I suspect that most families are familiar with the tricky politics of who spends Christmas where. I’d guess most people have dreaded the thought of sharing the big day with a particularly boring sister-in-law or politically unforgivable uncle.
For those 24 hours, many people I know reluctantly manage the passive-aggressive comments from judgemental grandparents, or sweep over the familial feuds and tensions that play out the rest of the year. Some may think this is stressful. To you I say: congratulations. You’re one of the lucky ones.
I take no pride in claiming to know what is actually stressful, which is the following: whether or not to invite my brother into my home for Christmas. My brother is a drug addict and an alcoholic of nearly 20 years, once (relatively) high-functioning, now unable to hold down a job or stay clean for more than a few weeks. At the time of writing, he is homeless. He is achingly lonely and chronically depressed. He experienced profound trauma at a young age – the type that statistically leads to substance abuse. He is broken and desperate. He’s my big brother, and it’s Christmas. The answer is obvious. Isn’t it?
But tell me, would you invite someone into your home who had spent the last 20 years lying to you? Emotionally manipulating you? Deceiving you into lending hundreds of pounds, thinking you are helping, when all you are doing is aiding and abetting? Someone who threatens to overdose when you don’t offer up the money that they are demanding?
Would you have someone in your home for Christmas who has assaulted your father, threatened to push your mother down the stairs, and will break in through bedroom windows if they decide to? Would you have this person around your three-year-old daughter? And would you invite a person for Christmas who had caused years of anguish and heartache, tricked and cheated you, when you’re experiencing your own personal tragedies, and your partner is facing unemployment? As much as they are suffering, hurt and unwell, addicts can be manipulative, cunning and deceitful. What would you do? What should I do?
Fortunately, the Princess of Wales recently offered up a solution. To mark Addiction Awareness Week, she said we must “fight the stigma” of addiction. To do so, she said, we should offer addicts “love”, “compassion” and a “listening ear”.
Kate has done a lot of work around addiction, so I was genuinely surprised by how insensitive (and naive) her comments were to families like mine – families who have offered nothing but love, compassion and listening ears for years. She came across as almost childlike in the face of the brutal complexity of addiction and the well-known devastation it has on all involved.
And her words were missing a vital component. It’s absolutely no secret that an addict must decide to do the work if they want to get better. As my brother once said to me: “Everyone has their race to run.” Someone suffering with addiction has to choose when their time is up – hopefully before it’s too late. Until they do, love and compassion are simply exploited and manipulated. So however hard the Palace tries to convince us that Kate and William will be modern monarchs, they can’t convince people like me that when it comes to addiction at Christmas, love is all you need.
If my brother does come to our home, it won’t be easy. What do we do about presents? Booze? How long will he stay for? Will he ever leave? What will we talk about? Do I have to explain why he’s not living in our spare room, and could I if I had to? Simply writing these things down makes me wonder if they are selfish concerns in the face of his plight?
Or, because of his actions, has he forfeited it all, and do I have the right to enjoy Christmas with my family? Does his sadness and unresolved trauma override his agency?
As the years go by, I increasingly think not. If anything, I think it’s only by accepting responsibility that he will get better. What I do know is this: if he does come I will feel desperately guilty that I have a loving family and a warm house, and if he doesn’t I will feel exactly the same. When it comes to addiction, it’s only ever a lose-lose situation – for everyone
I don’t know what it is to be an addict. But I certainly don’t undermine the horror of it. From what I’ve seen, it is a cruel disease, a curse, dark magic that takes control over a person’s life, coercing them into destroying anything good they may have once had.
But being the only sibling of an addict, with two ageing parents, a small child and a life of her own, isn’t easy, either. Christmas serves to magnify our lives and our relationships – even at the best of times. Everything is more intense under the glare of the Christmas lights. With my brother, it feels like any minute now the lights will blow, the tree will catch fire and everything will be destroyed. Yet again.
For much of his adult life he has lived abroad, and so this wasn’t a dilemma we faced. He could never afford the flights home. But he returned to the UK a few years ago.
In that time he bounced between my separated parents’ homes, wreaking havoc, harm and hurt. His relationship with both of them is so strained right now he’s not welcome anywhere. This year, things feel more hostile, more explosive – and even more stressful.
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As life keeps teaching me lately, anything could happen. The precarity of being addicted and homeless makes that especially true. We don’t even know where he’ll be living next week, so in some ways a decision feels premature.
Throughout this process, I have found that anger is an easier emotion to face than sadness. Being furious with my brother means I can, albeit temporarily, ignore the tragedy of what his life has become and how we’ve all but lost the handsome, talented big brother I so idolised and adored growing up.
My fury allows me not to invite him into my home. But sadness is a far deeper wound, one that can’t be healed. And when the anger subsides, which it always does, the sadness remains. And so I have little doubt that my brother will be in my house this Christmas, protecting him from the cold, and me from the sadness.
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