Collateral Damage

What is collateral damage?  It is losing something valuable that you did not intend to lose while throwing out the trash. So my trash and my baggage is this: my mother is an alcoholic, my dad is an enabler and my family is still dysfunctional because of all of that. The collateral damage is the rest of my extended family, including in some ways my brother and his family.
I need to use this as an exercise in allowing myself to have some feelings on the matter and to validate those feelings. As a child I was not allowed to have feelings. Because my mother had them all. She controlled everything. I use to call it Smother Love. Now I call it manipulative, among other words.  My therapist would say that I protect my dad and I do. So I need to also say that my dad may not have had all the feelings and emotions but he certainly helped squashed my own. There is nothing to be scared of. Don't be a baby. You maroon.  And sometimes it wasn't directly at my brother or me but the criticisms and judgements of other people were sometimes so strong (from both parents) that I did not want to be at the receiving end. So I made myself a mini-mom. A likeness of her that would allow me to blend in and hide- from her. To survive. I also strived to be perfect and still struggle with that today, although it has gotten better since cutting the ties.
Ha, survival. Sure I am 37 years old but I am still dealing with the repercussions of having to live with a selfish, volatile alcoholic. It sucked and it still sucks. She is or maybe was since I am stepping back from it all now, a vacuum, a black hole that sucked everything around her down into her inky mire.  I used to tell my aunt that it bothered me so much that one person could cause such heartache, pain and angst. That my  mother was the one thing we could all agree upon as being unreasonable or (insert any negative adjective here) and yet no one would stand up to her.  All of us were still powerless to flip the switch off.
Until my brother and his wife started having words with my mom about her drinking. You cannot watch our kids if you are drinking. I have no idea how many times and different ways they had to say that. So how many times did she stop drinking only to start again? We all know the answer.
It may have been before my brother had kids, but I told my mom once that I didn't like her drinking. She said I know I have a problem. I think I can have just one (drink) but I can't. She cried a bit and I felt better for having said something. (That had required many hours of therapy for me to do that!) But of course it did nothing ultimately.
I do not want to type out the whole process that started with my brother's family and led to ours. I have told it too many times. And those are just the facts. It is not the feelings. The real meat of the matter. I will say this, however.  It really began for me personally when dad asked me to talk to my mom (and after having experienced a week from hell around my oldest daughter's birthday when my mother stayed with us).  We both talked to her and it sort of felt good but sort of like, what now or so what? She seemed most upset that we were ganging up on her.
I am angry that I am still having to deal with this. That not talking to her is great but the whole complicated drama still plagues me daily. But the anger is just the superficial layer. It protects me from the underlying torment. I just don't know how to let it out!
Sometimes I think I need to tell my parents how I feel. Tell them what happened to push me to this point. but I don't want to be like my mother. She does things out of spite. To hurt. My truth as an explanation for why I am stepping back would likely be taken the wrong way, thus defeating the purpose.
I do not trust my mother to be decent. to think of me outside of herself. To interact with me or my family in a way that will not leave me feeling anxious and horrible and with chest pain. How sad is that? I write that but I do not feel the depth of sadness that I know must be there.
I do not want to wallow in self pity but I do not think I have allowed myself the freedom to experience the pit of despair.  Only then will I be able to rise above it with no strings attached. So how do I do that?

It is obvious I think that I am a mess when it comes to this situation. It has me all in knots. My poor kids who have a tired mom (thus more cranky) because I am trying to process this hefty load. There is one shred of collateral damage right there. The indirect affects it has on my girls. and then there is the family that I want to see. That I miss hanging out with. But i am not ready to face my mom and so I am not going to see my aunts, uncle and cousins and my brother and his family. Now that makes me sad.


I have tried calling my dad twice in the past couple of months and he has not attempted any return communication.  Our girls have received a box of homemade clothes from my mom with cards signed from  both of them. But no phone call, no email and no notes.
It feels like I am standing at the edge of a precipice. One small breath of wind and I will be plunging down into the depths.
I am making myself crazy wondering what he is thinking. What sort of crap he has to put up with from my mom. Trying to make the sadness dissipate. Sadness seems like such an incomplete word for how I feel. I need a bigger vocabulary!
The thing that bothers me the most is that they are both likely feeling like I am doing something negative to them. That I am choosing to be mean/heartless/unforgiving. But I am really choosing to be true to myself and loving to my family.
Don't they want to know and understand what this is all about? My therapist tells me that it is naive to think that I could have a relationship with my dad while he is still in the middle of the same old alcoholic-enabler pattern. I guess I did have that hope. but the bigger underlying hope is that at least one of them would at least be able to wonder how I am. At least try to understand what I am going through. Ask, how are you? Ask for me to explain what I am thinking or how I am feeling. Ask what they could do to make it better. Not telling me that they are praying for the Holy Spirit to open my heart to them.  I am not waiting for them to fill these expectations. In fact I think I am working on grieving for their absence and finding the harsh reality left behind- and being okay with that truth.
My therapist's response to my telling her that my dad hasn't returned my phone calls was "that sucks." Yeah that does suck.
Neither of them respond to emailed photos of the girls, which my mom did ask for once upon a time. We are just each following our own scripts, writing out the other persons parts based on our own insecurities. Not good for business. So I keep coming round to this truth: there is no point having any conversations until she or they are ready to and I will know when she is in recovery (the first step in being ready). She isn't because I have not received the sorry notes. The ones asking for forgiveness and more importantly asking for what to do or how to help.
So it all comes back to me again. I still carry that resentment, which I need to cast off and let go. It was their choices when I was a child that got us to this very point and it is still their choices that have me dealing with their choices. I am still dealing with their crap. Even after deciding that I have had enough of their crap- and have removed myself from the crap. It is all in my head and my heart and I need to let it go. The collateral damage sucks, but you know what, is it really so mcuch collateral damage if they arent separate from the situation. The enablers are just as important to the plot as the alcoholic. Thats their shitty choice and they have to live with that.

I just want to get to a point where this isn't on my mind or near enough to on my mind that I spend way too much time thinking about it. I don't want to be tainted anymore. and I need to focus my energies on my family- and expanding my vocabulary. I want to eloquently express myself. (And write some essays for children's magazines. On nature topics, not dysfunctional drama. Whew.)