megamay

I'm new here and SO happy to have found this place! I've been reading a bit and identifying with pretty much everything. I will try to keep it short, but I know it will end up being long.

My mom is an alcoholic. Growing up she was my best friend. I didn't have much of a social life and would come home from school and hang out with her. I talked to her every day in college even. I always thought she drank too much, but refused to admit that she was an alcoholic. She was mostly functional. By a VERY young age my sister and I had figured out that if we wanted candy or more dessert, we just had to wait until about 8:30 to ask because she would then give us anything. She was usually passed out by 9 or 10.

Then I moved out and got my own life and then my sister moved out and got HER own life, and it's been downhill ever since. The past couple of years she has just been getting worse and worse. She's depressed, has anxiety and is drinking so much that she has fallen and busted her face up, peed herself a few times, can't hold a job, and now she can't even hold a conversation when I'm pretty sure she's NOT drunk. She's been good at hiding it so she could just be drunk every time I talk to her, but it seems like her brain is just not the same. She tried to quit in July and had withdrawal. Now she swears that she's only drinking beer, but she's spending a LOT of money that she doesn't have on SOMETHING.

Anyway, every time I talk to her I get upset. I decided that maybe I could help her if I told her I wouldn't talk to her until she got help. I even gave her a check made out to a counseling center to get the help. She didn't go. She didn't even call me after the first two times. It's like she just doesn't care! So I started talking to her again three weeks later. but I don't WANT to talk to her. she only complains about her life. She doesn't ask about me. She doesn't ask about my daughter. My brain knows that it's her illness, but my heart tells me she just doesn't love me. She certainly was ready to give up all contact with me in order to avoid talking to a therapist.

I have a good friend who has been through the mental health, substance abuse ringer with herself and her parents and she's telling me to hold my ground, not talk to her. do whatever I need to take care of me. But I just feel like such a bitch for not talking to my mom, for cutting her out of my life. Doesn't that just make ME the bad guy? I have to start planning my daughter's birthday party though, and I don't want to invite her. It will just upset me, but I feel like I will regret it if I don't. How do you know where to draw the line?!

Mracoa

No, not at all. Don't feel bad that you can't fill the void in her life. That is up to her, not you.

I guess it's different for everyone. I invited my father to my wedding, even though I was terrified. Only one real big embarassement, but it was well contained. (He mistook my mother for my mother in law. 12 years after they divorced he couldn't recognize his wife of 11 years).

You probabaly already know where your line is. The trick is building up the resolve and tools to enforce that line, wherever you decide to draw it.

Kialua

How is your Mom affording to live? Is she functional? If she gets to the point where she isn't taking care of herself you could try to get power of attorney and get her committed. Read my blog about that with my sister and Dad, a bit different situation but maybe helpful anyway.

It's so sad to go through this, I know. My folks never cared about me and my life either, it was always them and their needs and misery. Don't bother being offended or hurt by it, it just is, sorry but get used to it. Now you are the parent. It's up to you to decide how and when to have or not have contact. I would go about once a month, and call when my Mom was widowed every other day. Then stepped up to once a week. Just to soothe my conscious. She wasn't the alcoholic but she enabled and never apologized for the brutal beatings and hell we lived in on her watch.

My advice is keep this away from your kids as long as you can. They don't need to know or carry our burdens. Good luck.

CookiesAreDone

I haven't been here for a while even to lurk, but after seeing my own mother Friday (whom I have disowned) I have felt the need to be here and maybe help someone as I have been helped. Sadly, I have no words of wisdom as I question every decision I have ever made in regards to my very narcissistic pathological lying may-or-may-not be sober mother.

I think however, if you have to ask yourself whether or not it is in your child's best interest to allow your mother to attend speaks volumes.

You are not the bad guy for wanting to end a cycle of hurt. Guilt is a powerful tool. Don't let her use it.