Dealing with Another New Realization that Hurts and Helps

How has my drinking has affected my children?

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash

My therapist occasionally brings up how my drinking has affected my children. I ask the kids about it, and their answer stays the same time after time, year after year: We don’t remember it.

Phew, I think. We really dodged a bullet there didn’t we?

My oldest was a week away from his eighth birthday when I quit, my youngest was four. They are nineteen and fifteen now. They don’t remember me drunk, they don’t remember me drinking, so obviously if they don’t remember those things then it didn’t have an influence on them, right?

That has comforted me for years.

I stayed in denial, not aware I was in denial.

You know how, until you can see a thing, you can’t see the thing? All of the work I’ve done on my own attachment style, and yet I was ignorant to the fact that my own children have attachment struggles as well. Because they said the words I longed to hear “We don’t remember you drinking”, I dug no deeper.

Realizing that my drinking affected them was one of those moments when you stare in slack mouthed disbelief, gaping at the enormous elephant in the room that’s been squished up against you the whole freaking time.

Of course years of day-in-day-out exposure to an erratic alcoholic affected my children.

How could it not?

I immediately want to explain to you that I didn’t drink during the day, or every day- as if excuses like that magically change the effect. I know first hand what it’s like to deal with parents who are unpredictable, what it’s like to live on daily eggshells. I did not realize that my children have grown up on eggshells too. I just couldn’t see it.

Until I can.

It hurts.

My oldest had a best friend in preschool. They loved the crap out of each other for two years. There were lots of playdates and fun times at school, then kindergarten time came and they went to different schools. Our families tried to keep the friendship going, did okay for a while, but they saw each other less and less. The summer after kindergarten we moved to another state and that friendship was over.

Losing that friendship started the family story of his fear of getting close to people. I asked him about my observation (that my drinking affected him in ways he doesn’t remember and that could be why he doesn’t trust people) when we were on a walk yesterday. He reminded me that he changed schools a few times, that’s where he thinks his fear of getting close to people comes from. He said he trusts me more than anybody, so me hurting his trust doesn’t make sense to him. I have other ideas, but I didn’t push. I told him whatever he figures out, I’m capable of handling tough conversations, so if he does realize my drinking hurt him we can talk about it.

My youngest spent his first year of life with a mother (me) who toxically over-functioned in a desperate attempt to cover up her downward spiral. And even though it didn’t stay that way, it was still that way more times than I’ve wanted to admit. His first year of life was one of the worst years of my drinking. It makes sense to me now that it would affect him in ways he can’t consciously remember or explain.

This realization…well. It’s new, tender and painful in a way that makes me know I need to wade in, not jump in. It’s comforting too though, figuring out what could be behind some of their struggles and being able to take ownership of my part in them- that brings a sense of relief. Now I, we, know what we’re dealing with. There’s also part of me that is proud of me for being willing to take a look at something painful with both honesty and shame, to not run past it, but to stop and let it catch up to me. Take it in.

I haven’t considered these kinds of conversations I might have to have with my children as they get older, the things I will have to own, the accusations I may have to face. Recognizing my influence and taking responsibility for it is a way I can prepare myself for these conversations so they can be healing instead of hurtful- for all of us. So that I can say “I’m sorry” and mean it. So that I can help repair it.

So much of sobriety and recovery is realizations like this, the realizations come around over and over until you are willing to take them in, then take a deeper part of them in. See more. Say more. Listen more. To take in the hurt, the pain, the regret; but also the relief, the growth, the progress. Neither erases the other. They work together to create a sense of truth that makes it possible to carry on.