Letting Go

And I happen to love this post on letting go. What does letting go mean? Letting go is an elusive concept to wrap your mind around, and this post from Recovery is Sexy gets to the heart of it.

What does Letting Go Mean?

My dad

My dad got pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital in March. He quickly suffered multiple complications, went into septic shock, and suffered strokes. After being on a ventilator and unconscious for 2 months, the doctors told us it didn't look like he would improve much beyond his comatose state. We came to terms with the idea that our dad was going to die, but then he began to recover unexpectedly. I had spent a month in California meeting with doctors, monitoring his progress, coordinating the dissemination of information on his health to family and friends. I was in a haze, as my brothers and I also coordinated shifting the caseload of his law practice, paying his utility bills and basically doing all the things it takes to run a person's life.

When my dad started to come to, he couldn't talk because he had a tracheostomy. He would grasp the nurses' hands and look at them intently and mouth out "Thank you." He didn't say that to me, although he did kiss my hand. He gained more consciousness and awareness with time. One day I went to visit and a friend of his was in his room, waiting to meet me for coffee. When I walked in, I was arguing with my brother on the phone, who wanted to sell the furniture in my dad's apartment, and give up the lease to save money while my dad recuperated at a rehabilitation center for around 6 months.

My dad was angrily trying to say something to me. I moved closer to read his lips. He mouthed "waiting for you." I said "Who?" And motioned with his head towards his friend who was waiting for me and gave me an exasperated look. I was early to meet the friend, but that's not the point. The point is that you can never do enough for an alcoholic. After all the time and energy I put into caring for him. I sat by his bedside, holding his hand and talking to him while he was unconscious because the doctor said it might help. I brought his CDs from home and played them for him. I told him stories and when I ran out of things to say, I just told him about what flavor of frozen yogurt I would eat when I left the hospital. And when I left to come back to New York, a friend of his asked him if he missed me and he made a talky motion with his hands and rolled his eyes, as if to say that I talked too much.

It was really painful for me when I got home to feel like all my effort was not recognized or appreciated. But it really shouldn't be surprising, because it never was. So many nurses, doctors, friends and associates of my dad told me how lucky he was to have a daughter like me when he was unconscious. And I kept finding myself hoping that they would tell him that when he came to instead of me. But it doesn't matter if they all told him that, it doesn't mean that he would hear it.

I am so grateful that my dad is alive. It means that we have the opportunity to work on our relationship. I know I can recover from all of this pain and damage done to me and my thought processes and feelings without anyone in my family's support. But in order for my relationship with my dad to recover, he would have to recover too. He's only sober right now because he's still in a rehabilitation center and now he has cirrhosis. So, it's exciting that for the first time in my life, my dad is sober. But it's also scary. I am just grateful for the opportunity. However it plays out is not something I control. I can try to have conversations with my father and he can choose to do whatever he wants with that.

Moles

So, my ex-boyfriend has been e-mailing me lately. But, first a word on the ex... After moving in together toward the end of '08, he became increasingly disconnected and when he passed out drunk on the floor for the second time in as many months, I literally started packing. I couldn't believe that I was back to where I started as a child - watching a full-grown man getting drunk and feeling like I needed to do something about it to help him take care of himself. The first time he passed out on the floor (in the hallway in front of the door to the bedroom), I woke him up and helped him to bed. The second time I left him there. I worried all night laying in our bed that he would vomit and choke on it and die and then his mom would be so pissed at me and on and on, but ultimately resisted the urge to go wake him up from his stupor and get him to bed. I was intent that this was not going to be my lot in life. My lot in life is not to be the caretaker of these men.

As a child, I couldn't wait to leave home. Where I lived in suburban Sacramento, you needed a car to get anywhere. When I was 12, I asked my mom to get me a bus pass just so I would be able to get around and get out of the house without depending on anyone. She said no. Literally the day of my 16th birthday, I was at the DMV taking my driving test. (I failed the first time). And when I left home for college, I never went back longer than a few weeks for the holidays, and even then, I always found a temp job to keep me occupied. And when I graduated college, a week later I moved to New York and have been here for the last 5 years. So I'll be damned if I did all that just so that it would be physically impossible to take care of a man who it seemed so desperately needed taking care of only to re-enact the very situation I was running from here in Brooklyn.

And the week I was supposed to move into my new place was when I got a call from my brother saying that dad was in the hospital. So I was in California for a month, grieving the imagined loss of my father, because the doctors basically told us after a month that he wasn't getting any better and at any point if we made the call, they would "discontinue care." We were planning for the funeral, going through my dad's house when he started to recover and luckily, has continued to do so. That experience brought up all these old issues with my dad and family and when I started reading about ACoAs and attending meetings, I started grieving the loss of my childhood - don't think I've finished that one yet.

And now it's July and I haven't even had the time or ability or whatever to grieve the loss of this relationship and deal with all that. And I'm just so tired of grieving. This is like that carnival game where the moles pop up and each time you smack one down, another one pops up. So here goes... the thing that hurt me the most about our break-up was not the actual break-up or the reasons for it, but the aftermath. We were fighting and accusing each other of all kinds of things when I was getting ready to move out, but when my dad got sick, I thought that that would hit some sort of pause button and that my ex would put everything that was going on aside because of what I was going through. It suddenly didn't seem so important to me. But when I told him I couldn't move out as planned because I was going to California to be with my family, he responded by saying that I would have to help him out with the rent if I stayed any longer. The night before I left, he was aggressive towards me, instigating a fight, and I just didn't have it in me to respond, I was so upset. I literally said nothing as he continued to come at me with various accusations and snide comments. I cried myself to sleep and on the way to the airport the next morning he sent me a text asking me the name of the hospital where my dad was. No apology. No explanation. I didn't respond. He tried to call a few times while I was in California and stopped when I didn't respond.

When I got back and actually did move out, he was cruel, insulting me in e-mails and threatening not to return my deposit. It was ugly and at the point in my life where I was the most vulnerable, weak and broken. I was beyond disappointed in him. Breaking up is one thing but being human is another. I was mad at him almost as mad as I was at myself. How could I have been in a relationship with someone and invested so much into it, only to find out in the end not just that he couldn't "be there" for me when I was going through some shit, but that he couldn't even be civil.

So, then after all that without any further communication between us, he began sending me friendly e-mails in the last couple of weeks about events going on in Brooklyn that I might like or a video of some little girl on YouTube that allegedly looks like me. And I'm just like, what? So I was marinating on how to respond to this newfound goodwill he apparently has towards me, and so I e-mailed him and asked him what I was wondering. I said, what are your expectations of our relationship now that we aren't together? Because initially you were negative and insulting and now you're acting like we're friends. So I need some clarity on what your expectations are so we can discuss it. And I turned it over before I sent it because I wasn't really sure what I was going to get back, but I decided that I don't want him to have the power to reach out to me when he's thinking of me if I haven't agreed that that's how I want our relationship to be.

He actually wrote a pretty honest response. So you never know. I was really prepared for the worst. But I'm learning that people can surprise you when you put your real intentions out there. He said he thinks about me a lot and that he never let anyone so close to him before, and that he's had trouble just writing me off despite his best efforts. He said he would like to be friends, especially considering the fact that I have maintained a relationship with his 8-year-old sister with his consent. (I'm looking around my room to see if the timekeeper is going to call time on me yet). So, I feel that if we are to have a relationship at all, that there are some things we need to talk about and deal with. But I'm not sure I do want to have a relationship with him at all. So I just wrote him back to say I was going to think about it. I guess I have a new issue to marinate on. These damn moles.