Communication

I think I would have never become an alcoholic if there was better communication in my family. My family is very good at not talking about anything. My Father was abused by his (probably) schizophrenic Father. His entire family never talk about it. They are so good at putting a happy face on bad things that my brother actually named his son after my Dad's monstrous mentally ill Father. My Mother brought her own non-communication skills to the marriage. Her oldest sister had a different Father than the rest of the 11 siblings- my Grandmother had a first, brief marriage as a teenager. No one knew this until my Grandmother died. My own Mother was a 17 year old High School dropout with a shotgun wedding and hid this from all of us. When Mom and Dad combined, they excelled at making sure we never communicated about anything uncomfortable. My sister got pregnant at 17 and they proceeded to act like it never happened. They adopted Nick and didn't tell him until he was in his 30's. So..... I was raised in this family where we would never, ever talk about anything bad. As I result, I kept a lot of things inside. Things that followed me like a dark dark cloud. Things that made me miserable inside my own head. Things that somedays made my life feel like hell. BUT, I was taught well and threw myself into acting like everything was OK. After years of wrapping myself around my own axels with unexpressed anxiety, fear, worry, and anger I drank to medicate myself and help me not think about every bad thing I was expressing. If I had just managed to talk about my feelings and make connections, I don't think I would have ever become an alcoholic. In fact, I'm sure I would not have. It wasn't until AA that I had people I could talk to that understood the stupidity and weirdness of this disease and could help me find my way out.