AF Daily Thursday, November 27th

[Pamina]

AF Daily Thursday, November 27th

Happy Thanksgiving all!

The issue of support vs abandonment has popped in and out of my head all day, so I thought I'd stop by here before going to bed. Sharing a journey is of course both comforting and powerful. Watching someone on a completely different path can be painful, as I just discovered with a friend who drinks heavily. I haven't seen him late in the evenings for a good long while, on purpose. We have occasional lunches instead. Tonight I stopped by his group and listened to him asking the same question 20 times. His memory is totally gone. There is no pathway that I can take to get through to him on this, and I've given up a long time ago. I can only wait for a potential opening into the subject to come from him, and it may never happen. Earlier in the evening I sat with another group, two of whom have previously abstained for many months. One has now gone back to occasional drinking, the other is reassessing his relationship with AL. I told them I don't know what I'll do in the long term forever, but as long as I feel the least bit wobbly or vulnerable emotionally, I'll carry on abstaining. They were both supportive although that's not their choice at the moment. I was just struck by the fact that we do each need to find our own 'truth' about AL and also that we can't learn lessons on behalf of anyone else. So maybe, WIP, your friend needs to learn something by choosing to mod, but that does not detract from your truth in any way or the path you feel you need to follow.

[Cinders]

AF Daily Thursday, November 27th

Brigid, you are more than welcome here. You chose your path and you followed it!! We are all trying to do the same thing.

Everyone else, I had a most beautiful day with family. I remember every second of it.

Grandsons are spending the night tonight, so the joy gets to continue.

Love to all my MWO friends. I hope your day was as blessed as mine.
Cindi

[A Work in Progress]

AF Daily Thursday, November 27th

Pamina;479369 wrote:
The issue of support vs abandonment has popped in and out of my head all day...

I was just struck by the fact that we do each need to find our own 'truth' about AL and also that we can't learn lessons on behalf of anyone else. So maybe, WIP, your friend needs to learn something by choosing to mod, but that does not detract from your truth in any way or the path you feel you need to follow.

Pamina, I agree. Upon thinking about all this further, and wondering about my own emotional response, this is what I felt best captured it:

It's like going on a trip, maybe a long hike to a certain destination, with a friend. At the outset, you agree it will be a great trip, with a very worthwhile destination; you agree that the difficulties you meet along the way will be well worth the trouble, that you will endure them together. And then, well after you began the journey, your friend says that she has decided that the destination no longer seems attractive to her, and she quits the hike, and goes somewhere else.

That is the precise feeling that I have when something like this happens. It isn't really that I now want to drink (although fears arise; maybe she's right! maybe the destination isn't all that attractive!)... but that I miss the companionship (and the sense of solidarity of purpose), along the way.

On this "hike" we are engaged in, here, it isn't just two people. And we will both lose and gain people along the way. It's OK, it's just how these things go. But, sometimes, it's especially sad and discouraging.

On a much lighter note, I had a lovely T-Giving dinner with friends and their family members, including a 12-week old Labrador Retriever puppy! Of course I fell in love. And dinner was great, too. This is the first T-Giving in many years when I cooked nothing (I took a pie from a great pie-bakery here in town), and washed no dishes. Amazing!

wip