I have been slowly letting the fantasy I have about my addicted loved one die. What good is it to harbor a fantasy that is not rooted in reality? There is a difference in hope and fantasy, and I think for a long time maybe I have blurred the lines between the two and it hasn't been helpful.
For a long time, in the back of my mind I had this dream that my ALO would recover things would get back to normal (whatever that is) and we'd be some sort of regular family again. Maybe we'd even open a restaurant together. We'd have happy Thanksgivings and Merry Christmases around a table that would make Norman Rockwell proud. My ALO would have their zest for life restored and become a productive and upstanding member of society and our family. We'd all be reasonably happy together.
The truth is, I needed a HUGE reality check. Things could never get back to normal because they were never "normal" to begin with. The fantasy I held was my very own fantasy, no one else shared it with me. I never bothered to really consider if this fantasy was the same dream anyone else shared. Rather it was just some thing that I harbored in my own mind, assuming that there was some level of familial sympatico. Never mind that my ALO was too entrenched in their own life and pursuits to share or discuss such a dream. I think I thought something like one day my ALO would wake up after being healed and clean and sober of their addictions and think, "Aha! Back I go to the bosom of my faithful family and we shall all build an idyllic life together!" I never really took into full consideration that my ALO has their own dreams and plans, and family life was not a priority for them. And that even now, in the throes of their addictions, they are a bonna-fide adult who has a right to live their own life. You can't make someone feel a love and attachment that simply isn't there for them. Everyone has different priorities and goals in life, it doesn't necessarily make them right or wrong. They simply have different preferences.
I was confusing my hope that they will one day recover with my own fantasy of what I thought their recovery should look like. Instead, now I am learning that my hope is that they will recover and find their own version of a happy, sane and sober life, and that life may or may not include me. And that's OK. I pray for and wish them well in it.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
1 comment:
E.B.,
A very touching entry... thanks for sharing such insight. This was meant for me to read today, I think. I can very much relate.
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