I shared at that meeting about how I have always felt like I have to prove to someone that I’m worthy of love, how it has sabotaged my love relationships, and how it all began with my mother, who left my dad and me when I was three

Kim had imagined that coming home would be like “a utopia,” she said, but she was a stranger, and everyone was furious. “I realized I didn’t know my kids anymore,” she said. There was tension in the house over who was the mother figure. She heeded the advice of a counselor at an outpatient clinic. Let them be angry. Let them say what they need to... See more

Perhaps a better metaphor would be a spouse facing illness and refusing treatment, the anger that could bring. Even so, I want to believe I did alcoholism to myself. It flatters my independence, no matter how much damage I did.