Generational addiction is complex and ugly.
While it isn’t a hopeless thing to come back from, it is impossible to mend relationships if no one is willing to take a look at the truth, especially if you are talking about unraveling years and years of effects of trauma, abuse, codependency, enabling, addiction, and mismanaged mental-illness.
So not every family trying to interact with each other after dealing with addiction and its ramifications make it. We don’t all kiss and make up. We don’t all attend group counseling sessions or family rehab visits or collaborative therapy or accept apologies or offer or accept forgiveness.
It’s a hot fucking mess express, and everyone knows it.
And sometimes, it just stays messy and no one wants to touch it.
There are no unicorns, no rainbows, no positive quotes. No hugs or family selfies.
There is disconnection, and minimizing, rationalizing, denying, justifying, and distorting. It’s frustrating.
And I totally get it.
I know how good it feels to push away the raw, real, shame-ridden truth for as long as you possibly can, and those defense mechanisms are helpful truth shunning aids.
They trick your mind and your heart into feeling like things aren’t as bad as they actually are; into believing that ‘everything is fine’ when in fact, all of the things are anything but fine.
And they do great work.
You can use them for as long as life will allow, or, as long as your own truth will allow. Defense mechanisms are most definitely one of those things that work until they can’t anymore.
But there is no grey area to linger comfortably in.
They either work or they don’t.
So sometimes when you commit to living authentically, you have to walk away.
You have to space between you, and Pleasantville.
Maybe, like me, you have to throw your hands in the air and scream:
“Everything is not fine. No matter how many times you say it is or band-aid it all up, it still isn’t fine.”
So you make new choices.
You decide to do what is best and healthiest and easiest for you to live with every day and you own it.
You believe in the choices that you are making.
You choose to face the pain of walking alone because it hurts less than pretending.
You gather up your pieces of what is left and you keep moving forward.
You stay open to possibilities, but you refuse to allow old mindsets to hold you down.
And you wrap God’s truth around your heart tightly, and you cling to His track record in the restoration department.
The end.