My older brother tends to bring it up a lot and share memories of things he saw that deeply disturbed him. It's amazing how just two years older can mean seeing more and remembering more. My older brother has a lot of anger and I have learned when he shares to listen because he clearly needs to talk about it and continues to struggle with what it meant to him personally.

I have a hard time sorting through my own feelings. I can experience a lot of cognitive dissonance with it tbh. It's hard to love someone with this disease and separate the challenge of the disease itself and the emotional abuse suffered from it when the individual was active in the disease. I try to respect the disease as I have seen how challenging it is to break away and change, yet at the same time I can be angry due to how this challenge HURT ME. It's a very selfish disease and often the individual engaging doesn't realize how their behavior is actually "abuse" be it deep emotional abuse suffered by others who love them or have to somehow deal with it and all the gaslighting and denials.

There is a difference between "empathy" and being high and feeling ones feelings and partying with someone else doing the same. That's not a true friendship either, it's just hanging out with someone else that has a problem too and endulges.

I found this quote a little while ago and texted it to my husband.

The quote says:

F.E.A.R has two meanings.

"Forget Everything and RUN"

OR,

"Face Everything and Rise"

The choice is yours

My husband replied, "You just saw that expression today?".

After thinking about it more, I am now sure my husband has not only heard this in the rooms in his recovery, but has said it many times when he was trying to help someone FACE they have a disease instead of running to the alcohol and denial. Face it and Rise is what these individuals work on in their sobriety and support others as they do the same.

I remember when my friend took me to an Alanon meeting when I was struggling with my husband's bouts of drinking and blacking out etc., What I saw most DEFINITELY frightened me, and the truth is I CRIED. After that I made a decision to Face the reality and say something. I told him he had a problem and that I could not live like this anymore and I was serious. That same night he went to an AA meeting and discovered that YES he did suffer from this disease. It's been 28 years now and countless meetings and he has not drank any alcohol or done any drugs.

We had to change things too, which meant changing hangouts and friends and understanding the genuine lifestyle change that had to take place.