Love the handle! I know ALL ABOUT the decorating fever. Is HGTV your favorite channel? LOL! One of the 1st signs I think....
I just came across this last night while I was looking for further information to fill my empty hole inside --you know those wee hours when all is quiet and your mind is allowed to wander? This is why I love on-line groups for things, b/c THAT is when I need the support.
I guess we start by telling our story? I hope you don't mind--I need to spit it out and afterall you did say you wanted more posting
I read through the descriptions at the beginning and it all sounds so much like me. I grew up in a household that was dysufnctional and insane. 1st I was a product of an affair my mother had while trying to leave her alcoholic. Naturarally, guess what they did to have fun (my bio father & mother) DRINK! Well, he walked out on her before I was born, leaving her with yet another mouth to feed--I was #7. She went back to my "dad" the big drinker. Then they split (she ran across country to get away from him), and again, at age 6 I was, to my feelings, abandoned (and it was here I also found out he wasn't my REAL dad anyway, there was this other guy, who didn't even leave a photo of himself behind....)
My mother then went into free divorcee in the 60's mode and started experimenting with drugs. Oh and they thought it was even more mind expanding to give these drugs to children. Afterall, if they expand ADULTS minds so much, how much better to start as a child? Right?? So yes, I was given drugs against my will now. I can't even imagine doing that to a child! But this was how I grew up.
Both of my sisters and one brother became heroin addicts, one tried several times to OD. Everyone else did their share of drugs too--we have pics of my sisters kids drinking cans of beer when they were just old enough to hold the can. It was insane from all directions. Sometimes there was no food and I had to panhandle and/or eat out of trash cans or go into restaurants and finish people's plates as they got up to go, or just plain steal food. Earting was a daily challenge at times.
Along with all this FUN, came the sordid people that seemed to hang around at all times. I ALWAYS felt unsafe...and indeed WAS unsafe a lot. Both of my sisters were repeatedly raped-one noteabbly as she slept in bed with me (we never had our own bed or a room--godforbid). The man held the knife to my 8 y/o throat as he did it. I have no memory of it. I have no memory of a lot of my childhood, actually.
Needless to say all this left me feeling very unsafe with men. Well, unsafe, period. It was about impossible for me to date as a teen. I was scared to death of men. Yet I wanted to feel safe and protected by them. Ergo, my screwed up patterns which persist to this day. See I have identified some of these problems...having my own child and realizing how NEVER would I allow these things I grew up thinking were normal to happen to my child has helped me to see it wasn't my fault...all of the things that happened really WERE crazy and I really DID have a right to feel angry scraed and abandoned. It's just DOING anything about them (knowing what to do) that present the problem to me now!
Every man I have been with --except for the one I'm with now-- has been a drunk. Two of them are dead from alcohol, including my son's father, and this all happened by the time I was barely 40. I am NOT batting 1000, let's put it that way.
I have the pattern of abandonment. Each one of them has both physically and emotionally abandoning. This one is not an active drunk, but he dallies with drugs and has that all important allure of leaving me feeling alone, unsure and unsafe in the relationship, even when he's right nrext to me. As usual.
In view of the fact this one is not a drunk, yet I am still going crazy, it fianally ocurred to me to join Al-Anon. I have begun going to meetings. But I know that the root of my problem lies with my origins, which is why I am highly interested in ACOA. I need to beat these demons if I am ever to find any happiness and the actual, real love that I have craved so desperately since I was born.
Thank you for letting me get this all down.
Elizabeth