Thanks chicory. Thanks for sharing your story.
It's very difficult for me because my mom will always be in my life. My parents have been married for 25 years and my dad isn't going to divorce her. I told him last night that I wish he had divorced her 10 years ago and taken us away from it all. He said, "I don't know what to do. She's my wife." My family is very close, so if I am around my dad and sister, I will have to be around her too. So, I can I fully detach and not be affected by it if I'll always have to be in contact with her? If I always am in contact with the rest of my family?
Also, I don't think she's going to drink again. I'm not concerned with getting her to stop or recover. I am concerned about my own recovery and know I have to seek it for myself. Like I said before, I haven't been concerned with controlling her drinking or her recovery for a long time. Even if she were to keep drinking, over the past few years I've not been as concerned with the present. Last year when she'd get drunk it was easy for me to ignore it. I didn't care about the current situation anymore, I was just so livid over all the years when I was a child and a teenager that she was like that, all the horrible things she'd done and said to all of us in the past. I'm stuck in the past and can't get over it.
I just have anger from the past 10 years. I don't know how I'll ever really get over it, even if she were to completely turn her life around right now. How do you get over when a parent does that to you? I know, I know, I have to accept that it's a disease and it was the disease that did it, not her. I don't think I'll ever accept that fully, that she didn't have some choice in it. How many times had we tried to get her help? I know she has to want it for herself. I understand. How many times had people tried to talk to her about it? When she was sober, how could she not see how badly she was hurting her family and at least make a small effort to get better? How could she not feel bad enough about what she was doing to her own children? She probanly did, but she just drank more because of it. I know how it works. I'm just not at the point where knowing how it works makes a difference in how I feel. I guess I'm not ready to give up the anger yet.