How does one recover from years of alcohol and chemical abuse, from decades of self-destruction and self-loathing, from a life of humiliation and failure? How does one overcome the damage from a childhood of molestation and bullying, of an irrational mother and emotionally damaged grandparents? How does one look back on fifty years and not see a life of wasted opportunities and crushed dreams? I have no answers to these questions, but they are the tasks that stand before me as I begin this blog.
I have been free of alcohol for three years and of marijuana for nearly two. I am not, however, free of the hopeless feeling that I have no future and that years before me hold nothing more than the same failure and pain I have known before. I have no desire to use and no fear that I will resume using. My fear is that I will die having accomplished nothing, having never found self-respect, having never known serenity and a sense of accomplishment.
It is common, I am told, for survivors of childhood and adolescent sexual, physical, and emotional abuse to have little or no self-respect or self-confidence. Even when one has a myriad of opportunities to succeed, when abuse of various kinds is thrown into the mix, it is common for the survivor of molestations, of beatings, of humiliations to be blind to one’s abilities, responsibilities, and opportunities.
I have attended meetings of various recovery programs, been under the care of several mental health care professionals, and studied countless books and web articles concerning recovery from abuse and its various side-effects and, yet, I find I still have difficulty in finding the peace and serenity I think I ought to achieve, to find the balance between taking responsibility for my actions and seeing that others contributed to my pain and failure.
I hope that this blog will help me as a means of putting these various issues into perspective and that others may share their experience with me, as well as benefit from my own mistakes and experiences.
0 Responses to “Recovering from a half century of destruction.”