A Time to Change

Getting my life back.  I don't know if she would appreciate me using her name, so, I'll just say that yesterday, someone with whom I've developed a respect and admiration for her enthusiasm and wisdom commented that, "only I can give myself my life back."  That is so true.  I sat and looked at the comment, thinking, knowing it's true but all I could see were the words and understand what they meant.  I couldn't see past them, to what getting my life back would be, and then I realized that, my whole adult life has been being a mother.  I was married before I graduated college and two months after that, pregnant, and after that, motherhood took off.  Her direction to me, which is exactly right, stumped me because, I"m not sure what my life is.  Yes, I'm a mother, teacher, someones daughter, sister, friend, etc. I have hobbies and dreams all of which were mingled with motherhood which meant that they never got fully developed because my first priority was the children and family. 

In articles I've read on an addict's brain that addresses the issue about stunted emotional  development, the researchers have written that  if the addict is 50, but they began their addiction at 20, then emotionally, they are still twenty because the substance abuse kind of freezes their emotions.  Once the addiction is managed, and with time, the emotions get caught up with their age, but not until they start living their lives without the drug or alcohol. 

Well, I think I'm kind of like that.  I think that's what keeps me emotionally dizzy and unclear, because I've been following the path of motherhood, doing it all, getting ready to 'let go' when, this all began and the alien nature of the whole ordeal, trying to get up to speed with what all addiction entails, I'm still stuck, emotionally, as a mother of a high schooler (when the eating disorder began), trying to get my brain around all of that, and just when that was managed and understood, the alcohol began, which, I didn't realize until this morning, threw me back, again, to those old emotions.  I have been living a life, but not living a life.

It made me realize that, yes, I have a life, but haven't really been submerged in it because of the nature of raising kids and then trying to understand the addiction, has never given me the opportunity I had before I was married, to really concentrate on me (and I'm not talking about being selfish, I'm talking about 'knowing thyself').  In the back of my mind has always been, 'them.'  If I'm reading, gardening, walking, out with friends, I've never been fully in the moment because when they were younger, is was one set of thoughts, and as they grew, a different set of concerns and routines.  It's what comes with being a parent.  If, parenting goes as planned, and normal ups and downs occur, there is a time when you begin to separate that thinking to a more loosely connected version.  One where you start revisiting who you are while appreciating who your children have become; a process that  would be allowed to happen if life went normally along.  Dealing with addiction, I'm realizing, compartmentalizes the parent's emotions and thinking, much like the addict's.  It's that separation of thinking that never happened with me.  Too enmeshed. Too confused.  Too unbelieving of all that has happened (until recently) that I haven't followed the natural path, I've been on the surreal path.  The Alice in Wonderland path. 

Time to crawl out of the rabbit hole and take a look around at the real world.