Expressions. The name of my blog. The reason I have a blog. I need to be able to write things down. To express. And, yes, to vent. The problem with "letting it all out" is that you don't know who is reading. My husband? My kids? My employers? Hmmn. How can I be free to truly express myself?
Anyway, I feel the need to express. Part of the problem is that I don't have any real friends here who I can call on the phone at any time and just let it all out. And I don't want to constantly pester the one or two friends that I do have. I also don't want to always vent to my brothers.
So, what's up in my little corner of the world? Well, last night was a rough one. My DH and I don't fight. Seriously. We never fight. We get irritated and annoyed but we don't yell or scream. But tension does invade our space at times. Last night was one of those nights. And why did it happen? I'm not 100 percent sure. I know why I was tense and I'll get into that in a minute. I have no idea what is going on with DH. I made a comment about the air conditioner being set so low and WHAM! He went into full defensive mode. I actually wasn't "accusing" him of anything. Our air conditioner seems to have a mind of it's own sometimes (seriously, it has this programming capability that thinks for itself!). But DH decided I was attacking him for turning the air down. Uh. No. I honestly don't care what it's set on. He said he'd turned it down the night before because we were having guests and wanted to cool the house down. Uh. (again). OK. Weird because we had a very cool evening and had the house open, but OK. I honestly didn't really care.
That set off a night of tension and no sleep....which, of course, didn't help anything. I lay in bed and tried to sleep. I tried to think of someone I could call and talk to and came up blank. (That makes me kind of sad.)
Eventually, I feel into a restless sleep and woke up unsettled.
The truth of the matter is that I was unsettled before the ominous air conditioner episode. For some reason, demons chose last night to rear their ugly heads. This particular demon was addiction. Not mine. But fear of addiction claiming someone close to me -- again.
I was born into a family of addictive personalities. Somehow, I managed to escape that curse. Like so many other things, I am different than the rest of my family. I'm the only girl. I'm the only brunette. Etc. Etc. And I'm the only one who doesn't have an addictive personality. I'm not sure why, but there's no doubt that it's true. I have tried all those bad habits that people get addicted to (well, no, not all of them...but the common ones) and I have always been able to walk away. I smoked a pack a cigarettes a day for a while (not a huge habit, but a habit) and one day just set them down and never smoked again. I've gone through period where I drank quite a bit. One day I'd realize that I was drinking too much and I'd just stop -- even with full bottles of alcohol in the house, I'd not have a drink for months.
But, as I said, I'm the only member of my family that doesn't have the addictive personality. every other member has, at one time or another, struggled with something. And, for the most part, they have overcome their addictions.
Last night, I discovered one of the effects of growing up in that type of situation -- an almost overwhelming fear of addiction happening to someone that I love. My kids. My husband. I don't voice this fear, however.
I have talked to my kids about the hereditary nature of addictions. I've cautioned them without trying to scare them. They will make their own way and hopefully my guidance will help.
But I can't share the fear with them. Or with anyone else, really. But I feel it. I know that I'm ok. That I can drink a glass of wine every night for a month and still be ok. Because I've proven to myself that I can. But I don't know that the people I love can do that. And it haunts me.
My first memory of someone in the throes of addiction is from a period of time when I was seven-years-old. My mom had left my dad. Again. It happened a number of times over the years. I remember her coming home from somewhere and knowing something was wrong with her. I had no idea what it was. It was many years later when I found out that it was amphetamines. That memory is burned into my brain. And there are many more.
So, where is this rambling leading. Nowhere. I just needed to write it down. Perhaps to put the fear and memories into words gives them less power.
And I know that, last night, when my DH got all wound up, he was probably feeding off of my unspoken, unexpressed fear. I couldn't say anything. He hadn't done anything wrong. And my fear was/is totally unreasonable.
I spent the sleepless night telling myself that the fear was unreasonable. Everything is fine. And it really, really is fine.
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