Originally Posted by
ch1 
Figured I'd post an update as some nonsense has happened since and really brought me down.
After she got out of rehab a few weeks ago she seemed much better. She was expressing herself and not letting her home situation cause her to stress out and drink. Then last Friday I call her and she sounds clearly intoxicated. I call her out on it and she denies it. I tell her the next day that I'm not going to come visit her since I know she's lying, and that Monday she calls and admits to it. I proceed to tell her that I realize I can't trust her at all anymore and that we need to just stop talking.
So for this whole past week I didn't talk to her at all and she didn't attempt to talk to me. Flashforward to Saturday night. A friend of mine tells me his girlfriend saw my ex's name come up on an app that tracks arrests in the area. She sends a photo of the mugshot and arrest and it's my ex. Arrested mid Friday morning for another DWI and currently in jail for who knows how long.
I guess I don't know what to feel. I knew there'd be problems, but I didn't expect her to get another DWI. I don't even know what she was doing driving around at that time anyway, as she didn't have meetings on Fridays.
I'm worried what's going to happen to her now, even though I know it doesn't concern me at all anymore. That's 3 DWI's in about a year. I know the first two were combined into one case, but still. That fact that she's in jail is shocking. I still feel really horrible and don't know what to tell myself.
Either her life will spiral out of control and she'll stop, take stock of the situation and decide that enough is enough. Or she won't.
For yourself, you can either decide to have an emotional involvement from a distance, and feel terrible about matters which are entirely beyond your control and not your responsibility - or you can stop maintaining your contact with her, directly and indirectly, mentally wish her all the best in life - and let her go.
Watching someone you care about increasingly self-destruct while you stand there helplessly is the stuff of nightmares, and gut-wrenching - I know. I've found with family members that the only thing to do for my own sanity was detach with love, and recognise that they had their own reasons for acting the way they did - which were nothing to do with me.
Just as only she can decide whether to carry on drinking or not, only you can decide whether you want to have some kind of emotional investment in her or not.