Crazy

I had thought I was crazy, and I didn't know why.

As you all know, I am in a recovery group and in therapy since the Boy has been in treatment this past year. In my recovery group, there are people whose loved ones have addictions, mental illness or both.

Jack had workaholism, which some therapists don't see as a real thing. Welcome to America, Home of the Protestant Work Ethic! (As if Catholics, Asians and everyone else doesn't work hard.) Working hard is good! It is normal! There is no such thing as working too hard!

...until your kid ends up in the looney bin and your wife leaves, then maybe you might want to look at how work is impacting your life.

Nevertheless, some therapists don't think workaholism is a real thing. Some regular people don't think it is a real thing. My father-in-law commented that I have nothing to complain about. His mother was married to an abusive alcoholic. I wasn't getting beaten. I should be fine, right?

Actually, it is complicated because I wondered the same thing myself. Jack's workaholism resulted in four tickets to Hamilton on Broadway, a strand of pearls from Japan and a trip to New Zealand. What did I have to complain about?

I began to think I was crazy.

I read about a woman whose spouse would drink after she went to bed. In the morning, her spouse would be on the floor, banged and bruised from his overnight bender. I never had to deal with anything like that. I never measured the level of alcohol in the fridge to see how much someone was drinking. Sure, I would count the number of nights on call on the calendar, highlighting them in yellow. But I got Hamilton tickets? How could that be a problem?

I was talking to a friend in my recovery group who read me a passage in a therapy book: workaholism results in emotional abandonment of the family.

Finally, I am not crazy.

I am not crazy. 

I could say that the workaholism paid for all of the trips and fun stuff, but Jack still had a job that he would have gotten paid the same without emotionally abandoning the family. 

Now, my recovery friends would say I should focus on me and not my qualifier, but this is about me. For so long I had thought I was crazy. I thought I was nuts. I didn't know why I was so uncomfortable, uneasy.

Validation is key. It is the first step in acknowledging a problem, and from there I can start to address it.