The minute he opened the door the smell of stale cheap wine and
cigarettes flooded all his senses.
Though the house was silent, echoes of loud and hostile
voices rose up within him threatening to bring him to
his knees.
-Deep breaths, deep breaths, he whispered to himself.
After a few minutes of doing some deep breathing he felt his
tense body starting to relax. He hung his jacket on the
hook in the hallway, slung his backpack over the shoulder
and then entered the ''battlefield''.
-To others this may be the living room, but to me,
this is the battlefield, he thought to himself.
In the corner of the room, hanging over the edge of
the couch with a pool of vomit on the floor in front of her,
laid his drunken mother.
His heart sunk. Like hundreds of times before.
And like hundreds of times before, his was the job to
clean her up and get her into bed.
Like a well trained nurse he lifted his mother off
the couch and carefully carried her to the bedroom
and put her in her bed.
The room was in a mess. There were empty wine
caskets, beer bottles and old greasy and moldy
pizza cartons strewn all over the floor.
He let out a heavy sigh.
Though he knew it was pointless he couldn't
stop himself from whispering ; why mom?
He pulled a blanket over his mother, opened a
window and then closed the door behind him.
Walking through the hallway to the kitchen,
he noticed that the walls had a lot of new holes
in them.
-Still crying with her fists I see, he
said to himself.
As he stepped into the kitchen he was taken aback
by the stench of rotting food and dirty dishes
and the floor was covered in broken glass and
smashed plates.
Standing there, in the middle of his mother's chaos,
he had a sudden urge to just run.
Run as far away as he could and never come back.
But he didn't, because he still had memories of a
time when his home used to be neat and tidy
and his mother, ... happy.
-Oh, dad, why did you leave, why couldn't you
have helped her?
His mother had always had anger issues but when she
was sober, she seemed to be able to keep her anger under
control. But, then, when his sister died, everything changed.
Gone was the caring, warm mother he knew.
While he and his father sobbed, cried and grieved the loss
of his sister,
his mother buried her feelings.
She pushed them so
deep inside of herself that she could no longer
reach them.
Well, apparently all feelings except for anger and rage
which fueled by alcohol had seemingly
become her way of dealing with her profound
sense of sadness and loss.
*
Facing difficulties(of varying kinds) most of
us (whether we are aware of it or not), learn to
handle/manage them with the help of our
coping mechanisms/strategies.
There are different ways of defining what a
coping strategy/coping mechanism is, but
my personal definition is this:
It's our ''go-to'' thinking and behavioral method/strategy
that we use when we are faced with internal/emotional
and or external/physical issues.
As far as I can ascertain, our coping strategies often
fall broadly into one of two categories;
healthy and unhealthy.
Unhealthy as in: it prevents rather than helps us
to resolve issues, it puts our health in danger,
it makes us do things we would never do otherwise,
it hurts other people, and rather than improving our
lives, it makes them worse.
Healthy as in: it helps us to deal with and resolve
difficult issues, it is life-affirming and guides our
behaviours to fit with our ethics and morals,
it helps us to care about and for others,
and sticking to them, improves our lives.
Some examples of the most common ''bad'' coping strategies
are: substance abuse, denial, avoidance,
self-harm and negative self-talk(''you're no good,
you're useless, nobody cares anyway'').
Some examples of common ''good'' coping strategies:
dealing with rather than avoiding difficult issues,
sharing our difficult issues/emotions with someone rather
than suppressing or ignoring them, staying true to
our guiding values and ethics and being open
to view our difficulties and issues from
many perspectives.
When faced with a difficult issue/problem,
perhaps first ask yourself: in the long run,
what I am planning to do about this,
will it make things better or worse?
''Problems are not the problem,
coping is the problem.''
(Virginia Satir)
About the image: graphite on paper
(For those of you who may be wondering where I've
been for the last few weeks....... I've been experiencing
really painful back issues and so not been able to
write posts as per usual.)
