Just Once

I did my best
But I guess my best wasn't good enough
'Cause here we are back where we were before.

— Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (as performed by James Ingram and produced by Quincy Jones)

After being in radio for a while, everything reminds you of a song and tonight is no different.  There are two aspects to this song though that I want to talk about.  The first is perfectionism.

There is a tendency for adult children of alcoholics to be perfectionists.  But not just the usual idea of working something until is is completely without flaw.  There is another, more debilitating side to perfectionism, which is giving up if something is not perfect.

A woman I know was not a very good housekeeper.  And for me to call you "not a very good housekeeper" says something.  She has health problems and so has a reason for needing help cleaning her house.  She has enough money coming in that she could hire a cleaning person.  The problem is that she wants the house to be clean enough to let a cleaning person clean it and she cannot get it there.

And the reason she cannot get it there is that she won't let anyone else help her enough to get it there.  The logic of it is mind bending to me.  It doesn't matter if she knows the person from Adam, she refuses to let anyone help her get her house clean enough to clean or heaven forfend let them actually clean it.

This, although it may not seem it at first, is perfectionism paralyzing her.  Her house has been cleaned (by me actually) enough to the point where someone could have been hired to really clean it.  But while I did my best, I guess my best wasn't good enough, because she let it deteriorate instead of hiring someone.

And yes, she's an adult child of an alcoholic too.

The other piece of this song on my mind is reflective of my current despair about my track record in relationships.  Just once I'd like to figure out what I am doing wrong and really, really fix it.

And I'm working on it.

All By Myself

When I was young
I never needed anyone
And making love was just for fun.
Those days are gone.

— Eric Carmen

Well, it was going to happen sometime, and now is the time.  The empty feeling is creeping back in, now that the last relationship is in the rear view mirror.  With gaps of only a few weeks, I have been in one relationship or another since I was in my first. I never take the time off to just be me.  Because when I am not in a relationship, I just feel empty.

I suspect that being an adult child of an alcoholic might have some play in that.  I am sure that has a play in to whom I find attractive, but that's another story for another blog post.  But at any rate, when I am out of a relationship I feel unloved, of course, but beyond that empty and maybe even unreal.

It is as if a relationship validates me, that my existence has no meaning or purpose apart from a relationship.  Of course, this is nonsense, but this wouldn't be the first time that a person has felt something that otherwise makes no logical sense.

But I am resolved to see my self imposed time-out of relationships through to February.  As much as I want to be in a relationship in one way, I need to find out if I really want to be in one in another.  It seems to a degree that when I am in a relationship, I want out and when I am out I want in.  I need to know if I am just impossible to satisfy or if it's because I go into relationships not making sure that the things my head needs in a relationship are there while my heart is clouding my judgment.

But right now I am alone with that empty feeling.  And it looks like I am going to get to know it very well.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

This will be short and sweet tonight.  Just found out today (in a year already full of changes) that my current therapist is closing her practice.  Her associate, whom I had started seeing when these wheels were apparently put into motion and I could no longer see her, is moving to another practice, so there will be some continuity there.  But I'm getting tired of things changing so much.

I know that change is an inevitable part of life, but the rate of change can slow down.

Please?

September 11, 2001

Where I was when I got the news isn't that interesting a story.  Yes, I have asked people that question and answered it.  But that was me bonding with other people and I do not think it as important as another aspect about it, which is that it changed me just as being an adult child of an alcoholic changed me.

While I never thought America was an impregnable fortress, I was never before fearful in my own home.  And that day I was.  I don't live anywhere near a high-value target, but before they grounded the planes, there was no telling how many crews they had and where they were headed.  And it was reasonable that this was a disorienting strike to throw us off from an invading force.

My parents grew up with war, a war that changed their daily life.  But while we had Viet Nam and the Gulf War in my lifetime, I never experienced anything like that in mine.  Until that day.

The experience changed me.  I still cringe when planes fly overhead (and I hate that the terrorists even have that small victory).  My views of the world at large have hardened.  But more importantly on a personal level, I had a deep and lasting reminder of the capriciousness and tenuousness of life, more than when my cousin drowned, more than when my brother died in a construction accident.

I don't take a minute for granted and while I don't live my life as if there will not be a tomorrow, I do not act as if tomorrow is a given.

—§—

I watched some of the coverage this morning from New York City and Washington and at one point became teary.  But I recovered by listening to "The Angry American", a reminder of our national character, that if you mess with us, you'll get a boot in your backside.  It's the American way.  All brought to you courtesy of the red, white, and blue.

Looking Out For Number One

One of the common traits of an adult child of an alcoholic is a tendency to consistently put themselves second.  They do it to such an extent that when they do make reasonable assertions for their own time or autonomy, they are seen as being selfish.  That may seem impossible to you, but trust me, I have lived it.

Another problem for an ACoA with this is they have trouble fully enjoying what they do for themselves.  They remind themselves of what they should be doing or how they don't deserve what they are supposed to be enjoying instead of just enjoying it.

So, to that end, I have decided, even though there are a zillion arguments against it, to watch the first football game of the Cleveland Browns's season with the local area Browns Backers on Sunday.  I have done enough duty around the house and I have had a hard week.  So I am giving myself this.

However, lest you think I am entirely self-absorbed, I am well aware that Sunday is the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the aborted attack on the White House and tomorrow evening, I will share my thoughts about that day ten years later.

Day After Day

Not going to write much today.  Writing these every day is a bit of work and I have been trying to decide what would be a good maintenance pace, as I know I will not be able to keep up every day indefinitely.

As I mentioned, I recently lost the relationship I was in and I am having trouble adjusting to not being in a relationship on a day to day basis.  I am glad for this as it is forcing me to determine who I really am.  But I have been in some sort of relationship almost constantly from when I started in my first, and so there are habits that I need to break or at least recognize and figure out the motivation behind them.

But right now, I need to go to bed.

Breaking the Cycle

Thanks to a long story no longer worth telling, my ex-wife and I have parental custody of my granddaughter.  She is overall a good child.  Like all children she brings with her challenges, but unlike all children she carries special burdens.

Beside my alcoholism-damaged personality, the child is from an alcoholism-marred family on the ex-wife's side.  Without telling other people's business, let it just suffice to say that there was alcohol from that direction.

She also comes from stock that has ADHD.  There has been a suspicion as she has gone through school that she suffers from that.  However, there is a complication that makes knowing that hard.

And that is that she suffered serious head trauma as a toddler, trauma caused in my belief by abuse.  So there may be non-ADHD neurological damage that creates her day to day challenges in learning.

I am the parent that focuses on the school aspect of her life.  The thought is that I am best suited for this, but there are days when she is willful and just not getting it that I question that analysis.

She has a playful personality.  Everything is always fun time.  And while I am more than capable of having fun, I don't really know how to make doing homework into fun time.  It doesn't help that I thought (times tables aside) doing homework was fun.  Yeah, I was that much of a nerd.

So I often see my mother or father emerge in me while trying to keep her on track.  Again, I am limited by having no examples to draw from other than them.  And I am sure that from time to time, I am passing the alcohol damage down the line.

But I fight on because I want her to have options, to not be counted out, despite the numerous strikes already against her.  There's no real ACoA lesson here, other than I have to learn how to parent both her and myself.  It's just hard seeing myself possibly passing on future damage because I don't yet know how to stop it.

“You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry.”

I apparently am a scary guy.  I say this because some people I know flee in fear when I am mildly annoyed.  My version of mildly annoyed apparently is at the edge of murderously enraged for some people.  The scary thing, the truly scary thing, is that most people have never seen me truly angry.  I scare myself when I am truly angry.

When I am truly angry, it is such a powerful thing that my grip on my conduct and my sanity is tenuous.  It goes back, as many things do, to my alcoholic upbringing.  The relationship of my parents was, as we called it in sociology class, conflict habituated.  They loved each other.  And they loved to argue almost as much as they loved each other.

Therefore I grew up prizing harmony.  And thus I overvalue it and therefore tend to be willing to take more than I should to avoid conflict.  So when conflict is inevitable, I cut loose with a force more appropriate to everything that I have gone along with instead of just the matter at hand.

I am working on expressing my truly feelings immediately, rather than stifling them until they boil over.  But when you're "always" amenable, people find you actually speaking your mind an unwelcome and disquieting jolt.  But no matter the effect on my life, I am sure it's better than my being angry.  You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

My Dead Dog

Life goes on even as you try to live it, and so even as I was dealing with relationship drama, as well as drama at my work, drama with my home, and drama to do with my granddaughter, my dog took sick.

He started off with a limp that they first thought was arthritis.  But when it didn't get any better with arthritis medications, a second trip to the veterinarian found cancerous tumors around his shoulder. He had about a month to live, four if I had them cut his shoulder and leg off.

I chose to let him live out his month and he did.  He took pain medication for a while and felt good enough to get one more walk around the neighborhood, something I had been promising him for a long time. He stopped eating in the last week and a half of his life and stopped taking medicine.  He was wasting away from malnutrition and vomiting up the water he would try to drink.  I decided that as much as I didn't want him to die, I didn't want to watch him die of starvation either.

So on a sunny Monday morning, I took the day off from work and I said goodbye to my dog.  I still to this moment feel guilty about killing him.  I will probably feel that way until I die.  I believe it was the right thing to do, but I don't feel like it.

It has been hard for me to adjust to him not being here, but I am beginning to.  It still feels like he is here with me, watching me as I go about my day, as even before the illness his life pretty much consisted of lying there and watching me.  He was 12 years old, after all, which is pretty far along as far as dogs go.

Totally apart from all of this, I have noticed that I am a little weightier than I would like these days and I am having some issues with my back muscles, so I have decided to take a nightly walk to try and get past both of those things.  While my neighborhood is perfectly safe, I still wish I had my favorite company with me, because I know he would have loved it.

And if there is anything beyond this life, he does.

I Want Love, Just a Different Kind

But I want love, just a different kind.
I want love won't break me down,
Won't brick me up, won't fence me in.
I want a love that don't mean a thing.
That's the love I want. I want love.

— Bernie Taupin and Elton John

As I alluded to when I restarted this blog, my marriage and my post marriage relationship have crashed and burned. This is not entirely unexpected for Adult Children of Alcoholics.  One of the things that happen to us is that we tend to seek relationships like the one we grew up in simply because it's what we know.  And sometimes we unknowingly try to work out our failed family issues growing up through our marriage.

The real problem for me, and where I went wrong in my post marriage relationship is that I crave being in a relationship.  Immediately as my marriage was crumbling I climbed into another relationship.  It was too soon and I ended up duplicating a lot of the same dynamic I had with my wife.  So when my girlfriend and I crashed and burned, I made a promise to myself to abstain from dating / relationships for six months.  Three months for the three years I spent in the post marriage relationship and three months to make up for the time I didn't give myself to get past my marriage dying.

Thing is though, I crave being in a relationship.  I miss many things about being in a relationship, but it is more than that.  It is almost as if I cannot define myself as lovable unless I am in a relationship.  Knowing it isn't enough; I have to have proof. That speaks to my insecurity of my lovability.

So despite my commitment to waiting, I find myself considering dating sites and getting anxious about finding somebody.  But I am committed to doing the work this time of realizing that I am enough without being with someone, even though it triggers feelings about abandonment.

The other thing that I am realizing is that the next time I dive in, much like Messrs. Taupin and John, I want love, just a different kind than what I have had up till now.

Secret Origins

In order to be an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, there must, by necessity, be an alcoholic somewhere.  (Actually, in truth, you don't have to have an alcoholic in the immediate vicinity, but that's a subject for another day.)  In my case, that was my dad.

As far as my dad goes, if you were going to have an alcoholic for a father, he would be the kind you would want.  He never missed work because of his drinking.  He never harmed us or verbally abused us because of his drinking.  He was, all in all, a pretty reliable drunk.

But make no mistake, he was a drunk and it did even then have an effect, because it would bring out "that guy".  When my dad would get drunk, he would get sullen.  He seemed always a little bitter about something.  And he never understood why we did not feel he was as fun as he felt he was.

However, the larger effect on my family of origin (FOO; as we go through this, I will introduce some of the acronyms and jargon used in the program) came not from his drinking directly but by how my mother would react to it.

My mother told us the story of how they got involved.  My mother did not like my father's drinking when they were courting and told him that he would only marry her if he could stop drinking for a year.  Her thinking was that would be impossible for him and her problem would be solved.

The problem with this plan is that she grossly underestimated my father's willpower.  This is a man who in my youth, after smoking for years, just dropped his pack into the trash and never looked back.  My father did abstain for an entire year and since my mother was a woman of her word, they married, which was fortunate for me, since it caused me to exist, but may ultimately not have been the best for them.

My dad resumed drinking almost immediately thereafter.  And I believe my mother's kvetching about it started right after that.  My father's drinking was the thing that could most quickly turn my mother into a termagant.  My mother was so harsh about his drinking that it might drive anyone to drinking.  This little vicious circle is one of the gifts of alcoholism and why we need 12-step programs in the first place.  It's like a computer virus in the human condition.

So this is the crucible in which my condition was formed.  I never thought it had anything to do with anything, but as I am finding, it has a lot to do with everything.  But that too is a subject for another day.

Old Blog, New Mission

Well, after an absence of five years, I'm back.  And what a five years it has been.  In that time I have lost a wife, found a girlfriend, lost the girlfriend, and found that there is an actual explanation as to why I am the way I am.

You see, I am the child of an alcoholic, and as it turns out, adult children of alcoholics have a group of traits that color how they do things in life and who they choose to do them with.

Much like with alcoholics, there is a twelve-step program to help.  And I have started to work with that program.

But I wanted to talk about what I am going through as I try to change myself and thus my life, and so, since my girlfriend is out there blogging about what a horrible guy I was, I figured I might revive my blog to get in on some of that "I am a horrible guy" action.

I don't really expect you to be here.  I am writing this for me and if you show up, then yay you.  But if anything I write here is of use to you, it would be nice of you to let me know.

So I am back.  Let the fun begin.

Hang Around a War Zone, Get Killed

The mainstream media decided to come up for air from the Foley pseudo-scandal long enough to find a different needle to stick in their Bush administration voodoo dolls. It is about the Iraq War (the stand by when the scandal of the minute isn’t working out) and it comes courtesy of our friends (?) the British.

An ITN journalist who died during the beginning of the Iraq War was ruled to have been “unlawfully killed” by U.S. forces by a British coroner. This coroner, from a distance of many miles and now many years, somehow was able to determine that the journalist did nothing to contribute to his death. As a result, the National Union of Journalists and the reporter’s widow are calling for U.S. forces involved to be tried for War Crimes.

Let’s say the coroner with telescopic-time-vision is right and the reporter did nothing to contribute to his own death. That does not ipso facto make the U.S. action a war crime. It could have been, oh, a mistake. To leap to the conclusion that if he’s not responsible for his death the U.S. committed a war crime is requires Olympic triple-jump logic. One has to operate from the assumption that the U.S. forces wanted to fire on journalists in general, fire on him specifically, and ignores the very real possibility that it was an accident!

If there were some evidence that the journalist was directly targeted with intent because he was a journalist, then maybe a war crime trial would be warranted. But nothing in the report I read suggests intent, even as it puts the blame for the fatal fire on one of two U.S units in the area. But there was a war going on, and it doesn’t take Mensa level smarts to know that if you’re hanging around a war zone, there is the very real possibility that you could be killed, especially if you were not embedded, as the ITN crew was not.

ITN defended the principals and necessity of unilateral journalism, but there is a price to be paid for such detachment and sometimes death is it. There was a remark that no story is worth dying for. If they truly believe that, then they need to stop covering wars, because in wars good people, bad people, innocent people and reporters all die.

Anybody still think U.S. forces should be subject to the International Criminal Court?

Moving my pic in house

The server hosting my Lightning Man picture is going bye bye and the image server I have for auctions doesn't seem to get along with Blogger, so I am posting the picture to a blog entry in order to have Blogger host the picture themselves.

How John McCain Lost My Vote

Some of you who know me personally might find it more surprising that John McCain ever had my vote. But he did, provisionally. After Rudy Giuliani, he was easily the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, and since no Democrat I could vote for is even going to run on that side, I had made peace with voting for him in the event that Rudy doesn't run. He had done some things that made it seem he was getting tired of being a RINO and in the most important matter on the table today, the War on Islamofascism, he was on the "fight it" side. And then he came out for coddling terrorists.

No, he doesn't call it that. He, having been a prisoner of war, has a sensitivity to mistreatment of the captured. I accept that and understand that. But being mean to someone is not torture and coercion of someone to get information is not evil. Yes, it's not the way we choose to behave and live, but much like disciplining your kids, it something you do now to lessen chance you'll have to do worse things later, in this case putting innocent civilians in body bags.

The mark of a mature individual, a father, a teacher, a civic leader, is putting your own personal peccadilloes aside for doing what is best for that which you have charge. It does not protect the United States to allow members of Islamofascist organizations to keep their murderous secrets. If John McCain as a senator is not willing to put the country ahead of his personal well being, as George W. Bush has done, then I cannot in clear conscience vote for him.

So I sincerely hope he loses the nomination or, barring that, that the Democrats nominate someone with some sense. Or else I'm taking my ball and going home.

To Australia.

A Bad Case of the Stupids

The U.S. House and Senate are having bad cases of the stupids right now and if the party in power doesn't wise up, they'll be the party out of power. The first case of the stupids comes from their reaction to William Jefferson (D - Louisiana) having all that cold hard cash. There has been a long-standing unwritten rule that congressional offices are sacrosanct. The reason given for it is separation of powers. But if followed slavishly with no exceptions, it would allow representatives to have an untouchable base from which to conduct all manner of criminal activity. Theoretically, under this gentleman's agreement, as long as the representative kept the body in a file cabinet, he could commit and get away with murder without impunity. To people out here in the real world, this is patently absurd. And yet, rather than be happy that the FBI has possibly rooted out corruption in what is supposed to be an honorable body, they're in a flap because William Jefferson's office was searched. With a subpoena. Congress, which issues subpoenas of their own like candy, wants the right to be able to ignore one. How out of touch you must be to not realize how out of touch you appear taking a stance like that. Comity of the branches be damned, it looks like you think you have the right to be better than I. Nobody else gets to ignore lawful subpoenas and neither should the offices of a representative.

The Senate is just as tone deaf with the illegal immigration bill. They're so worried about turning off a potential voter base that they are fomenting revulsion an actual voter base: law abiding citizens. Americans (including Hispanics) want the border controlled. Then and only then should the question of what to do about all the illegals in here should be addressed. Offering illegals a smorgasbord of goodies (whether or not you call it amnesty) will just motivate more illegal immigration. This is not rocket science. That is, unless you're one of the one hundred men and women trying to curry political favor instead of do the right thing.

Republicans are running scared they're going to lose in the fall elections. If they keep ignoring the regular people they will.

How Green Is My Family?

Our latest rant against wacko environmentalism started with my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law has moved in with my wife and myself for an extended basis (read: forever) and in the room that is now hers she would like a three way bulb in her lamp. Having recently discovered the virtues of replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents for people who cannot be bothered to actually turn a light off (yes, my son and wife's ears are burning), I went searching on line to see if there was a compact fluorescent replacement for the three way bulb (there is).

That's where I ran into an article about replacing the incandescent bulb with the fluorescent. No problem, there, as it is really smart thing to do. The problem is that instead of just advocating people do this, it was arguing that people should be mandated to make the change, with a punitive tax on incandescent bulbs. This is why the very changes and reforms greens supposedly want to happen are so slow in happening or do not happen at all.

Using a reel mower to mow a small yard or replacing incandescents with fluorescents are good ideas (both of which this Right Wing Arch Conservative actually does). But no one wants an idea, no matter how good, shoved down their throats. And most people resist people who think they know better than you do what's best for you. And that's where the green movement goes so horribly wrong.

It's okay to believe that people should replace their light bulbs, but why not help them see it to be in their own best interest rather than just trying to force them or tax them into the behavior you want? Taking the proselytizing approach is the route that the right tends to follow more often and it seems to have paid off.

So if you really want to change the way people interact with their environment, why not try it one person at a time.

How to get oneself a fatwa.

Announcer: It's time for 'Life With the Islamofascist Family' Today's Episode: Over Your Dead Body

Kalila: Mo, I'm worried about Leila.

Mo: Did I give you permission to worry? You must do as I say or--

Kalila: Death!!! Yeah, I know. Anyway, she's hardly been eating, hasn't kept her mind on her studies. I think she is in love.

Mo: Is she pregnant? If she has defiled the family--

Kalila: Death!!! Yeah, right. Anyway, I think you should talk to her.

Mo: Why should I talk to her?

Kalila: Because the last time I tried to talk to her instead of you, you threatened me with...Death!!!

Mo: Oh, yeah. That's right.

Leila: Bye mom, bye pop. I'll see you later.

Mo: Wait just a minute young lady! Where do you think you're going with that dress a full inch off the ground? You know the punishment for going out half naked!

Leila: Death!!! Yeah. I know.

Kalila: What is his name dear?

Leila: Whose name?

Kalila: The boy.

Leila: Sssh.

Mo: Is there a boy? If he so much as looks at you--

Leila: Death!!! Yeah. Got it. His name is Kadim.

Mo: I do not approve!

Leila: But dad, you'd like him. He's planning to be a suicide bomber!

Mo: So when can I get to meet this Kadim?

Announcer: Join us again next time for 'Life with the Islamofascist Family'

Mo: Or else it's Death!!!

Dome Decree

With the bombing of the golden domed mosque in Iraq, even more people are losing their resolve and declaring Iraq a failure. The sad thing is that it is a harbinger of success. We're winning and the only way we're going to lose is if we let the images confuse us from the facts.

Several analysts have noted that the act of blowing up the mosque (and thereby trying to incite civil war) is from a tactical standpoint an incredibly risky maneuver, on par with the "Hail Mary" pass at the end of a football game (if I may mix religions for a second.) A civil war might mean the USA won't get the democracy from Iraq they might want, but if one fails to ignite it would give the populace even more incentive to coalesce around an Iraqi identity. Moreover, it could further turn the people away from the Wahabist / Islamofascist interest and toward the USA.

24 March 2006:
I wrote the above immediately after the bombing but never finished it in a timely manner. But I came across the draft today and decided to finish it now. Civil war isn't happening. Considering how much the media would love to report a true Civil War, the things they are reporting happening don't rise to that level. The fact that the US and UK forces haven't had to mobilize to retake the country says to me that the country, while still as chaotic as has marked the end of the war, is not fighting itself.

And while I am on that subject, let me remind everyone talking about us losing the Iraq War: we won the Iraq War long ago. What's going on right now is the fight for the peace. Saddam Hussein is no longer in power and if we wanted to control any particular region of the country we could. What we are going through is the dead end nastiness that people seem to forget goes on even after you win. No one would dispute that the Union won the U.S. Civil War (that is to say the War of Northern Aggression; I live in the south now), and yet some Booth fellow still managed to shoot Lincoln.

Assuming they embrace republican democracy, peace will come to Iraq eventually, and the dome destruction could be the first sign that our boys and girls will be coming home.

See You In The Funny Pages

As a religious man, I can appreciate how you might find a cartoon about your religion unfunny, even inflammatory and blasphemous. But as a man with reason and sense, if I truly felt moved enough to do something about it, I would direct my wrath at the perpetrator, not people unrelated to the source of my offense.

Which is why I have a problem with the Cartoon Riots. Muslims who do not like the Danish cartoons have every right to be offended, but no right, none, to destroy the Danish embassy in Lebanon, no right to destroy property and assault people during their protest marches. None.

Adding to my disgust with the situation is the fact that Danish imams have chosen to exacerbate the situation by adding cartoons not from the Danish paper. This is orchestrated and is using the cover of religious outrage for another purpose.

I have been skulling over what the purpose might be and I have an idea: Al Qaeda and Islamofascism are losing. It's getting harder and harder to recruit gullible young Muslims into blowing themselves up. So what better to re-stoke your fervor than an insult to your religion? Get 'em riled up, get 'em blowing up.

But as with just about everything, there are unintended consequences. Europe is wakening to the menace many have called Eurabia for years. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority will find themselves even more isolated from the world. And disparate nations like France, Russia, and the US may finally combine to confront Iran.

Whether or not my theory as to why this was done is right, it is clear that the Muslim world understands the American part of the western world even less than we understand them. To turn a common phrase, they should be careful what they protest about; they might just get it.