I left home when I was 19 for a lot of complicated reasons. I think the primary motive was to establish my own self separate from my family. I managed to do that and kind of isolated myself from them. I still wrote letters and went home for Christmas but really I was on my own. I proved to myself I could make it.

What I learned though was that everywhere I went there I was. I brought all the characteristics both good and bad that I had adopted as a child and young man with me. I didn't escape the labels of alcoholism, enmeshment, scape goat, rescuer, peacemaker, whatever. It took a lot of self examination and hard work deciding which characteristics, values, behaviors, etc. I wanted to adopt as my own. Many of them were things my parents taught me and I chose to call my own. Many I did not want and worked to get rid of them. We do have a choice but it takes awareness. Awareness can be your most powerful ally.

I spent a number of years blissfully unaware drinking, drugging, unhealthy relationships, unconscious patterns of behavior that were not good for me until one day I decided to start doing something about it.

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