Of pickledness and sleeping dogs

Okay, I seem to be back.

Logistical business is afoot--I'm moving back to my mom's and applying for a full-time job, for example--but the truly important things right now are discoveries, or in some cases busted denials:

1. I am radically unready to be in a relationship. This has caused a lot of pain to someone I care about very much, and that has sucked and continues to suck.

2. One reason I'm radically unready is that I'm in early sobriety and my brain is still a-clearin' from years of pickling. It is not an especially rational or patient brain, even on good days.

3. Another reason is that I'm in early sobriety and I'm kind of not entirely certain who I am, in some ways, or what I want my life to become. These are important things to know before attempting genuine emotional intimacy, I think. Ahem.

4. Yet another reason is that I’m in early sobriety and my energy level is at a lifelong low, excepting the last 3 or so years of my drinking and the 6 months before I was diagnosed with diabetes. That sounds like a bundle of caveats, I know, but what I’m getting at is that I don’t have a hell of a lot to give to other human beings at this time.

5. A big fifth reason concerns matters that pertain to recovery but are too personal (wha?!) to get into here.

6. That is probably enough reasons to concede radical unreadiness.

7. In unrelated discovery news, I’ve been remembering a lot of stuff from when I was a kid. Mostly not important stuff, just stuff: sensory snapshots of places I lived or toys or pieces of furniture or dishes or classrooms. I attribute this to the brain a-clearin’ somewhat. I don’t like it. Makes me afraid that less benign details may follow. If I’ve forgotten important shit from my youth, I’d put my next paycheck on there having been a good reason to do so.

8. To wit: Ju, who is a retired therapist and social worker, recently told me that when a parent utilizes a child as a therapist and companion, that’s emotional abuse; the child doesn’t get to be a kid and instead must parent the parent.

This was not news to me.

Then she added that in this situation the child becomes a sort of surrogate spouse to the parent, especially if the actual spouse is unavailable due to, say, being drunk all the time.

Err, okay.

Moreover, this is a form of sexual abuse because the resultant intimacy is akin to that which should take place between partners, not parent and child. Sex or no sex, gender and orientation of the individuals notwithstanding.

Well, fuck that.

And fuck the denial slinging too. I’ve been in denial about plenty of things in my life. I know from denial. This isn’t denial; it’s simply stating the clear and obvious fact that No, My Mother Did Not Sexually Abuse Me. For Christ’s Sake!

I adore and respect Ju. She rocks my recovery world, truly she does. And she has helped me in so many ways. But doesn’t it kind of shit all over the seriousness of real sexual abuse to suggest that my (admittedly enmeshed, dependent, and codependent) mom did to me the equivalent of what her fucked-up perverted elder brother-in-law did to her when she was a kid?!

I ran this conversation past E a few days later. She acknowledged the existence of this school of thought within the profession. But the key point, she suggested, isn’t necessarily what we decide to call it. The key point is that my boundaries are for shit because I grew up without learning that it was okay to set them, much less how to do so. Hence the current task is to learn those things.

Okay. That’s reasonable.

I thought I’d processed this conversation with Ju pretty well, but as I’m writing it down I find myself more and more pissed off. For the sake of completion, though, I should note that I asked her opinion about my moving back in with Mom. She said go for it; we’ll both learn a lot. And I’ll save money and be closer to my favorite meetings and AA people again. All good things.

I was going to move back anyhow. Pffft.