A Heavy Burden

The Laundry List is fourteen traits of Adult Children of Alcoholics.  Number six says that we have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults.  This trait has me pegged to a tee.  When I was young I felt like I was the only one in the family that cared about my father.  I made sure he ate, helped him to bed when he passed out on the sofa or the floor.  I even drove him to the liquor store when I got my driving permit because I didn’t want him driving drunk; endangering his life and the lives of others.  When I was twelve, my mother had enough and wanted to leave him.  Although I understood her feelings, I also worried about my father being left alone.  What would happen to him? I’d ask myself.  I can’t count the number of times he fell asleep after putting food on the stove to cook.  This was before smoke detectors.  I would wake up in the middle of the night to the smell of smoke traveling through the house.  It was my greatest fear that if we left him to fend for himself, he would surely die in a house fire.  As an adult, I seemed to have sought out relationships with men that I could rescue.  I had the tendency to confuse love with pity; this is number nine on the laundry list.  I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but almost all my past relationships have been with men that drank, smoked and needed help.  They say hind sight is 20/20 and I can see clearly now that my blinders are off.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.