(Who me? A cow? No way! I'm a beautiful princess!)"SNAPSHOTS OF DENIAL"
Denial is a large part of the disease of alcoholism. My own examples of denial are, in my opinion, totally outrageous and in the light of sobriety even more unbelievable. Here are just a few.
SNAPSHOT #1
I was living in a household with a husband who worked in food service so was often not home at dinner time. I had a daughter 4 years old and a son 14. Neither of them cooked. One day only the kids and I were at home. I suddenly found myself opening the oven door and finding a cooked chicken inside. (I had no idea about black-outs. I had not the slightest clue that I had 'missing time'.) I looked at that chicken, not remembering having cooked it, not even bothering to mentally calculate the fact that my 4 year old was too young to cook and my 14 year old did not cook chickens in the oven. I had no recollection of having put it in the oven. My mind did the 'denial thing' and just jettisoned any need to understand what was going on out the window, took the chicken out of the oven, and we ate it.
SNAPSHOT #2
After having more drinks than I could continue to count and wouldn't bother to count anyway, I was asked by my husband, "Have you been drinking?" Without the slightest hesitation, I responded, "No, of course not!" This felt like a God's honest truth to me.
SNAPSHOT #3
One day, my best hiding spot was found. There is a laundry room off the kitchen and a large laundry basket on wheels sat in that room. I always had a vodka bottle stashed under dirty clothes and towels. When it was found, my only thought was extreme anger that someone dared to find my perfect storage area. It NEVER occurred to me that there was anything amiss about storing a vodka bottle in the laundry room. I was in total denial.
SNAPSHOT #4
I went into the laundry room (the infamous vodka storage area), opened the washing machine and was nearly knocked over by the stench of wet laundry. I had no idea how or when the laundry had been washed (never made it into the dryer). I, of course, had to rewash, then dry. I denied to myself at that very moment that there was any problem with this picture.
Now I can tell any of these stories in an AA meeting and they will be greeted by loud, raucous laughter. Only alcoholics can laugh at these types of stories while at the same time knowing the deadly seriousness that lies beneath them.
Thank God the 'chains of denial' were finally broken allowing the light of reason and sanity to pour into my life.
Prayer Girl
(Photo credit: Hegyesi Bela)
8 comments:
oh yeah, now we can laugh about them. but they still give me the subtlest chill down my spine...
Wish I didn't get this but I do.
And I am grateful I have a place to share them that will be met with laughter and understanding. Anywhere else it might be met with judgement.
I make no excuses for my addiction and i too can tell these stories in meetings or in my blog and i am OK with it. I am so glad you are too. Isn't it such a wonderful feeling being freed from our self made prisons. Thanks so much for sharing so brazenly honestly about your disease today. I think I will do the same.
I like hearing those stories. And I appreciate the laughter now. I used to not see the humor in drunkalogs. Now I see how unmanageable I was and all of my denial around the alcoholic. So it's easier for me to understand how we all have lived lives of being unmanageable and with denial.
I got a big dose of denial from a mother who also has a son in prison. He is doing 4 years,that's serious time, I know that. She said he didn't do anything wrong, he was there because he had a "big mouth". Uhmm, OK. I should be in prison for life then!
How are you doing?
Hugs!
The laundry room hiding place reminded me of going to after the bar closed parties and taking my vodka or the drink du jour and alway hiding it in the dryer at the hosts house. One time, we heard this explosion and the host was very pissed that there was shattered glass all over his clothes. I left shortly after the "Big Discovery". Same night I hit a curb and broke four wheels hitting a curb. What can I say.
Yes, I should have know that day after my 21 birthday when I called my mom to tell her about waking up to a spotless house with all laundry done and folded with no recollection of having accomplished it and a husband who hadn't gotten home in time to do any of it, that there may be a wee problem with my drinking... specially when my mom laughed and said, "YOU ARE MY DAUGHTER" explaining the MANY times she had experienced that same thing. I KNEW she was an alcoholic my whole life, so why did I not see the ominious warnings? LOL
Glad I now know, and that God continues to fit me for MAXIMUM service! :)
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