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Decision: To Drink or Not – Follow the Questions.

I saw my therapist today.  I do not think I can fully explain the magnitude of the session we had.  Those who have been reading my blog since I began 2 years ago, and those who know me well are well versed in the abuse I suffered as a child.  I am grateful to no longer be a victim of those events.  However, I learned today, that I am still strongly influenced by the emotional distancing and the verbal triads my mother rained down on me.  I have worked diligently to separate her from me.  I thought her death 12 years ago would set me free.  I was wrong.

I often talk to family members who have “passed.”  My Dad watches over and protects me from beyond.  The same is true of my grandmother and my step-mother, but not so my Mother.  Could it be that I can not reach her through the astral plane because she has not fully passed over.  Is she trapped in purgatory waiting for her final sentencing?  Has she set up housekeeping in my mind and body where she continues her life of suffering though me?  Albeit far-fetched, I know without a doubt she lives on in me.   I told my therapist, “I need an exorcism.”  He agreed.

He suggested I focus less on my drinking and more on my tangled, dysfunctional, guilt ridden, shame filled relationship with my dead mother.  He did not say I should drink.  He said if I did choose to drink I should do it out of a plastic insulated tumbler just like the one my mother used daily.. When I see my mother, when I say the word, Mother, when I think of my mother, I see alcohol.

There she is long, filtered cigarette in one hand, vodka tonic in the other.  When I drink, no matter how much or how little, I see myself as mother.  Consciously or unconsciously I fear being her.  I hated her.  I blamed her drinking.   She was mean,cold, distant and evil to the bone.

I went to my daughter’s house just after my therapy session to pick up come velcro rollers and a curling iron.  She took one look at me and said, “Are you okay?  Is something wrong?  Do you want to talk?”  I struggled to put my recent experience into words. “Mom, you are nothing like your mother.  You do not have it in you to be like her.  She was evil.  Some people are just like that, born to be mean.  She knew what she was doing. Don’t give her so much credit.  Alcohol did not make her bad.  She would have been horrible if she didn’t drink.”

Revelation.  In order to understand my mother’s inexcusable behavior, I blamed her drinking.  How as a child, or even as an adult, could I reconcile her hatred of me?  She was, it seems, by nature vindictive, narcissistic, judgemental, untrustworthy, insensitive and distant. She did not need booze to be cruel.  Her only conversations with me consisted of complaints.  She blamed my step-father, her mother and father, the depression and me for her miserable life.

One more thing.  While talking to my therapist, I realized that my drinking has always been a way to stay connected to my mother.  The times I felt the closest to her, the most loved, were when we were sitting down over cocktails.  What does all this mean?  Only time will tell. Do I drink because I am an alcoholic?  Do I drink to be with the mother I never had?  Do I have a problem with alcohol or is my real problem, my mother, who refuses to die?  “Out, damned spot! out, I say!”

No doubt this post will arouse a myriad of reactions from my readers.  I stand ready to hear what they have to say.  This is my journey.  I am not concerned about what others think.  I know I must answer these question for myself  I know I must make my own decisions. somehow along the way, no matter how confused, how depressed, how suicidal I have been, I have always come to the truth of my situation.  I will write until my writing brings me face to face with my own internal, radiant light.

I am created by Divine Light

I am surrounded my Divine Light

I am protected by Divine Light

I am ever growing into Divine Light.