Pauly, i am sorry to hear what you are going through. The pain and the heartache are unbearable some days.
I lost my brother through al over ten years ago and i was on the verge of being an alcoholic then, still had a bit of control but not much. The anger i felt was awful. I was very close to my brother growing up, it was him and i against the world really and then he got with the wrong people and went his own way in his teen years. we still kept in contact spasmodically and he then came back into my life in his mid 20's. he was a drunk and angry but we still had that brother and sister bond. al slowly took over his life and other drugs but al mainly. he was turning out to be not a nice person, angry, abusive and always known as Andrew the drunk. I tried to help him and i still think i could have done more, the guilt is still there. the children still remember him as "uncle andrew the alcoholic", that is all they saw as children. But to me he was my brother, the only one i had and i lost him to drugs. I always thought to myself that i would never be as bad as he was, that i could handle al and not end up like him but at the end of my drinking career i was just as bad as him drinking daily. It didnt bring him back which is what i wanted so much, i didnt like Andrew the drunk but hell i would have any Andrew to having him not at all.
I didnt really grieve Andrew until i was sober. No one talked about him and i surely didnt as i felt angry and also guilt and shame that i was turning out just like him. Why could i have not done something more, why did he not chose to stop drinking, why did he leave me when he was all i had (more so growing up), why did al take the one person who got what we had been through as children. Now i have grieved sober, now i know why Andrew drank and why he could not or did not stop drinking, his pain was too much to bear in life and he just could not stop. Now i have been through it, i get it finally.
Each and every time i talk about my brother i cry, i miss him still. I miss the man that al took from me all those years ago so I grieved sober as he deserved, i had too to move on, the pain inside hurt and i wanted it out to move on. Now i know that Andrew is looking at me with a smile on his face, saying to me "you've got this sis". His favourite saying to me as children growing up.
Al took and took and took and won, you dont need al Pauly to deal with grief (says i who got the medal for it). When i drank after he died i was so god damn angry then sad and hurt and every time i drank i repeated the same story. When i stopped drinking i put Andrew away in my head for awhile to be dealt with later so it took me until my 2nd year of sobriety to grieve properly for him and look at his life logically to understand the why's of his addiction and understand and really "get it".
Take care of yourself Pauly, there are a lot of people who love you and a lot better ways to deal than drinking as we know but i get how you feel and i get it now. I just miss him.
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