12/20/03

Last night wasn’t a good one, and today isn’t starting out so hot either.  Justin living with me is taking its toll.  I’ve asked him to leave. (again)  To an extent it’s true, that old saying “out of sight, out of mind.”  I can’t stop him from going out and making poor choices.  What I can do is remove myself from the equation.  Then when he comes to visit, I won’t have this anger towards him for knowing that once again he has sold himself short.  I asked him the other day why it’s so hard for him to make the right choices.  Come to think about it, that was probably a condescending question.  He’s a very intgelligent person.  No he’s not.  Yes…. of course he is.   He never answered.  I didn’t expect an answer.

Last night . . . . he decided to go out with a friend, which means out drinking.  I told him not to come home if he did that, and I also told him he had to take his dogs with him because I wasn’t going to listen to them bark all night from downstairs if he left them.  What did he do?  He put them in his car to sit there all night while he went out.  I found that out because I opened the garage door to see if he’d taken his car, only to find the dogs staring at me from inside of it.  It broke my heart to see them out there all alone, and I thought long and hard about whether or not to take them out of it and bring them inside.  But in the end, I had to leave them there, because it wasn’t my choice to put them there in the first place.  This morning I got up early and opened the garage door to see if they were still there.  They were – and so was Justin.  He’d come home and slept in the car with his dogs.  (I locked the doors to make sure he wouldn’t be able to come in during the night)  The thought of this tears me apart.  His need to go out, to drink, to . . . . whatever, is so much stronger than anything he feels for me, or his dogs.  (whom I’m positive he cares for even more)

This morning he came in, (I’m guessing hung over) and again we had a few words, and he went downstairs, I’m sure to get more sleep.  Meanwhile, here I sit, mad and sad and a myriad of other emotions, some of which I’m not even conscious of.  Probably a lot of which I’m not conscious of.  I know one thing.  I cannot go through life with another lying, selfish, self-destructing alcoholic.  Not even my own son.  I started reading a book called, “How to live with an alcoholic”  I didn’t get very far in it.  My emotions seem to get in the way, and I can’t get past the fact that I’ve been here before and I hated every minute of it!  God help me, but the fact that his dad played the starring role in “I’ve been here before” makes it even worse.  Divorcing his dad was my choice, my way of putting sanity back in my life, and the alcoholic lifestyle out of MY life, forever.  I thought. 

I did some online research, and I may be able to get into some sort of support chat.  In my area, there seems to be only one Alanon meeting per week, not a lot to offer for a shift worker such as myself.  I have a lot of questions, and I think I may need a lot of support in the weeks to come.

Yes, I need help.  I need help to control my emotions, to be sensible, rational, to calm down and as they say, take it a day at a time.  The one thing I got so far out of  Al-Anon, is that almost the exact 12-steps used in AA, can be applied.  You know, I’m thinking that my life could be so much worse, I  know  that, intellectually.  But right now, it feels like whatever I do, it will be wrong.  I don’t think I can do what is right for me, and right for my son . . . . and feel good about both.  ***and the choir sings, happy f’n holidays***