cookies.  However, I also know that I need to make time to deal with my inner brewings.  I want to be able to articulate in an appropriate way to my children what life is like with an addict in due time.  I need to be able to answer questions in an honest, yet compassionate way.  So here goes...a little more of what's been brewing inside lately.

My sister is leaving rehab this week.  She has chosen not to stay and complete the program.  I have so many emotions stirring inside.  I am angry that she is denying the help that she herself asked for.  She asked for someone to come up to help her sober up and take her back to rehab.  She took time and resources from our parents, who were willingly to help her back to sobriety.  However once she gets to rehab she decides, "This is stupid, I already know all this stuff."  She's been through it all. I am angry.  She is essentially flipping off the people who had compassion on her, took her at her word that she was sincere in her cry for help.

I am sad.  I am sad that the disease is taking her away.  I feel like I have been morning the loss of my sister, but with a small ray of hope that she will return one day.  It's confusing to mourn this way.  When I think of mourning, I think of saying goodbye to one in our earthly life, with the hope of meeting again in heaven.  However, with an addict I mourn the person lost to the addiction with a continued hope of a reemergence.  Mourning a living person creates guilt.  I feel guilty for mourning her when she is still here, living and breathing.  It is a constant battle in my heart: to mourn and to hope.

I feel rejected.  For the first time ever, my sister has stopped talking to me.  She has made no efforts to contact me.  This is a new one.  She has consistently kept me in her life.  I am constantly wondering if I have done something to become a trigger to her binges or if in some way I am an enabler.  I try to listen to her and support her concerns.  I try to say very little and to encourage as much as possible.  Rejection hurts, my heart aches.  Although I am struggling with feeling rejected, I am also experiencing relief.  I am relieved that I have not had to directly deal with her for a few weeks.  I am relieved that I have not had to verbally outline my new boundaries with her.  I want to carefully lay these boundaries.  I do not want her to feel rejected, but I do want to stand for myself in this mess too.  I want her to feel my love, but to recognize my limits.  This may be wishful thinking on my part. 

I came across this writing on a support group last week.  It is so fitting for my sister.  It is my hope to share it with my family. 


"Let Me Fall All By Myself"




If you love me let me fall all by myself.
Don't try to spread a net out to catch me.
Don't throw a pillow under my ass to cushion the pain so I don't have to feel it. Don’t stand in the place I am going to land so that you can break the fall (allowing yourself to get hurt instead of me) ... 


Let me fall as far down as my addiction is going to take me, let me walk the valley alone all by myself, let me reach the bottom of the pit ...
trust that there is a bottom there somewhere even if you can't see it.
The sooner you stop saving me from myself, stop rescuing me, trying to fix my broken-ness, trying to understand me to a fault, enabling me ... 


The sooner you allow me to feel the loss and consequences, the burden of my addiction on my shoulders and not yours ... the sooner I will arrive ... and on time ... just right where I need to be ... me, alone, all by myself in the rubble of the lifestyle I lead ...
resist the urge to pull me out because that will only put me back at square one ...
If I am allowed to stay at the bottom and live there for awhile ... I am free to get sick of it on my own, free to begin to want out, free to look for a way out, and free to plan how I will climb back up to the top. 


In the beginning as I start to climb out .. I just might slide back down, but don't worry I might have to hit bottom a couple more times before I make it out safe and sound ... 


Don't you see ??
Don't you know ??



You can't do this for me ... I have to do it for myself, but if you are always breaking the fall how am I ever suppose to feel the pain that is part of the driving force to want to get well. It is my burden to carry, not yours ... 


I know you love me and that you mean well and a lot of what you do is because you don't know what to do and you act from your heart not from knowledge of what is best for me ... but if you truly love me let me go my own way, make my own choices be they bad or good ... don't clip my wings before I can learn to fly ... 


Nudge me out of your safety net ... trust the process and pray for me ... that one day I will not only fly, but maybe even soar."


Well said.  I hope that my family can let her go, hope for her to soar.  We have done everything possible, except to let her fall.  It is time to let her fall all by herself.