The Question That Begs to be Asked. Why?

     My whole life, all I ever wanted was a chance to start over.  Nothing seemed more necessary than an chance for me to be me without all of the baggage of my family if I was ever going to lead a "normal" life.  By the time I was 23 years old my sister, mother, and father had died.  In a very sad way I got the chance to start over.  That same year I met the woman who would become my wife.  With the exception of her mother, I was about to become a member of a "normal" family.  So, I got married and for quite a while life was really good.  I had a good job, financially things were good and we were doing alright.  Then came addiction.  Whether it was alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, work, money, or sex, it took control of my mind.  I honestly believe that addiction is a mental illness.  Perception and thought processes become helplessly distorted.  Logical thought becomes non-existent in active addiction.  The very thought of making sense of addiction may be crazy to begin with.  I have to realize that I may be trying to get an understanding of something that is not able to be understood.
     So I got this new start I always wanted and my life still became everything I never wanted it to be.  How does everything change for the better and yet I end up being an addict just like my parents?  I have given this a lot of thought.  Everything didn't change or more accurately everything changed, except me.  I was still the same person who lived in that chaos of my childhood and the trauma of my adolescence and the loss of my early adulthood.  Even though everything else had changed, I still hated me.  I have never been ok with who I was.  The idea of being anyone else than who I was always seemed so attractive to me.  I never wanted to deal with myself, my emotions, my issues.  If I could find a way to not feel what I felt, I would find it.  This entire process would just happen subconsciously.  Looking back my behavior patterns never stood out to me, they were all I ever knew.  My addiction has been there my whole life.  At times my addiction may have been dormant but it was there.  Addiction made every effort to make sure that the anxiety, loss, and trauma that I knew growing up would be all I would ever know.  Luckily through NA, in-patient treatment, and individual counseling I had found help and started to be able to piece this all together.  Everyday I find another piece.  What the puzzle will look like when finished remains to be seen.