I have been working on detaching for 3 years now.  Being a complete co-dependent mess if I can step away at all that is real progress for me. In the beginning my only way to pull away was to be angry. I could unleash my anger and frustration and walk away with no guilt. I would be so proud of myself thinking I had made such progress but within a day or two (if that) I would be right back in the middle of another storm.

It took very little to coax me back in. Any cry for help would send my motherly instinct into high gear and unfortunately my addict knew that too. Rushing in and saving the day for momentary relief was a gift of mine. I could handle any situation and fix any problem and my addict son would be happy and id be able to breathe. Then the hamster wheel would start again. He would get into trouble. I would fix. He would be ok (for awhile) and round and round we’d go. This has been repeated for the last ten years. The insanity of this is I never recognized this pattern or my role in it.  I never saw this was only temporarily fixing my discomfort not his illness.  That any reprieve from the craziness of the day in day out was only aiding in his addiction gaining a tighter hold. He never learned consequences of his falls and I learn to band-aid all of his problems so I could stop the hurting. Wounds so open and painful neglecting the real treatment we were (and in some ways still are) running that maze. No direction or maps to follow, aimlessly scrambling around trying to find our way out.

It was not until the last year or so that I started to see what I was really doing. To him and myself . How could I not be there for my addict when he needed me most I repeated this often and was what kept me going but now I was starting to ask a different question. How can I be there for my son when he needs me the most and the answer is quite different. Its obvious now that the only way I can be there for my son is to not be there for the addict. To not Fix! To Not control!

To detach looks very different to me now, and it doesn’t follow anger. Its preceded by love for myself and him. Realizing that allowing myself to sit in my discomfort and him to sit in his means opportunities for development. For each of us to govern our own decisions and therefore consequences we would actually attain comfort and peace in knowing we have the control over our individual lives and what those can look like. We dictate our destination and not just the journey.

I have to detach every minute of every day to accept who i am,  not protect the addict but love my son and to respect the difference. Until you are looking at each as individual entities you will not be able to hold everyone together. As I’ve said before to hang on you must let go!!