This might be a little departure from the general topic of addiction recovery, but hopefully it just helps give (me) perspective to more than just the addict/alcoholic struggles in life.
This week my cousin, who will remain nameless, came to crash on my couch from out of the area to visit a female friend he's been trying to get to know on a romantic level. My cousin is incredibly smart. I don't mean that, in the "he's a great guy, he's smart, etc." I mean, the kid has FUCKIN" GOT EXTRA things in his head that the rest of us mortals don't seem to have, smart! Intellectually he is probably in the top 5 - 10 percentile range, of the nation that is. With the good, comes the bad. He's always been so far ahead of his peers that he almost runs a circle around them only to end up behind them, where he ends up feeling. Socially at least. He's in his late 20's and has yet to have what he defines as any type of "real relationship".
So, he drives 700 miles to spend time with this girl who he's nuts about and has known since he was practically a kid and is crashing on my couch. On the way to go see her in a play, he gets a text message from her basically stating that she's been meaning to tell him that she's begun seeing someone but didn't want him to find out by running into this other guy after the play. The side note was, I, as his older cousin, who loves his younger cousin very much and wants to see him happy has to read this text to him b/c he hands me his cell phone while he's driving and says "Will you read that to me?" (because it was long). So I get handed his "Dear John" text message and am suppose to find an easy way to break this to him? Que the heart wrenching music!!
Luckily, I am able to steer my gut wrenched cousin over to my buddy's house who helps talk him down off the proverbial ledge a bit after a few hours of talking and laughing, four of us talking, venting, laughing, crying about the toils of life. It becomes apparent that although my cousin has never been a drinker or drug user, he has his own, and entirely real escape mechanisms. Video games. Isolating. Avoiding people. He escapes the tragedies of life by further withdrawing from the people who constantly bring him to the intersection of "What's the point Blvd" and "Hopeless Way". I began to cry at one point.
I realized that drugs and alcohol really aren't the only methods of escape. I mean, I know that already, but it became even more apparent as my cousin was spilling his guts (and this is someone who internalizes all his feelings, almost always!) about the futility of life. I had to admit, as much as I hated it, I understood exactly where he was coming from. There isn't always a happy ending. Sometimes life just DOES suck! Sometimes just letting someone say that, feel that, acknowledge that is the best medicine. We can't fix these type of wounds. Especially not when they are years and years old with lots of cobwebs, cracks and dust.
As we were all sitting around the living room, talking about the aggravations of life I said I wished people without addictions had a 12 step program to help with life like we alcoholics do, my cousin chimes in with "Life Sucks Anonymous" - SCORE!
LIFE SUCKS ANONYMOUS
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