This half amuses me and half annoys me. I have kind of an awkward relationship with one of my brothers. He's a lot older than me, so we didn't really grow up together, and have had to get to know each other as adults & we're very different with very different values, We also live a 3 hour plane ride apart so we don't get to see each other very often. But he's pretty much the closest family I've got so I want to have a relationship with him.

But he has a really hard time dealing with the fact that I'm an alcoholic and that I have psych issues. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm willing to talk about them openly. After all recovery is a fairly big part of my life at the moment. He always rather obliquely refers to them as my "issues" and he can't say AA meeting to save his life. The step study I go to every Sun. night is "that thing you have". I mentioned that I'm coming up on my one year this month and he did manage a congratulations, immediately followed with so will this always be a problem? hmm yes.

And he gets really weird whenever I mention the psych hospital. That's the really big taboo subject that we don't talk about. When we were talking tonight, I mentioned running into a nurse who'd been one of my nurses when I was in last summer and how she'd been really happy to see me and how we'd had a nice chat & I got dead silence.

I mean I guess it's kind of hard dealing with the fact that your kid sister is both slightly nuts and an alcoholic, but they're my problems not his. I don't get why he can't accept me for who I am, and be happy that I'm having some success in dealing with my problems and in my recovery.

Family?????????