What I Got

Hearing my sponsee's fifth step on Sunday got me to thinking about the type of Al-Anon I am and what I got from my character defects.

In alcoholic families, different family members take on different roles. Each role plays an important part in keeping the family together. At different times in my life I have been all of them.

When I was very young I was the quiet child, who was no trouble to anyone. As a teenager, I became the wild child, the one who gave the family purpose. As I got older, and especially when my daughter struggled with her own addictions, I became the hero, the fixer, The Doer Of Things That Needed To Be Done.

I've said before that this role left me exhausted and resentful, because control turned out to be an illusion. But I clung to this role because I got something from it.

There's tremendous ego gratification in being the hero. For starters, I was the command post in any crisis. I was always at the center of things, and so all information flowed through me. There's a tremendous feeling of power in that.

I saw myself as the high-functioning person amidst the dysfunction. I got to feel superior.

People I loved came to me for help. And I helped them.

And here's the rub. I was good it. I couldn't fix my daughter, but I was good at finding solutions to the trouble she found herself in. It was a role I grabbed and held onto fiercely, but others were happy to give it to me. I had support and encouragement.

"Get your mother on it," my ex-husband used to say to my daughter. Because I was capable. I swooped in with my checklist and my computer and my cellphone, and we were going to do this thing, whatever I decided it was.

Different players had their own motives for allowing me this role. I imagine my ex-husband was relieved that Things Were Being Taken Care Of, and that he didn't have to do it. My daughter got my undivided attention. In return, I got her gratitude. She owed me one. It was a rush. And I didn't have to think about my own issues.

It was a closed feedback loop. The system fed itself. And that's the problem with character defects. In a way I was the victim of my own success. I got so much from behaving that way. Why would I want to give all of that up?

Only it didn't work. Not really. Nothing really changed. At least not for long.

But the ego! So hard to let it go. I had to pry my fingers off the wheel at first. Before I became willing, life had to bring me to my knees.

At first, surrender felt like raising the white flag on a battlefield. Not so much "I surrender" but rather "I give up!"

In order to give up all I got in this role, I had to replace it with something else. Attending meetings, working the steps, building a relationship with my Higher Power provided those things.

The lure of The Other Way was still strong. But after a while, the siren song of the old ways grew more faint. Slowly, slowly I became entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. Finally, finally, I started to enjoy the ride.

If You Don't Believe I'm Right, Just Ask Me

I want to be right all the time. It’s a well-known, well-documented symptom of my disease, closely related to trying to control.

I know this about myself. I accept it. Most of the time, I can see what I’m doing and let it go.

But not yesterday.

Some time ago, I mentioned to my husband that I heard a reference to the movie Hoosiers as it related to Butler University. My husband thought it was odd, because Hoosiers was about a high school basketball team.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “There’s more than one classic basketball movie, I said. Maybe you’re confusing them.”

“No,” he said. He was adamant. I thought he must be wrong, but I let it go.

Then yesterday morning, I heard another reference on NPR. I knew I was on dangerous ground but I couldn’t help myself. I brought it up again.

“I know,” my husband said. “I read something similar in the paper yesterday. I can’t believe how all these news organizations keep getting it wrong.”

I bit my tongue. For a moment. I couldn’t seem to help myself.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered adamantly. By now I was sure he was wrong. All those journalists couldn’t keep misstating such a basic fact. I’m a journalist. I know how it works. Not that I think we never make mistakes. We do. But there are always legions of people to point that out. Corrections are run. The record is set straight. Mistakes in a high-profile story just don’t keep getting reprinted.

“Let’s check it out,” I said.

This is meant to sound something like scientific inquiry. But really it’s a cover line for me saying: “Let me show you how wrong you are.” It fools no one. Not even me. Certainly not my husband.

So I Googled Hoosiers. Those of you who already know the answer to this question are undoubtedly laughing your butts off right now.

I was.... Wwwwrrrrong.

There. I got it out. I was wrong. Phew.

That’s right. Hoosiers is about a high school basketball team. The connection is they won their state championship at the gym where Butler plays and the movie recreation was filmed there.

So there you have it. My demons are still with me. Only today I can laugh about it.

A Tempest in a Tea Jar

I want to thank everyone who commented on my last post. As always, your comments made me reflect on what I'd written.

I wanted to address a couple of reader questions from an Al-Anon perspective, and share a silly story about my husband's tea.

Why didn't I call the pool man myself?

Because we have always made financial decisions jointly. If he wanted to hire a pool service, and I didn't, he wouldn't hire one either.

Since the recession, frankly, a pool service is no longer an option.

The dilemma was that neither one of us wanted to do maintenance on the pool. I had a solution. He had a different one.

One characteristic of my disease is that I always think I'm right and I want people to do things my way. So in letting him try his solution (salt-water system plus barracuda), I was allowing him to solve the problem in his own way.

It didn't work out as he hoped. But I didn't want to "force a solution," as we say in the program.

I could respect that he didn't want to spend the money on a regular basis, but I didn't have to clean the pool, either.

When the pool got green and I asked him to take care of it, and he said he would (the second part is critical), then in following my principles, I have to trust him to do it in his time and his way. If I don't, then I'm trying to control the situation by deciding when it gets done.

Of course, if I had asked him to take care of the problem and only assumed his consent because he didn't answer, that would have been wrong.

I do have choices. Of course I do. One thing I've learned to ask myself is "how important is it?" which is an Al-Anon slogan. It wasn't important enough for me to make it an issue.

One of the things I'm learning in Al-Anon is that everything doesn't have to be perfect. I've learned to let a lot go.

Of course, reasonable people could argue that letting a pool get forest green has taken that principle to far. LOL

This comes with a major caveat. I didn't talk this out with my sponsor. Often, I do things I think are according to Al-Anon principles to find that I'm just distorting them. I didn't get into this program for my clear-headed thinking. LOL I find it's good to bounce things off someone else.

So thanks for being those people.

Another story of something I let go:

I had a resentment over making my husband's sun tea. I don't even drink the stuff, yet I had taken it upon myself to make sure his tea was always made. I put it into little containers he could take to work. If we went out of town, I put it in little containers to take with us. I actually stressed about this.

One day, he was on his way to work and emptied the tea container. "I'm running late," he said. "I'll leave this to you."

Well, that did it.

"Why is it that I don't drink this stuff but it's my job to make it?" I wanted to know. I was indignant. I quit making his tea.

For a while, I worried when his tea got too low or he left it outside overnight or in general took less care about his tea if I did. Then I realized he wasn't concerned about it. Why should I be?

Talk about a tempest in a tea jar! The whole thing makes me laugh now, how upset I can make myself over small, unimportant things. These things remind me why I need Al-Anon.

BTW, my sponsor disagreed with my decision to stop making the tea. She very astutely pointed out that I had created his expectation by my own actions. She would have liked to see me work on the resentment without refusing to make the tea. "How important is it?" would be a great slogan to apply.

But for me, this was a clear case of "if it doesn't have your name on it, don't pick it up." I was relieved to be free of tea duty. Though I could have been nicer.

In such situations, I always hear the voice of a certain Al-Anon member who used to offer this advice: Mean what you say, say what you mean, but don't say it mean.

Seeing Green

My pool is green. Not just a little algae around the edges, needs to be brushed kind of green. It’s forest pond green. The shade of green that concerns neighbors of foreclosed properties. The shade of green that breeds disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The saga of our pool is almost as long as my seven-year marriage. We live in a part of the country where it's difficult to find a house without a pool. When we got married, my husband owned one of those rarities. For reasons that had nothing to do with the pool, we decided that I should move into his house after we got married and sell mine.

It worked well for a while. It was a nice house and we were both happy, except for the storage situation. Even after selling or giving away much of my household effects, we had too much stuff. Our garage and closets groaned with the weight of it. We considered ways to add on or expand, but none of them seemed feasible. So eventually, we set out to look for a house that would neither be his nor mine, but ours. One that was right sized.

It didn’t take us long to find a house we both loved. We tell people that we liked the house but bought the yard, which looked like a lush, green park. In the center, stood a large diving pool.

I’m more a soaker than a swimmer, but I enjoy a pool. Until I got skin cancer a few years ago, I spent many happy afternoons on the top step of my pool with a book. Throw in some cheese and crackers, a glass of wine and a nap, and you have my idea of a perfect afternoon.

My husband worried that the pool would be maintenance issue, but I wasn’t concerned. I had pools before and they were never any trouble. I always hired a pool man. It cost $25 a week, and was money well spent.

But my husband didn’t want to pay a pool man. Unfortunately, he didn’t really want to maintain the pool, either. If prodded, he would tend to the chemicals, but the brushing fell to me.

This was before Al-Anon, of course. I brushed the pool every week, and resented every stroke. I begged for a pool man. Instead, my husband installed a saltwater system, which would produce its own chemicals, and a barracuda, one of those rubber things, that roams around vacuuming the bottom. Once outfitted, it would be virtually self-maintaining.

Except that it wasn’t. The cell had to be cleaned, the barracuda didn’t reach everywhere and the salt-water system couldn’t keep up in the summer. Soon I was back to weekly brushing. I whined and complained. I asked for a pool man for my birthday, thinking that would certainly make my husband do what I wanted him to do. But he remained unmoved.

Then I started going to Al-Anon. I learned that I was powerless over my husband. He could choose not to hire a pool man. I could choose not to brush the pool if it created resentment. I let the pool go.

So we entered a new phase of pool maintenance. My husband would ignore the pool, and I would tell him when it was green. I never suggested what he should do about it, I just mentioned its color, and my husband would eventually take care of it.

This worked fine until the cell needed to be replaced. Last summer, between the bad cell and the summer heat, the pool got quite green. Then we had some sort of event and I asked my husband about the pool. He called a pool man, who got it cleared up in two or three visits. Then winter came and we were out of town about half of every week, and the pool was once again neglected.

My sponsor has taught me that I can say something once, then I have to let it go. If I say something twice, it’s like a yellow warning light. Three times, and I’m definitely trying to control.

So the pool became a dilemma. I mentioned it was green. Months went by. It got worse. We had company coming and I asked if we should do something about the pool. That made two times and I was seeing yellow, but the pool was still green.

By now I’m thinking this is an issue for the health inspector and I’m in a quandary. If I say something three times, I’m in the red zone. If I take matters into my own hands, it’s still an attempt to control. It’s me saying, nonverbally, “You obviously can’t do this, so I’m going to do it myself.” Either way, it’s a manipulation.

(Sigh)

I realize that this is a luxury problem. It’s the type of thing Al-Anons struggle with when we are no longer struggling with the things that brought us to Al-Anon in the first place. I’m happy to have this problem. But it still presents a conundrum because either way I’m screwed.

So on the way to work this morning, I asked my husband what he thinks we should do about the pool.

Turns out he called the pool man that morning.

Which brought me back to one of the first Al-Anon principles my sponsor taught me. Sometimes, if you keep your mouth shut, things will work themselves out.

My Coupon Folder

The other day I found myself cleaning out my coupon file, and I thought how it was like my experience in Al-Anon, because cleaning out my file is really about reminding myself what I have and getting rid of things I don’t need. Out go the coupons for things I no longer want. On the other hand, I find coupons that feel like gifts—a forgotten movie pass or a gift card. Of course, there are disappointments, too, coupons I wished I had used but find they have expired. Those coupons are the reason I like to clean out my file. So I can take advantage of them before it’s too late. That's also why I keep coming back to Al-Anon.

I started thinking about what would be in my Al-Anon folder. My discard pile would include my obsession with my alcoholic, the conviction that I am always right, and my need to control other people—though that one sometimes feels like a coupon that arrives every week in the mail. A Value pack.

Among the things I rediscovered were my relationship with my higher power and the gift of living my own life. Fortunately, those didn’t have expiration dates. They were like manufacturers coupons, just waiting for me to use them.

Along the way I added a few things:

An awareness of the nature of my alcoholic’s illness, and of my own.

The ability to detach with love.

With step four, I reviewed my life, saw it differently, and let go of old grudges that, on inspection, I wondered why I’d collected at all.

With the guidance of my sponsor, in step five, I’m examining things about myself that were too close to see on my own.

For me, this program has been a little like getting a pair of 3-D glasses. When I strap them on, things that seemed unremarkable pop out in surprising ways. I wondered what I couldn’t see yet, and what else I might be ready to let go of. I could hardly wait to find out.