Since I last wrote a few things have happened. Spring seems to be on its way, our dog Vet Bill seems to have stabilized, our cat Olive is back to being depressed, the Canucks did not make it into the playoffs, I’ve discovered Kettle black pepper and salt chips and both my sister and my mother-in-law have been in detox and rehab. (Though M.I.L is currently out) La plus ca change….

This is my current goal – I know I can’t solve anyone’s problems. I can’t make my sister better, I can’t get my M.I.L better. I can’t do anything for these people. They have to figure it out. But when you’re in the thick of watching these people struggle with their addictions, you can’t help but have it affect you. I don’t want it to affect me. I don’t want to feel anger or even worse, deep sadness. It is the worst kind of rollercoaster to be on.  But I realize something. And that is that as long as these guys are struggling we’re going to struggle too. My sister breaks my heart. I just want her to have a life that’s healthy and happy because that’s what she deserves and nothing less. And while my M.I.L is a much more complicated situation, in the end, this is what I want for her as well. 

Sometimes when you’re in the middle of it though you get super angry and I guess that’s normal. But I never want to lose my sense of empathy for what these guys are going through. They suffer. But neither do want to be pulled into the depth of their crazy lives. How do I manage this? 

This time I’m managing it by trying to stay in contact with my sister while she’s in rehab. I let her know that even though this is her 3rd time I think she can do it. I know she can do it. I want to hope with her. I let her know that I think she is a terrific person in so many ways. I let her know that I don’t want her to die. That I really don’t want her to go away. I try and let her know that I love her through her struggles but I can’t do it for her. 

Nowadays I phone her son and talk to him about nonsense….about all the things 15 year old boys dare talk to their auntie about. I try to be constant for him. I want him to know that like his mother, I love him too.

 

It’s much harder with M.I.L. Her personality is more wiley. She knows how to manipulate or this is what I think I see. She is not a bad person but she has the ability to draw you into her vortex of life that isn’t always the best experience. I want to be compassionate and let her know that I think she can make it to recovery, that she can do it. But I am learning to navigate around her crazy issues. My new line is “I’m sure you can solve this.” and I hope that she can. Because I think she can. 

Anyways, that’s my update for now. The sun is out at this moment so I’m going to sit outside and admire the life that goes on around me.

Sometimes I laugh, in a dark, cynical kind of a way, because my family has this way of celebrating my sister’s return from rehab with a big party. A big party where everyone drinks their faces off and my sister, with her new found strength, stands by and watches as everyone sucks back endless cocktails and gets hammered. 

I have this thing I like to call the ‘circular’ conversation. These are typically conversations I have with my mother who has this way of holding to her own point of view in spite of alarming evidence to the contrary. Occasionally if you have enough energy you can beat her into some kind of compromise position but this is only if you’re up for an epic battle and if you can keep in mind that most likely within minutes she will go right back to her original argument which is usually wrong, unreasonable and unjust. She is exhausting.

One of our circular conversations involves my sister and her ability to be able to handle people drinking around her. My mother insists that AA insists that alcoholics cannot ask others to not drink around them and that other people shouldn’t feel like they can’t drink in front of the alcoholic. Sometimes I try to explain to my mother that there is a time and place for everything…and that people have greater strength at some points in their life than others and that maybe it’s not a bad thing to be sensitive to this…that maybe it’s about getting a little support along the way even if you are not the person with an addiction problem.

Case in point. My mother-in-law is an addict. Alcohol is her ’secondary’ drug of choice, opiates being her first. We have made a choice not to drink in front of my mother-in-law. This doesn’t stop her from using without us there but I think out of respect for her and her situation you just don’t do participate in that activity.

Case in point number 2. A few years ago when my sister was really struggling and my whole family was in an uproar about it, my mother, husband and I all agreed that when we went over to visit we would not drink in front of her even if others chose to do so. We all agreed. We made a pact. So, we arrive, and of course my sister wants to know who wants drinks…she asks me I say no, she asks my husband, he says no, she asks my sister-in-law she says yes, she asks my mother and my mother says yes…My mother not only goes back on her word which she virtually had only minutes before had said she wouldn’t do ..she answers by saying, “Well, I’m not the alcoholic so yes, I will have a glass of wine” which we all know will be 3 or 4 glasses of wine before we have to cut her off or drive her home.

Even though theoretically alcoholics might eventually have the strength to deal with social situations in which alcohol is present,  I think they should have the right to say they can’t deal with it if they can’t and if they never can than I think that has to be respected. Not everyone is the same.

I’m wondering if this blog should have been named family sucks, addiction sucks, people who can’t get their shit together suck. Really, now that one problem is seemingly under control the ‘other’ problem has come to life. The other ‘problem’ is, of course, my husband’s family. 

His sister recently left her husband who was no great shakes to begin with for another man. Great. And I mean that. Great because it can only get better, I think to myself. Except that she gets pregnant immediately, she discovers that he is violent and abusive when he drinks, and she still can’t manage to get a job even though we live in a place where jobs of any kind are for the asking. 

The reason she doesn’t get a job is because her mother enables her life style by giving her money whenever she asks for it. This is often as you can imagine. The mother can’t stand giving her money but doesn’t know how to say ‘no’. I get that because I have a brother just like the sister-in-law and eventually I just had to stop talking to him because it was getting too crazy.

Now, understandably, the mother-in-law is freaking out because the daughter is pregnant and has outwardly said that she will live with mom and mom will raise the baby. Now M.I.L has disappeared saying she has a friend over but what we suspect is that the chronic asking by the daughter has pushed her over the edge and she is most likely using again.

Really. Who needs soap operas? Writers could come directly to me for material. 

I’m wondering what you do in a situation like this? I have no problem saying ‘no’ to my brother now, though truthfully it did take me awhile but how do you say no to your pregnant daughter and worse, now that a child is potentially involved, how do you say no? It feels like a spider’s web. Anyways, this is my update for now.

My sister is going into rehab on Wednesday…it was delayed due to flue outbreak. The world is an insane place and things like animals, jobs and lovely husband are the markers for sanity. The insanity squeezes itself in-between all the other spaces.

I would love to hear from other people who have ‘leaners’ in their life and how they deal with it. Tools please.

 

 

Tomorrow my sister is going to Homewood. She’ll be there for 6 weeks. She was there two years ago and for most of those two years she did quite well. Still every time she relapses the wait begins again. It reminds me of when our dog was sick last year. He had 4 surgeries. In between each surgery we had up to a week to see if the stitching in his intestine would hold. Each time he went in his chances of recovering decreased until by the last surgery he only had a 5% chance of surviving. The days and hours after each surgery were brutal. Normal life, like eating, drinking, getting a little sleep, going for walks, continued but you were always in this suspended state of wondering what would happen next. And sure enough he would relapse.

 

That’s what it’s like with my sister. You just wait until it happens again. Normality I guess is one of those things that helps you survive but I hate the suspense of waiting for that terrible thing to happen. I feel like I have that most of my life. Probably because I grew up in drama central. (I haven’t even touched on the rest of my family. Oi.)

 

Sometimes I wonder if the reason I get so upset about my sister is not only out of basic human empathy but also because there is a part of me that feels just a little bit guilty. Afterall, I didn’t have to go through what she went through. I haven’t had my whole life shaped and molded  by terrible things that happened to me. I haven’t spent my whole life trying not to remember, trying to think about how I’m a sister, a daughter, a mother a wife with a secret. Maybe I don’t even know what the secret is. Maybe those buttons just keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed until I can’t figure out why I’m completely out of control. On some levels I understand this because of the eating disorder I struggled with for many years of my life but I know that this is pain on a whole other level. Yes, there are levels of despair. I guess the truth is that when she is sick, which she is often now, selfishly it forces me to have to think about all the things that happened to her and I hate it. And then I think well if I hate it so much than I can’t imagine the confusion and pain it must cause her.Who are these people that prey on children anyways? I can tell you who they are because my father is one of them. Sometimes when I’m in a particularly dark mood I walk into a nice happy family oriented place full of fathers and mothers and children and I think of the statistics and I look at as many people as I can and wonder…because the guise of middle class family life,  reveals nothing of what lurks beneath what is revealed to the outside world. Out of everyone in my family I had a good relationship with my father and I loved him. I knew he was eccentric, I knew he was flamboyant, I knew he could be hurtful but I had no idea that he was what he really is. A monster. Again selfishly when I found out what had happened I was thankful that he was dead. My other brother’s and sister’s said they wished he was alive so they could kill him.  I was thankful he was dead because I knew the father that I knew, the person that I loved would have to go. He would have to go. The last few years I have struggled with this. I went to a therapist who helped me understand that my father was a psychopath…and by every definition he is one.  People close to me gave me room to love the parts of him that were there for me and to hate and despise the man that he was to my sister.Lately though, I feel like this is an indulgence. That when I recall any memory of him that makes me laugh or feel okay that that is something that is wrong. When I see my sister fighting for her life, passing all the craziness of our family life on to the next generation, when I see how broken she is by her life, I know I can’t give an inch. I won’t make any deals with the devil. Now I wish he was alive so I could kill him. There is no reconciliation with the devil.

Since my last post my sister continues to struggle. She is in and out of the hospital and in-between detox, the psych ward and home. But in between all of that we talk. And I guess we talk about things we’ve never talked about before. I can’t help but feel that there is a connection between her new-found openness and her complete inability to deal with her life. I suspect it’s all the things that she has carried deep inside of her all of these years, that have finally made their way to the surface. And without real professional help and understanding, these things are way too big for her to cope with. In between our book talk and our occasional giggles, she sounds fragile. And when I find out she’s started to drink, cut,  or runaway again,  the anger that I’ve carried with me all these years seems to have disappeared. I don’t feel that she’s  not trying hard enough anymore. I think she’s tried more than hard enough. It’s that she just doesn’t see a path that isn’t painful. I think if she could be extricated from all of her pain, she would choose life. She told me that and I believe her. I think it’s everything in between that gets in the way. I used to think that I could help my sister. I don’t know that I really feel that way anymore. I try to talk to her kids. Call them, make them laugh. Or just chat. I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to do. And this is the way we go for now. This is how we carry on. Day by day. Minute by minute. I always thought life could change on a dime. And I see that more clearly than ever before. But still I can’t help but wish and hope that somehow this is still going to turn out alright. 

Sometimes you just have to accept that someone you love wants to die. That they can’t do it anymore. That life is just to hard. Sometimes you just have to accept this. This is the first time I’ve felt this way. That maybe her efforts to kill herself are just a way for her to ease her pain., to get her out of her life, out of her skin, out of everything that hurts. Maybe that’s just the way it is. Maybe it’s not about being angry because she’s not trying hard enough in the way I want her to try, or doing things in the way we all think she should because of her kids or because we want her back and we want her to fight. Maybe, just maybe she can’t do it. Today I just feel sad for her and the things she’s had to endure. My anger has slowly receded like the last drops of water in an empty cup.  I don’t think it’s that she doesn’t want to live, I think it’s just that she doesn’t know how to get out from where she is. So I think about ways of springing her from this trap. Getting her out from these four walls that stand too close. I think and I think and I think. And tomorrow I want to call my brother and tell him my new plan but somehow I know that maybe this is futile. This is her struggle. I wish I wish it wasn’t. I wish I wish she didn’t have to take it all on herself that if we all had a little bit of it for ourselves it wouldn’t be so hard on her. But I know what I’m thinking is just all crazy. I just want her to be out of her pain and I don’t want her to leave us.

It’s taken a long time for me to get to the point where I don’t create chaos in my own life anymore. My life with my husband and my family is an oasis of calm. It definitely is my sanctuary. But we both have had crazy lives and we have both attracted crazy people, and friends. I’m at a point where I have set strong boundaries in most of these situations but our family situations continues to be nuts. Last week alone we had:1. mother-in-law who is a great person but is an addict (painkillers and morphine) returns from being 4 months away (we’ve never been happier by the way)2. sister-in-law who never works, can’t take care of herself, is pretty selfish and nasty gets pregnant by a guy whom she’s only known four months who it turns out (surprise surprise) is an alcoholic who throws knives at her when he’s drunk and chases her around the house3. my sister gets out of the hospital after her latest two month drinking binge – now we all pretend that everything is fine and normal and continue to ignore the fact that she is not only an alcoholic but also addicted to painkillers. She tells me she wants to visit my other sister (who also by chance happens to have a strong pain killer habit herself). Other sister calls to say she is ridding her house of drugs in order for other sister to visit.4. my one sister who actually has a ‘normal’ life is hysterical all week because the dog she has adopted most likely has to be put down or given away due to chronic breed specific health issues. The dog is a wreck. Oddly this is the one issue this week that is really killing me.5. The week ends on Friday with a phone call from my mother-in-law asking if we can be on standby to take her dog (whom we love and adore) to the vet to be put down because she’s so sick..well and old.  By the end of the weekend I’m feeling put together again but we spend quite a bit of time wondering if either my sister has fallen off the wagon or my mother-in-law is using again. And if either of these things happen what do we do.I think the thing that I find the hardest is that I can’t get mad. I can’t get mad at my sister because she refuses to get help for the sexual abuse she suffered as a child,. I can’t get mad at my mother-in-law for the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Neither of these people wants to get help. I can understand why because the issues I had to work through which weren’t nearly close to what either of these people have gone through, was tough enough. But I keep thinking that life can’t be so good for them as it is so why wouldn’t they do whatever they can to get to that other side and then I feel rage at both of them for not doing it.I talked to my sister after she got out of the hospital last week and I decided my approach would be humour. How much more can she stand listening to us tell her what to do and how much more can I stand doing that to her? So we killed ourselves laughing and then we chatted about the psych ward and what that was like. Then she said she was upset because my brother’s wife wasn’t supportive of her. I tried to explain that maybe this person was feeling protective over her husband who gets dragged through hell every time this happens…that maybe she’s allowed to feel things too.  My sister paused and said but what about you… do you love me? Do you love me no matter what? And I said yes. But I didn’t tell her the part about being angry with her because of her kids and her life. Because I worry that any real kind of truth will put her back to a place we all hate. So we all walk around on eggshells.  I would like to break the egg shells. 

Yesterday we got up early and went skiing at Whistler. At first we were both thinking that it could be a bit of a weekend killer. Go to bed early Friday night so we can set the alarm even earlier for Saturday morning and then exert ourselves to no end all day long. Yuck.  I tried to put a tentative feeler out to our friend that we had committed to going with that maybe the weather would be bad or maybe we should consider going at the end of the month. But neither of us likes to back out of commitments once we’ve made them so we dutifully went to bed early, got up at 5:30 the next morning, met our friend and off we went.  Sleepily the merry trio made their way to Whistler.  We were also meeting up with some other folks that we weren’t keen on but we figured what the hell. We’ll do some runs and then separate. Anyways, to make a long story short, we never separated, we all skied together all day long and we had the best time ever. You can’t ever have a bad time skiing. It’s impossible. In some ways life doesn’t get sweeter than skiing on a beautiful sunny day. We ended it by going to the pub for a big plate of nachos and few beers.  We talked about renting a place for the night…maybe staying again and skiing the next day. We all knew we couldn’t because we had obligations at  home….mainly two big hungry dogs but we let ourselves dream a little bit after a perfect day.Because this is just the way life works as soon as we got home our friend Mark got a call from him girlfriend in tears because she had spent the day with her mom who has alzheimers and it had been a really hard day….then we got home and there was a message from hubby’s sister…the man she had just run off with chases her with knives when he’s drunk and tried to punch her even though she’s pregnant. We knew life would catch up with us again. It always does but it makes me realize how sweet a day like we had was. I never want to miss those great moments and I hope that my natural tendency to stay in my routine doesn’t stop me from really enjoying life and grabbing it when the opportunity arises.

We have been waiting for baited breathe for my mother-in-law to come home. We decided that after last year’s craziness that we were going to have a great year come hell or high water. And so far we have except of course for my sister who has fallen harder off the wagon than ever. My mother-in-law is a big hearted, absolutely magnificently dysfuntional person. Having her not be around has been great. Every February we go through some kind of family trauma. Last February was my mother-in-law and this February is my sister. And then there’s is the multitude of shit in between. My mother-in-law is a drug addict in denial. It’s not something we talk about with her, she avoids the topic, we avoid the topic, we all more or less try to not talk about it. What has been interesting is that my sister’s issues have provided a platform for insight and discussion about what’s going on with her. It’s tentative, but oddly the first steps have been taken.  I’m not sure what the no talking thing is about. I’m a victim of it as much as the next person. Who wants to make waves but it really makes me want to scream. All of this no-talking just seems really fucked up. Hubby and I have made a promise to each other. This was going to be our year of brutal honesty. It’s much harder than you think because you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings but sometimes there seems like no other way to cut through the bullshit.I think all of this bullshit is what makes me love our dog so much.  Hail to animals!