Good morning.

I am in search of ESH this morning. I need to find out if anyone else's situation is similiar to mine. Here is my situation in a nutshell:

The alcoholic that brought me into the program was my husband. We are divorced now. He is in prison due to some things he did in order to get the drugs of his choice. Need to establish right up front that he is nowhere in the picture again except for the devastation that he left behind. I am dealing with things as best I can. It was not until February of this year that I was able to stop the self-hate tapes that played in my head due to the things he said to me during our marriage. A lot of damage is done when people are under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

As I've said I'm dealing with all the emotional, mental, physical, financial, and spiritual fall out of that situation as it pertains to me. But our actions- his from pursuing the drug of his choice and mine from trying to fix the situation- affected other people. This is what I'm having a hard time dealing with at present. I can cope with my own personal situation but the guilt and shame of how we affected others is killing me.

Here's what you need to know: Thirteen years ago before I married my alcoholic, I was attending the funeral of a family member when my mother's side of the family weighed in. Mom was diagnosed as maniac depressive (bi-polar) shortly after my father died and my brother is autistic. Doctors do not always prescribe the proper medication and it can ruin lives. Mom was a guinea pig of sorts. Her particular case landed her in the psychiatric ward of the hospital numerous times which left my brother to pretty much fend for himself. I don't know how many times Mom was admitted- too many it would seem. My grandmother, aunts and uncles were at a loss as to what to do. I had been attempting to have a life of my own as a teacher in another county. I say attempting because up until I went away to college my life had pretty much revolved around taking care of everyone. See, I was a caretaker before my alcoholic entered the picture. At any rate I returned home at age 29 to tend to my mother and brother.

I made a lot of mistakes. In an attempt to make improvements to her situation I convinced her to take out a loan to get central heat and air for her home. I also attempted to do some beautification to the outside of her home by painting the siding but I only succeeded in making bigger mess. So, we looked at extending that loan to include reconstructive surgery on the outside of her home. She got a new roof, siding, a new porch, etc. I paid for a new fuse box. My brother and I received a very small inheritance from a great aunt that we used to do some reconstruction on the inside of the house. At times my entire paycheck was sunk into her home. I became the Cinderella around the house, too. If anything was really cleaned, I mean scoured, I did it. Neither of them have any interest in maintaining upkeep of anything. I was the Felix to their Oscar- reference here is to the old TV show The Odd Couple.

As I said I made a lot of mistakes. I see now that I should have worked harder at getting my mother and brother into separate housing rather than trying to fix up a house that was more than 50 years old. Hind sight is 20/20.

During the time I lived at my mother's home my things were in storage. I could not afford to live on my own and help her. My storage unit was broken into a lot. I lost a lot of invaluable things that held sentimental value. The other thing that happened is that I became lonely. I had left a larger city to return to a "blink-you-miss-it" town where the social scene revolves around church, the bars, athletic events and family. I was heavily involved in church- I was there every time the door was opened. I was already entrenched knee deep in family. I attended sporting events from time to time with friends who came in from out of town on visits. The bar scene just wasn't my thing.

So, what did I do to fix the situation. Well, sometimes I traveled. It was on one of these trips out of state that I asked God in desperation to help me find that special someone. I asked that I meet someone while on that trip to Arizona or to hear from someone I already knew. You know, you have to be careful what you ask for because God just might give it to you. When I returned from my trip there it sat on the bed- a letter from the man who would soon become my husband. I'd known him for a number of years. Or at least I thought I knew him. When I look back on it now all the red flags were there but I chose to ignore them.

The bottom line of the whole thing is that I had already gotten my mother tied up in financial debt with her home when I married my alcoholic. During those 5 years we were married I made the mistake of turning to her for help when I got too deep in debt to carry on. Oh, I worked all the time. Don't misunderstand. I actually worked 3 jobs at once sometimes. I was killing myself in an attempt to keep our bills paid, pay back my mother, take care of his father's debts (I forgot to mention I had a father-in-law who would not work for various reasons) and take care of the rapidly growing debts of my husband. My insanity knew no bounds. I thought I could work round the clock to take care of things. As I said, I was killing myself.

It all came to a head 4 years ago. I could do no more. My alcoholic finally admitted that he needed help and went into rehab. Truthfully, I think he only admitted it because he was facing some pretty stiff legal trouble. While he was gone I attempted to move without him knowing about it. I also closed our joint checking account and got myself a post office box for my mail. I also filed for bankruptcy. All of this was in preAl-Anon days. Somehow he got wind of me moving out and checked himself out of rehab. I awoke at 3:00 in the morning to find a snarling husband standing over my bed. I got moved and he wound up in rehab a second time for the same reason as the first- legal trouble. The night before he went into rehab that second time I attended my first Al-Anon meeting. Needless to say I began working a program and tried not to look back. He relapsed again and wound up in prison.

Today I am left with not only the devastation of my own situation but my mother and brother's. They've gone down hill physically and mentally over the last few years. I feel guilty for not being of more help to them. I detached to the extreme I guess. They felt as if I had abandoned them. I saw it as trying to survive, to rebuild a life. I can't look at either of them without feeling ashamed of myself and guilty.

I've made amends the best way I know how. I've signed them up for every service I believe they are qualified for. They now have three case workers. The financial end of it, for them has now been given over to a payee for a month now. There are in the works a plan to separate them physically as well so that the qualify for the maximum amount of services that their conditions allow. Things take time. The system moves slowly and it's a good thing because neither my brother nor my mother adapt well to change.

In the mean time I'm receiving flack from family members and community members about how utterly horrible I have been to leave them to fend for themselves after I contributed to their demise. No one wants to hear about all the things I've bought them to try to better their situation, or the money that I've attempted to repy, or the times I've dropped everything and gone to their rescue. It seems nothing I do is enough to rectify the situation. I try to keep the faith and forge ahead. If everyone will just be patient things will eventually right themselves.

If these people only knew how difficult I find it to put one foot in front of the other sometimes. I don't live in a mansion. I live in a little hole in the wall apartment. I don't have central heat and air. I have an air conditioner that barely cools off the one room it is in and a fan to circulate air. I have wall heat units. My apartment is not quite as old as Mom's house but it's falling apart. I don't keep it as clean as I should. The days of being Felix have been replaced with a depressed attitude. I just don't care as much as I used to.

When I had to go crawling to my aunt for help this weekend she placed blame on my shoulders again. As if I wasn't feeling guilty enough she had to heap it on my head. I don't know what more I can do to make amends to my family. The whole situation seems hopeless and there are times that I am so consumed with guilt over it that I just want to lay down and die. This is a burden that I can not carry any longer. I've given it to God and I have to leave it there. I wish others would do the same. If we're just patient enough things will eventually get better. In the mean time I am struggling this morning.

Today I am going to make some phone calls. I need to find out the results of the blood tests that Dr. Brann did. Am I going through early menopause? If not I need to move that medical evaluation at Centerstone up. I also need to get in to see my therapist again before that first week of school because I do intend to take one of the jobs that are on the table right now.