Christian Faur August 24, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, art, My 2 cents.add a comment
Artist Christian Faur’s series Forgotten Children – anonymous faces in greyscale, with contrasting bits of color floating through to show us what should have been.
You won’t meet many people who admit to an unhappy childhood, possibly from fear of mockery, possibly from fear of admitting it to themselves, but I am slowly acknowledging this to myself.
Sometimes it’s the way a piece of art resonates that triggers a feeling of how bad things were, sometimes it’s something much smaller. The other morning, reading a 40 something’s FB post lamenting his inability to sleep past 4am didn’t make me feel anxious about aging, but rather provoked a visceral reaction that not being able to sleep was a small price to pay for no longer being a child.
Much like Christian Faur, I don’t have the whole story, but I know that something was very wrong.
Choices July 3, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, family, My 2 cents.4 comments
We all say we make choices, as if we’re engaging in a creative act of our own free will. And in the best of cases, this is true -choosing is an empowering act. But this is not always the case.
I’m watching more and more of my friends strike out on their own career paths instead of climbing the corporate ladder, and I’m beginning to realize that certain choices I thought I made freely were actually the result of years of coercion.
My favorite class in school was always English, this despite the fact my freshman and junior English teachers were two of the worst teachers I endured in high school.* I competed in essay writing and literary criticism classes, joined a book club to do even more reading, and formed an informal “Lingual Lovers” group with two friends. Escaping into a novel was my highest pleasure. Through the written word, I discovered new worlds and new systems of thought. I had no doubt that I would grow up to be a writer.
My parents noted this with the same alarm most parents reserve for criminal acts such as shoplifting or arson, and began a decades long campaign to dissuade me from being a writer, a journalist, or taking that gateway step of majoring in English. Tales of abject poverty, unbearable workloads in college English courses, and the horrors of being a college professor graced our nightly family dinner. I knew my heart well enough to apply only to liberal arts colleges, but come freshman year, despite the incredulity of all my friends and several of my teachers, I enrolled as a business major.
I, of course, loathed every business course I took. I gathered a cadre of friends from the liberal-est of majors – languages, religion, philosophy, music – and took on a double major of philosophy to soothe my battered sense of intellectual curiosity. After two years of filling in blanks and answering multiple choice questions, I begged the liberal arts college to replace my business scholarship with one of their own. My less than tactful appraisal of the business school won over their hearts and purse strings, and I immediately registered as an English/philosophy double major. I triumphantly packed up my belongings to return home for a summer of waiting tables.
That triumphant mood quickly faded into three unrelenting months of taunting from my family. The disdain in their voices still rings clearly in my years, and I can feel tension spread across my body as I write this passage. My summer job was miserable – I had nothing in common with the pleasant people on staff, and loathed working with the petty, cruel, and lazy women who made up the remainder of the staff. Any complaint I uttered to my family was greeted with laughter and the advice that I’d better get used to it – waiting tables was the only career an English/philosophy major could hope to land. Even the Prairie Home Companion‘s fond jokes about English majors turned to weapons in my family’s hands.
When I returned to school, I kept my philosophy major, but dropped the English major in favor of the more practical major of chemistry. I’m glad I held onto enough of my spirit to settle for a subject that I still enjoy to this day, but I’m aghast when I look back to the abuse that formed my “choice.”
* This was not a powder puff category. The competition was fierce.
Reconciliation February 11, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, Blogs, family.5 comments
As most of you know, I’ve made a pretty hard break with my family. I’ve been struggling in regards to my choice about my mother – she is definitely the “good” parent. I have no problem telling you that she was the one responsible for most of the love and care I was lucky enough to receive growing up, but the fact remains that she is an alcoholic who stayed with my father, thereby exposing me to his raging anger and the emotional and physical abuse that came along with it.
On paper at least, my mom is saying all the right things – we love you, we’re here for you – but it rings hollow to me, so I felt an amazing amount of relief when I read the following post on Blooming Lotus*, addressed to a mother whose daughter refuses to talk to her:
“Until you appreciate the gravity of the damage you inflicted upon her, your apologies are going to ring hollow to her.”
This is exactly what’s going on for me right now. When I e-mailed my mother to explain why I couldn’t bear to continue on with the family, she assured me that everything was great and that I was mistaken about all the unhappiness that I described. She even fondly alluded to “her crab” (my father) in a way that let me know that nothing he has done has been all that bad.
Score one more for the collective wisdom of the blogosphere.
* This blog is written by a woman who has suffered almost unimaginable abuse and who has done and continues to do an amazing amount of healing around it. That being said, her blog is not for the faint of heart.
Guns February 4, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, family, Photography.2 comments
The photograph is from Amy Stein’s series Women and Guns. This series really grabbed my attention because the vivid images (especially 3 & 5) sent me back to my own hunting family.
Unfortunately, my experiences around guns illustrates the tendency of alcoholic families to skew reality into palatable stories. Our family considered itself extremely responsible when it came to firearms, but my memories certainly don’t jive with that line.
My grandfather owned guns. Hundreds of them – he was an avid hunter and gun collector who taught generations of Boy Scouts how to shoot. You know the sign that reads, “Never mind the dog, beware of owner”? He had it prominently displayed in his house. He was a lifelong member of the NRA, and you can laugh, but it wasn’t until high school that I realized NRA stickers were not included on the car at the time of purchase.
When we visited my grandfather as small children, my mom would drill us on gun safety: guns are not toys, do not play with them, tell me if you find one. She would make a sweep of my grandfather’s house before we were allowed to run loose, invariably finding at least one gun within kid reach, and I distinctly remember hearing my grandfather reply to her her questions with an exasperated, “Well, of course it’s loaded!”
I also remember at least two occasions where a relative accidentally shot a gun indoors. The story involving my grandfather is told with some hilarity because after the gun discharged, he could not find the bullet hole. It was only after locating the exit hole that he realized that he had sent the bullet through a painting on his wall, directly though the center of a sunflower. On my last visit to the family lake house a few years ago, my uncle was mortified that he’d accidentally shot the tv, but the rest of the family retold the story while laughing. I made several indelible mental notes to not ever be around the extended family again.
Then there was the ongoing problem of “losing” guns. (What, this doesn’t happen in every family?) My grandfather once reported a couple of guns as stolen after a break in at his house, but a year or so later found them. To his credit, he did call the insurance company to rectify his mistake. And when I was in elementary school, my parents misplaced their guns – they simply could not find them even after looking everywhere in the house. Eventually, I found them hidden in a storage area in my room. I’m sure my parents assumed I was responsible enough not to get in trouble with them, but really? Storing guns in a child’s bedroom?
But the memory that really chills my blood involves my brother, a hyperactive child who loved nothing more than to get a reaction out of people. The more skilled he became at needling, the more impressive my ability to ignore him became. And impressive it was – when I arrived at college, I found not a single other person who had my ability to concentrate in the middle of complete chaos. This hard earned skill definitely served my gpa well!
In any case, my brother and I must have reached some sort of stalemate, for while I was cooking one day, he snuck up behind me and pulled the trigger on his gun. Hearing that sound behind your back is just about the last thing you’d ever want to hear. The gun was unloaded and pointed at the ceiling – at least that part of the gun safety message had sunk in – but in those seconds before I turned around, I could not have known that. I don’t remember registering any fear at the time, probably because showing a reaction would have encouraged his behavior.
Some time later, I was sitting at the camp fire at our deer lease* when a gun went off right behind me. I lost it. My brother had snuck behind me and shot his gun in the air. He thought the gun was not loaded, and as all the adults were busy running around yelling and threatening my brother, I sat and cried and could not stop. At some point my dad asked why I was still so upset, and when I told him, he took off running to yell at my brother some more. My father is overweight with a nasty case of gout, and this is the only time in my entire life that I’d seen him run. It did not bode well for my brother.
The aftermath of this incident? Aside from the yelling and screaming, nothing. No gun safes, no locking the guns where my brother couldn’t get them, nothing.
And so I present my responsible, firearm-loving family in all its glory. :/
* Could it be, a category that does not exist in Wikipedia!? I’d love to do an xkcd style plot of the redneckiness of a subject vs the liklihood of it existing on Wikidpedia. But anyway, a deer lease is a plot of land that you lease out in order to hunt on it. Our family had been going to the same cattle ranch for decades and had, over the years, collected a few mobile homes and shacks for sleeping and cooking in. We also had a scattering of blinds over the property and had even upgraded from a pit in the ground to an honest to goodness septic system. If I recall, my uncle orchestrated that last improvement in a futile effort to persuade his new wife to join him on hunting trips.
Denial January 23, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, family.7 comments
Denial, as they say, isn’t just a river in Egypt. After coming up against the full force of my family’s denial last week, I wanted to blog about how crazy it seems.
Growing up, I swallowed the family story, hook, line and sinker. We were a great family, totally responsible and loving. Your family will always be here for you, they said, a message they are still trying to pound into my head.
In the third grade, I won an essay contest about what my home meant to me. I suspect the line that secured my first place spot and $50 savings bond was “My home is made of wood and bricks, love and care.” My mom insisted on adding the last three words, and I’m not lying when I tell you they didn’t really make sense to me, so maybe I knew more than I give myself credit for even back then.
I can tell you that it wasn’t until college that I realized my dad was an alcoholic. He came home from work, started on the Keystone light, switched over to whiskey later in the evening, and invariably passed out on the living room floor in front of the television. I cannot tell you how many times he forgot to pick me up from school but remembered to swing by the grocery store for beer. When I complained to my mother about this, she assured me that her father had done the same thing to her.
Against the backdrop of my father’s alcoholism, it took me even longer to realize the truth about my mother, but the red wine nights should have been a clue. She’d drink so much that her teeth and mouth were stained red, animatedly retelling the same stories over and over. Other nights she’d swirl her liquor and ice around in their tumbler and say, “This is my drug.”
There are so many other things that right now, from this perspective, it boggles my mind that they do not see their alcoholism. But they don’t, and with those fateful three words on my 500th post, “volatile alcoholic family” I may just as well have smacked a hornet’s nest with a big, pointy stick.
What’s the matter here? January 20, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, Home, Music.1 comment so far
I’ve always loved 10,000 Maniacs. For Christmas of 1988, my cousin copied two of their tapes for me. I loved Natalie Merchant’s lyrics, but what I didn’t realize back then was that many of her songs (Hey, Jack Kerouac and Don’t Talk) are about alcoholism and alcohol abuse. No wonder they resonated.
But I posted What’s the Matter Here for a different reason. Last weekend, two of my neighbors were fighting. When things hadn’t died out after a few minutes, I peeked out my window and saw that he had his arms wrapped around her and had shoved her against a wall while a small child watched, saying “Mommy, mommy!” I couldn’t risk my safety by saying anything to them, so I called the police.
My hands were shaking by the time I got off of the phone.
Obama’s inauguration is today, and while change may be coming to the nation, my heart is still heavy with the things that I cannot change.
One quick quote (thanks Leo!) January 19, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism.2 comments
“If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup.” – Turkish Proverb
Drained January 19, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, Books, family, My 2 cents.1 comment so far
So I have my new site, far away from the eyes of my family, and yet I don’t feel like posting. Today I sent several e-mails explaining myself to my family, and received several in return. Stating that I cannot be a part of the family as the family now stands is heart-rending. The responses say, with varying levels of skill and compassion, that the family is just fine, thanks, and we’d love to have you as part of it.
Clearly we are not speaking the same language. I did not expect my family to acknowledge their alcoholism, much less enroll in 12 step programs, but that’s what I need in order to have a relationship with them. Their offers are olive branches only insofar as I accept the family as it is and continue to accept abuse from them.
So yes, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, and I’m the only one standing on this side. It’s lonely.
However, I’m also thinking of all the case studies in the book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, which makes me feel a little less lonely. They illustrate the sad reality that in order to grow and be healthy, we must let go of toxic relationships. I know I’m not the first to experience the sadness and grief of letting go of family, nor will I be the last.
But for now, I’m emotionally drained and moving on to a long, hot bath. Pass the bubble bath, I’m gonna need it.
500th post December 29, 2008
Posted by Sarah in Alcoholism, meta posts, My 2 cents.Tags: My 2 cents
8 comments
You know you have a blogging habit when you hit the big five oh oh! I’ve been thinking a quite a bit about why I blog, and what follows is a pretty raw post. I hemmed and hawed over whether to publish it or not, but one theme I’ve found winding its way through my blog is my incredible admiration for people who speak their truths, those people who do not let fear silence them. That being said, here is why I blog:
When I began blogging, it was because I ran into a surprising truth about myself. Those who know me readily offer up the adjective “direct” to describe me. And while that’s certainly true, somewhere along the line I just got tired of the fighting I’ve had to do my entire life – fighting to survive in a volatile alcoholic family, fighting against the oppressive sexism and homophobia that I endured growing up in Texas and in my college years in Louisiana, fighting to survive a date rape in college, fighting to retain some sense of self after a demoralizing graduate school experience, and then fighting to retain some sanity in a “yell first, ask questions later” work environment. When I finally landed a secure job with an incredibly supportive work environment, I wanted nothing more than to relax and enjoy the mecca of San Francisco. And for a while I did.
Unfortunately, I had no concept of how to be angry or to stand up for myself in a healthy way, especially since I’d decided that fighting was no longer the path I wanted to walk down. That undoubtedly set the stage for a fiery, intense relationship that was, to dig up that old Dickens quote, the best of times and the worst of times. By the time I ended the relationship nine months later, I was sinking rapidly. Blogging was a way to reach out to others, to start putting the pieces back together, but most importantly, it was a way for me to relearn how to speak up about the things that mean the most to me. That last item happened slowly, with a post here and there. I sometimes had nightmares about people coming after me in retaliation for a particular post. Of course, none of that actually happened in real life, and I slowly began seeing my fears for what they were: fears.
Anne Wilson Shaef says,
Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process.
I like that quote because no one post defines a blog…you only get a blog through the ebb and flow of so many posts in succession. A blog is never complete, it can always accommodate one more post or one more comment.
The process of daily writing has become one of my creative acts. Thank you for sharing it with me.
