Blame Game

Getting over the blame game

I don't know too many people that haven't been scarred by something in their past, especially their childhood.  We are products of our parents child rearing, their successes and their failures.  It's not all their fault if its something that has been passed from one generation to the next.  Somewhere, somehow, someone has to break the cycle.

In my family it was alcohol abuse and rage.  Both sets of my Grandparents were raging alcoholics, if it goes back farther than that I can't be sure, either every one has passed on or no one will admit the truth, but in my family it seems to be a learned "behavior"

After going through therapy and seeing how things came down the "line" and knowing long before therapy that if I wanted the cycle to be broken it would have to start with me.  My Mother broke her own cycle by choosing not to drink, but she ended up marrying a man that couldn't help himself. So in the end, the cycle continued.

My father was the oldest of 7 children, he seemed to take the brunt of my grandfathers alcoholic rage, therefore when he became one himself he took it out on his first born, my brother, who in turn took it out on my older sister and myself. He was my abuser, my tormentor the one who tried to break me.  Its hard to hold anything from my past against my brother now that we are both adults for he is not my abuser anymore (scared too I'm sure) and I am not the scared little girl unable to speak up for myself in fear of being beaten. (again) Telling on him was not an option, the threat was a beating worse than before.

I broke the cycle for myself, I broke it by speaking about it. I broke it by not marrying anyone like my father, I broke it by getting help.  I was harder on my first born like my family before me, but I saw what I was doing early enough to stop it. I had to learn to let go of the "rage." I had to stop being the victim and realize it was over and I survived, and I had to realize somewhere someone had it way harder than me and I was humbled by that.

In my teen years I more than dabbled with drugs, alcohol( self medication?) and taking many chances with my life (literally) I was pushing the envelope to see how far I could push it and survive, at what point would I feel alive and say, "whoa!" I walked away from everything when I found out I was having a child of my own.

I quit the drugs, the booze, the risks and even the cigarettes that I had taken up at the wise old age of 12.  I was going to be a Mom and I was 22.  For that child I was going to break all the cycles. I am stunned by the fact that most people can't give up that kind of lifestyle for the sake of their children.  If I expect my children to abstain from that kind of behavior than I must too! So when each of my children finished their drug awareness programs in grade school and came home and asked me if I too could pass a drug test or a sobriety test, with a clear conscious I could say YES!

I wonder, could you?