Walking away from those in need.

I just read a post the encouraged me to write this one and it brought to mind the many times I was in need, in deep emotional distress and needed that engaged empathy, insight and comfort and people turned away.. Sometimes my need came out in rage when I heard people dismissing others who were trying to fight their way free of addictions.. and then there was a time that one of my family DID reach out and comfort me, but sadly he was one of the members of our family who decided to walk away. I always empathised with him because I knew of his struggles as the youngest in a family ridden with addiction, in fact his second brother ended up dying while driving a motor bike drunk, after they had a bad argument… So it is in traumatised families we often turn against each other.

I thought more today of how in the past I naturally blamed myself for others lack of empathy and inability to meet me in the place of deep underlying emotion.. I have compassion for the part of them that blocks feeling and need and walks away, but I wish we could be better as a culture. I may have walked away from someone in need but usually after I had been hurt by them and then there was the friend who tried to challenge me about my addiction but did it in a very unskillful way back in 1992. She later apologised for that. At the time I was just so so raw, I probably only could have taken advice from someone else in recovery.

There are times in my two sisters psychological distress it had been hard to be there, though with Jude I sat with her in the care home so many times holding her hand as she cried or raged or grimaced in pain from being mainly bed ridden.. I often pottered around dusting her photos as the room was often neglected. Often it stunk in the room from piss and other odors. Such is the depths untreated addiction takes us to. The untreated wound at the heart of the distress doesn’t smell nice but then there is life energy hidden in compost. It is one of the reasons I was the last person to not be there for Jude, I just could not walk away and got pulled back, even if it did, in the end, mean the ending of two more relationships. Such is my love for and loyalty towards family.

I’m picking my other sister up tomorrow to take her to vote, I am trying to engage when I can.. I know her story so well, I have watched the many hospitalisations, saw her slide down, know why her marriage failed and still love her ex husband greatly though we are not in touch any more sadly.. At one point he opened up to me a lot, he said he felt blamed by my mother and sister and he was, he walked away because in the end he could not stand the perfectionism but also he could not stay with someone struggling and give that needed love, he hadn’t addressed his own stuff.

I have a post to post after this that I found on a therapist from Ireland’s blog yesterday on all the mental health issues that are co-morbid with perfectionism.. Its a long list and I am sure if you talk to any person in recovery you know they will site perfectionism as a big part of their story, or share that their addition functioned to shut up the hostile voice of the inner critic or persecutor (often also called The Killer). This force made itself known to me back in 2005 at my lowest point and I was talking to Kat in therapy yesterday about a piece of stream of consciousness writing I did then called Destruction 11.11 where it made its presence known and told me how it hated my inner child and decided to begin to severe my connection from her around age 6 when the neglect got very painful. Sad to see how we turn against the joyful, soulful inner child, something John Bradshaw writes about really well in his book Creating Love.

I am learning, or trying to learn to be kinder on myself these days. I can have my boundaries around family.. I am also proud I have been learning to assert myself. The family accountant finally returned my email about the trust fund today and that is going to go forward, and he is going to organise a meeting with the bank. As I grew I learned to be passive, to not need or long for much, to fear I could never have my heart’s desire, so why even try.. It seemed easier to cave than to try and risk failure. These are old patterns I have to change..

I am so grateful to those who write about their trauma, even when its so hard to articulate at times.. I see WordPress as such a wonderful resource for us and am glad for the blogger who encouraged me to start this blog back in 2013… I didn’t think I had much to say that others wanted to hear and now I know that is not true and the support I got here the next year when Judy died was invaluable. I hold WordPress friends so dear to my heart. I have loved that this site is such a wonderful container for mutual grief suffered and endured.. I get constant inspiration here and feel part of what is a loving community…so that is on my gratitude list every single day…

Today I don’t want to turn away from my own needs and dismiss them, but I also like to be there for others when I can.. Sometimes I get tired though and need to rest…I just pray that those in need get the help they require and that people see deeper into the heart of those still in active addiction who struggle with buried wounding.. As we say in Al Anon.. when anyone anywhere reaches out for help, let the hand of fellowship be there. Someone was there at a meeting when I first went and without their honesty I may never have managed to find sobriety.