In a couple of hours, my brother and I will be getting on a plane and taking him home. He wants to spend Thanksgiving with his kids and grandkids, and who can blame him? He hasn’t seen them in months and he misses them; more than that he appreciates them, and wants to figure out ways to show them.
There are two things he won’t be doing, however. He won’t be seeing our sister. He won’t be staying.
Our sister is one of his triggers. While she can be a heavy drinker, she can also walk away from a bottle of alcohol without a second thought, but she has no issue with convincing him that it’s all right to go hang at a bar with her, that she’ll stop him at “just a couple of drinks.” He didn’t understand for years why he allowed her to manipulate him, or why she does it, but he’s made a decision important to his ongoing recovery: he can’t see her right now. He’s not sure he can tell her no, and he’s not at all sure she respects his efforts to stop abusing his body.
His boys are fully prepared to physically block her way to him, though I doubt it will be an issue. I don’t think anyone has told her that he’s coming home, so she’s not sitting there making plans. Once we’re there I’ll call her, and I’d like to see her for lunch or dinner, and I hope she’s not too offended by the fact that I won’t allow any access to Craig, and once I go home his kids will make sure it doesn’t happen.
And he’s not staying. One of the things we’ll do in the next few days is arrange to have his stuff packed up and moved, and then I’ll come home. After Thanksgiving his son will fly back here with him, because Craig does not want to fly alone. He’s fully capable, but he has a few doubts about being by himself in a situation where a few bucks will get him a drink or two. He’s fairly sure his internal dialogue will try to justify it as “just one drink” and he’s very aware now that just one drink will never be possible.
If you had asked me a year ago if I would be willingly bringing my brother this far into my life, I wouldn’t have even been able to laugh it off because that was a level of absurd too impossible to think about. But now he’s moving here, maybe not for good but for a year or two. It’s either this or move somewhere else, because he’s fairly sure that going home for good is the wrong move.
The thing that has been most helpful to him here, I think, is living with TK. With TK there’s no emotional baggage to pick through as there would be with me, and TK has significant experience in helping people pick through their personal crap. Their friendship is somewhat symbiotic; TK helps Craig with his addiction issues, Craig helps TK with his relationship issues. That’s something I never saw coming, because Craig doesn’t have the greatest track record, but apparently TK is learning from Craig’s mistakes.
This isn’t all about Craig, either. It started with him asking for help, but it’s turning out to be important to both of us, and not just important to our relationship as brothers. We’ve touched upon a few things that I’d frankly never considered as being pivotal in childhood development for each of us, though I should have. We seemed to have taken then same issue and gone in different directions with it, something both curious and little bit sad.
I’ll touch on that some other time.
But, in any case, we’re going home, me for a few days, Craig for a couple of weeks.
Showing posts with label brothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brothers. Show all posts
Monday, November 15, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Hope, just a little bit
In old movies and TV shows, Dad comes home from a trip and the kids all run to the door to greet him, happy and excited, asking Did you bring me anything? I walked through the door today and Rachel barely looked up, Alex grunted, and Kevin was bellowing Turn, turn turn! to whatever video game he was playing.
Char walked in, and was greeted with a chorus of Hi, Mom!
I see how it is.
Craig is all right. He's not great, but he's not awful; he's right on track, although some physical issues that have become apparent are giving him fits and starts. They still haven't fully addressed his blood sugar issues, and I'm not sure if they think it will stabilize and they're leaving it alone for right now or if they're waiting for some magic number, but they are keeping track. He's lost quite a bit of weight because he hasn't been able to keep much down, but yesterday he was able to eat, which perhaps not so coincidentally coincided with him finally starting to open up and talk.
My brother has some deep issues, most of which I was unaware, a few that I was acutely aware of. A few that directly involve me, and some that are indirectly caused by me. But he's talking, unpacking the baggage, so to speak. Even when he's out of rehab he'll be in therapy for a long, long time, I think.
Something that really jumped out at me: he started drinking when he was 13. That's Rachel's age. He hadn't even gotten through puberty and he was getting trashed on a fairly regular basis. He had no clue then what stepping into the party lifestyle would do to him as an adult, or how it would mold the decisions he would make in regards to simple things like homework, graduation, going to college or not. He resents the hell out of realizing that he drank his way out of any chance of getting a scholarship, effectively drinking himself into only having a high school education when deep down he wanted more. He resents the hell out of the idea that of all three of us, I was the only one who went to college; he knows I went on a scholarship, but it's muddled in his brain as me being the chosen one, the golden boy our parents anointed with a baccalaureate degree and a job clear across the country.
I had what he wanted: the degree, the job, and the girl. He has no idea what getting that degree cost me, why I agreed to the terms of the scholarship and the job, and I won't tell him because it wouldn't help anything; it's enough to know that even though he does understand that the road I took was nothing personal, to him it felt personal. To him it felt like I was getting it all, and he was getting a minimum wage job bagging groceries.
And the girl; he despises the fact that I dated Kathy all though high school and then married her. She was the one thing that mattered more than anything to him, and he always held out hope of "someday."
He also knows that hoping for that someday never made much sense. He married very young, too, had three boys, and in spite of himself tried hard to make the marriage work. When it didn't, it was just another thing he felt like he'd screwed up.
His list of things he thinks he screwed up is long, and it's a bit self-pitying, but I can understand that. He's barely scratching the surface of himself and has a long, long way to go.
He wanted to know how many times he's been in rehab, and I couldn't answer. Six? Seven? Twelve? I know he's tried it more times that I've strong armed him into it, but this is the first time I've ever felt like he's committed to it. Even so, right now I'm only giving him a 50-50 shot at carrying this off. He has too many demons, and while he accepts his own role in most of those, the weight of it all might be too much to bear.
Still, I have hope. This is the first time I'm not hearing excuses from him. He knows he stated this 37 years ago, when he was too young to accept that first drink, but he no longer blames the person who gave it to him. He's embarrassed for the things he's done and ashamed of some of his behaviors, but most of all, he's talking and it's not coated in BS.
And yes, he is the charmer and flirt Char mentioned, but that is who he is. It's been a part of his personality since he was very little. He very well could use his charm to gain trust from some woman, but to his credit that hasn't been one of his worst traits; I think I've mentioned before that he is very respectful of women, careful and considerate. It's with other men that he can be a real son of a bitch, where the drinking escalates and the testosterone rears its ugly head. He knows this; he knows he has to work on it.
But, 50-50, and to be honest, a year ago I would have guessed he had less than a 10% chance of ever being sober for more than six months at a time.
Char walked in, and was greeted with a chorus of Hi, Mom!
I see how it is.
Craig is all right. He's not great, but he's not awful; he's right on track, although some physical issues that have become apparent are giving him fits and starts. They still haven't fully addressed his blood sugar issues, and I'm not sure if they think it will stabilize and they're leaving it alone for right now or if they're waiting for some magic number, but they are keeping track. He's lost quite a bit of weight because he hasn't been able to keep much down, but yesterday he was able to eat, which perhaps not so coincidentally coincided with him finally starting to open up and talk.
My brother has some deep issues, most of which I was unaware, a few that I was acutely aware of. A few that directly involve me, and some that are indirectly caused by me. But he's talking, unpacking the baggage, so to speak. Even when he's out of rehab he'll be in therapy for a long, long time, I think.
Something that really jumped out at me: he started drinking when he was 13. That's Rachel's age. He hadn't even gotten through puberty and he was getting trashed on a fairly regular basis. He had no clue then what stepping into the party lifestyle would do to him as an adult, or how it would mold the decisions he would make in regards to simple things like homework, graduation, going to college or not. He resents the hell out of realizing that he drank his way out of any chance of getting a scholarship, effectively drinking himself into only having a high school education when deep down he wanted more. He resents the hell out of the idea that of all three of us, I was the only one who went to college; he knows I went on a scholarship, but it's muddled in his brain as me being the chosen one, the golden boy our parents anointed with a baccalaureate degree and a job clear across the country.
I had what he wanted: the degree, the job, and the girl. He has no idea what getting that degree cost me, why I agreed to the terms of the scholarship and the job, and I won't tell him because it wouldn't help anything; it's enough to know that even though he does understand that the road I took was nothing personal, to him it felt personal. To him it felt like I was getting it all, and he was getting a minimum wage job bagging groceries.
And the girl; he despises the fact that I dated Kathy all though high school and then married her. She was the one thing that mattered more than anything to him, and he always held out hope of "someday."
He also knows that hoping for that someday never made much sense. He married very young, too, had three boys, and in spite of himself tried hard to make the marriage work. When it didn't, it was just another thing he felt like he'd screwed up.
His list of things he thinks he screwed up is long, and it's a bit self-pitying, but I can understand that. He's barely scratching the surface of himself and has a long, long way to go.
He wanted to know how many times he's been in rehab, and I couldn't answer. Six? Seven? Twelve? I know he's tried it more times that I've strong armed him into it, but this is the first time I've ever felt like he's committed to it. Even so, right now I'm only giving him a 50-50 shot at carrying this off. He has too many demons, and while he accepts his own role in most of those, the weight of it all might be too much to bear.
Still, I have hope. This is the first time I'm not hearing excuses from him. He knows he stated this 37 years ago, when he was too young to accept that first drink, but he no longer blames the person who gave it to him. He's embarrassed for the things he's done and ashamed of some of his behaviors, but most of all, he's talking and it's not coated in BS.
And yes, he is the charmer and flirt Char mentioned, but that is who he is. It's been a part of his personality since he was very little. He very well could use his charm to gain trust from some woman, but to his credit that hasn't been one of his worst traits; I think I've mentioned before that he is very respectful of women, careful and considerate. It's with other men that he can be a real son of a bitch, where the drinking escalates and the testosterone rears its ugly head. He knows this; he knows he has to work on it.
But, 50-50, and to be honest, a year ago I would have guessed he had less than a 10% chance of ever being sober for more than six months at a time.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Vee Hav Vays
I've had some good reminders over the last couple of days on why I don't want to be in the position where Ian feels like he has to draw something out of me. He is very, very good at sitting down with someone who has something to tell but doesn't want to and getting them to spill it without them realizing that he's gently manipulated the conversation into going in the direction he wants. I've watched him these last couple of days sit there with his brother and his brother's counselor, and draw out of him things he just didn't want to talk about or couldn't bring himself to talk about; they've all been issues the counselor has tried to pull from Craig but just couldn't get him to talk about.
Ian makes it feel like such simple, social conversation, but for whatever reason, he can subtly nudge things into getting him the information he wants. I don't quite know how he does it, but he knows it's as skill he has, and I never want to be on the other end of it (anymore than I already have been; I'm sure he's gotten me to talk without me realizing it before.) He's usually not persistent about it; he doesn't manipulate the kids into talking about things they don't really want to talk about and wouldn't unless he thought it was critically important, but they probably wouldn't realize what was happening until they'd already told him what he wants to know.
I don't think Craig realizes what Ian has been doing, but he's talking to Ian and letting the counselor listen in. This afternoon I wasn't sure if my being there was a hindrance or not (because Craig is really getting into some deep territory) so I came back to the hotel to call the kids and then kick back for a while. It hasn't been all super-intense picking at Craig's brain; at least from where Craig sits it's been more like his brother happily came to visit, has taken him out on a pass to get some lunch and just get out for a little bit, and like they're just getting to know each other again. And I'm starting to see how they were when they were kids; they were very close then, even if they fought a lot, and I can see how easy they can be with each other. I can also see how much Craig loves Ian, and how very jealous he is of Ian. There's a lot of conflict there, like he doesn't quite get why he wants their relationship again, but resents it all the same.
We're going to head home tomorrow; Craig seems to be all right and even managed to eat and keep food down today, and Ian will come back once in a while when he thinks Craig needs him to. I'm not sure how often I'll come with him, but I've been very surprised to realize just how charming Craig can be and how much I actually like him.
Ian makes it feel like such simple, social conversation, but for whatever reason, he can subtly nudge things into getting him the information he wants. I don't quite know how he does it, but he knows it's as skill he has, and I never want to be on the other end of it (anymore than I already have been; I'm sure he's gotten me to talk without me realizing it before.) He's usually not persistent about it; he doesn't manipulate the kids into talking about things they don't really want to talk about and wouldn't unless he thought it was critically important, but they probably wouldn't realize what was happening until they'd already told him what he wants to know.
I don't think Craig realizes what Ian has been doing, but he's talking to Ian and letting the counselor listen in. This afternoon I wasn't sure if my being there was a hindrance or not (because Craig is really getting into some deep territory) so I came back to the hotel to call the kids and then kick back for a while. It hasn't been all super-intense picking at Craig's brain; at least from where Craig sits it's been more like his brother happily came to visit, has taken him out on a pass to get some lunch and just get out for a little bit, and like they're just getting to know each other again. And I'm starting to see how they were when they were kids; they were very close then, even if they fought a lot, and I can see how easy they can be with each other. I can also see how much Craig loves Ian, and how very jealous he is of Ian. There's a lot of conflict there, like he doesn't quite get why he wants their relationship again, but resents it all the same.
We're going to head home tomorrow; Craig seems to be all right and even managed to eat and keep food down today, and Ian will come back once in a while when he thinks Craig needs him to. I'm not sure how often I'll come with him, but I've been very surprised to realize just how charming Craig can be and how much I actually like him.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
His first step will be the hardest
My ex-wife's death was Craig's tipping point; within an hour of being told of her death he was at his favorite bar (with our sister no less) drowning every might-have-been he felt. Usually a functional addict, this time he couldn't hold it together and wound up calling in sick, then taking vacation days, before realizing that he really would die if he didn't stop.
He doesn't know what made the light bulb go off, but says he had one clear moment of hearing his own voice in his head, telling him he didn't want to die.
So he tried to go it alone, and thought he had quit enough times that he could do it again and make it stick, and went nearly two weeks without drugs and without taking a drink. He doesn't even really remember buying the bottle of bourbon, he just knew when he was sitting there staring at it that he had to call someone who would care enough to talk him out of opening it.
He didn't think I'd get on the first plane I could, but I had told him a long time ago that when he was serious about it I would be there.
I'm not sure rehab will work, not even as badly as he wants it. There is so little of himself left in him that I don't know what he has left to fight with. I don't know if he's physically strong enough, and I don't know if the damage he's done to his body is something he can overcome. He can't eat without nausea, and his liver has to be shot by now. But, this time I'll be in his corner, because this time I know he means it.
Over two days time I spent more time talking to him that I have in the last ten years, I think. I have a better idea of when and where he derailed and how powerless he was to stop it. I also feel somewhat badly for him; he was a royal douche about it, but he loved Kathy more than I realized, but he had no idea how to approach her maturely, and the guilt he felt over having feelings for her at all pushed him into doing so many stupid things that I pushed him out of my life.
He is responsible for all those stupid things, but at least I better understand it.
I don't know if our relationship is reparable, and all I could tell him was basically, we'll see. He's not going anywhere for a long time, and I will go visit him a few times while he's in rehab, but I can't promise him what he wants, not yet.
I was able to honestly tell him something he wanted to hear. He's a fucking idiot, but I love him anyway, and I won't abandon him.
He doesn't know what made the light bulb go off, but says he had one clear moment of hearing his own voice in his head, telling him he didn't want to die.
So he tried to go it alone, and thought he had quit enough times that he could do it again and make it stick, and went nearly two weeks without drugs and without taking a drink. He doesn't even really remember buying the bottle of bourbon, he just knew when he was sitting there staring at it that he had to call someone who would care enough to talk him out of opening it.
He didn't think I'd get on the first plane I could, but I had told him a long time ago that when he was serious about it I would be there.
I'm not sure rehab will work, not even as badly as he wants it. There is so little of himself left in him that I don't know what he has left to fight with. I don't know if he's physically strong enough, and I don't know if the damage he's done to his body is something he can overcome. He can't eat without nausea, and his liver has to be shot by now. But, this time I'll be in his corner, because this time I know he means it.
Over two days time I spent more time talking to him that I have in the last ten years, I think. I have a better idea of when and where he derailed and how powerless he was to stop it. I also feel somewhat badly for him; he was a royal douche about it, but he loved Kathy more than I realized, but he had no idea how to approach her maturely, and the guilt he felt over having feelings for her at all pushed him into doing so many stupid things that I pushed him out of my life.
He is responsible for all those stupid things, but at least I better understand it.
I don't know if our relationship is reparable, and all I could tell him was basically, we'll see. He's not going anywhere for a long time, and I will go visit him a few times while he's in rehab, but I can't promise him what he wants, not yet.
I was able to honestly tell him something he wanted to hear. He's a fucking idiot, but I love him anyway, and I won't abandon him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)