Too many Qs...
I'm no stranger to Al-Anon, this is just my first time sharing in this community. My Qs are: My dad (deceased), my mom (recovering), my brother (addiction + NPD), my sister (addiction + depression), and now, most recently, my life-long friend.
What stings the most right now about just finding out about my friend's patterns of addiction, depression, and infidelity, is that he was the one who was there for me every time another one of my family members was in crisis mode.
He witnessed firsthand the emotional torment of wishing I could have found a way to keep my dad's drinking from killing him, and was the first person I called when my dad died. I shared all of the challenges and frustrations of helping my mom through rehab, as it became evident there were deeply-ingrained behavior patterns that sobriety alone was never going to resolve. He heard about all the pain and damage my brother caused that resulted in his marriage ending and losing custody of his kids. And he knows about the falling out I had with my sister, largely resulting from her outbursts that happened when she drank excessively ignoring the warning labels on her multiple medications.
My childhood friend has probably seen me cry more than my own husband of almost 20 years. Despite that, he went and blew up his own life, and I'm finding out about all the pain he caused along the way.
I'm tired. But I'm also grateful when I hit a point in my life when I needed a wake-up call. It's easy to retreat to the same bad habits to cope with the pain that their bad habits caused me. I've been through several rounds of therapy at different phases of my life and each time came away learning something new about myself and to recognize and acknowledge my triggers to better cope.
It's just so sad right now to be at an age where I'm starting to see what happens when people plow through life with unresolved issues. I know my friends' family was/is also incredibly challenging. And I think there is so so much he never dealt with, and we're seeing the result of that now. 20-something me is in there screaming "we've got to DO SOMETHING!" but 40-something me is saying "No, we've been here before. They are the only ones who can really help themselves, and they have to want to."
All I can do is to reassert my boundaries and protect my peace.