I'm having a bit of difficulty here.

Yesterday morning I received the sad news that my mother has relapsed. She'd been sober for about 6 months. I have ostracized myself from my entire family so have barely had contact with her for the past couple of years, so I learned that she has begun drinking again via facebook messenger, from my little sister.

Last August, when my mother called me to say the same thing, I initially responded to her by reciting what I had learned in addiction books. I was impressed with how numb and prepared I felt. My ultimate goal back then was to feel nothing, to always have the perfect thing to say, and to live in my head. I'd been chased way out of my body long before. I said: "This is an illness, relapse is OK, what's important is what you do now, you don't have to keep drinking, how bout you call your AA friends, this doesn't have to be a big deal, maybe it's just a symptom of your disease, it doesn't have to turn into a binge, we all still love you,  yada yada." I was still labouring under the delusion that what I said mattered, you see. Then the second I hung up the phone, I was surprised to find that my legs gave way beneath me, I crumpled to the floor, my chest became a vice and I went straight into a PTSD panic attack. I pretty much remained in that PTSD panic attack for the next few months. Everything that had ever happened to do with alcoholism, that I hadn't dealt with, seemed to be triggered and hit me at once. I was swallowed whole by it. Completely consumed. I could feel the stable, happy, harmonious life I'd built for myself slipping out from under my feet. I didn't have anyone to talk to or receive help from. I was expected to continue being a partner, a mother and a productive staff member at work.

For some reason, my mind decided that this would be the binge that would kill her. She's 50-something and has had serious alcoholic seizures, has damaged herself with multiple suicide attempts, and all sorts of health problems from excess drinking. I was absolutely convinced she would die this time. How long can a liver hold up? She's been drinking like this since she was 15! It seemed preposterous to me that I just accept that it would kill my own mother. People who get a cancer diagnosis don't just say "I'm gonna die! That's cool, nothin we can do about it. Let's just leave the person with cancer at home alone, untreated, and get on with our lives. We've got other things to do and besides, we must look after ourselves, mustn't we? That's the name of the game here." If someone said that about cancer, we'd have them sanctioned. We'd tar and feather them. Interestingly, now, I don't feel the same. I must have got it all out of my system. If she dies, it's what's right for her, if she doesn't, it's not time.

Her drinking has resulted in the death of an innocent man when she was driving drunk, her imprisonment, all my siblings being put into foster care, her stealing a car, her seriously injuring a young woman who now needs a walking stick, multiple car accidents - that was what I was afraid of. She doesn't just quietly get drunk. She doesn't even just limit her abuse to the little sphere of her house. She does severe damage. She's like a loose cannon out in society. It was inconceivable to me to just leave her out there, drunk and at large, poised to do God-knows-what. It felt crazy to me to just sit back and see what happened, when she might create harm that was preventable. Surely it had to be preventable if I could see it coming? I felt a responsibility not only to her, and to myself, but to our community, to do something constructive.

So that's the brick wall I bashed my head against for the next few months. I'm really familiar with that brick wall, I first found it when I was about 6. "How can I get mummy and daddy to stop drinking?" Gosh, you wouldn't believe the tactics I've tried over the years! Actually, I'm sure you would.

I did at least have my wits about me enough last year to know that I couldn't do anything unless mum was willing to do something. It had only taken me a couple of decades to grasp that old chestnut, I think a gold star is in order! For the first couple of months I did just leave her to it and made no contact, and spent every waking minute worried sick, waiting for a devastating phonecall of some description. Then she said she wanted help, and that's when I jumped into action and involved myself, to no avail. Alcoholism isn't understood by any professionals around here. Or maybe it is. Either way, there's no help.

Eventually, last time, she became sober, through no intervention of mine. Meanwhile I'd nearly killed myself doing the alcoholism-jive.

In between, I've been forced to do a lot of soul searching and reconsider a lot of my personality. I'd like to say I did it because it was the right thing to do, but no. I did it because life forced my hand. I was shoved between a rock and a hard place - a pretty sacred place to be, as it turns out. Ripe with potential for healing.

So yesterday when I heard, I was surprised by my reaction again. I was calm! I felt genuine serenity and acceptance about it. I'd made progress -but- not- perfection! I went to work feeling full of love (this love feeling is new and novel to me) and I was praying and receiving sane thoughts from HP and it was all considerably different than every other time.

But then, later in the evening, I learned that my youngest sister, who's only 16 and had been living with our mother again during that sober patch, had her own plans. She is going to move out of our mother's house and couch surf, sleeping on the sofas of various friends and aquaintances. She's choosing to be homeless.

This sister had been in foster care since about 4, with zero contact with us. Last year told me that she was being abused by the foster carers and needed to move in with me. So she did. I went in to battle for her and got her out - that took a lot of energy and stress, but I didn't question it at the time. Of course you spend yourself dry and push yourself to the brink to rescue an abused child, what other option is there for the love of God?! Then, in my care, she was cutting herself, burning herself, making herself vomit, threatening suicide, and telling my daughter all the horrible things she was planning to do to herself, like drinking a bottle of bleach. It has always been really, really important to me to expose my children to as little of this as possible. And it was near on impossible for me to deal with, I was reaching my limit of trying to deal with badly wounded people who couldn't see their way clear to help themselves. When my daughter told me she was too scared to go home in case she found my sister dead, I realized I had to have a bit of a break and reconsider the situation. I'd immediately got my sister into various psych services and they were all telling me that she was showing several signs of borderline personality disorder.  At the time our mother was sober and foster care was no longer an option, so I took my sister to our mother's house for the weekend. However, since then my sister has not spoken to me, she went from adoring me to hating me, will not speak to me at all, and now does not want my help. I offered her help yesterday, she said no. She has wanted to live this life she plans for a while now, for some reason. Something romanticized in her head about moving from house to house night by night, depending on the goodwill of others? She also has a conscious plan to become a drug addict. It's just not a solid plan, you guys. Being homeless and being on drugs. I do totally understand WHY she's gravitating down there, and I can't see it working out well. She's 16! She should be fighting with her parents about whether she's allowed to watch MA18+ movies or not. That should be the extent of the kid's woes - that and homework. She's making decisions that will affect her entire life, and she's not in her right mind.

When I was younger, one of the biggest points of contention for me (read: agony) was the sheer volume of adults who had not intervened. Copious adults, from family members to priests to nuns to the school to counsellors to police officers, knew that our home was full of violence, rage, drunkenness and neglect. They knew because I was telling them. But no one did a thing. All of those backs turned to me saying 'we won't help', even when I was begging for help, created tremendous pain. That's what I swore I would never do, to anyone. I couldn't understand why a whole society would let children be hit and dragged around by their hair and verbally abused and thrown out windows and hated. I couldn't conceive of how or why. Where was the basic humanity? You see a puppy and saw 'awww', you see a kid with a black eye and say 'let's get this kid outta there'.            So I guess that's what I equate surrender with. Cold, indifferent, uncaring. Were they all in a state of holy surrender? Were they all playing the long game, with intrinsic trust in the divine plan, safe in the knowledge that all turns out well in the end, it's all part of the marvellous tapestry of creation, and one day we'll all look back on this and laugh? If so, why didn't anyone tell me about it?

And now I seem to be in a position where I have to do what I had judged everyone else so harshly for. I have to know that my sister does not have a home, and let it go.

I can't reconcile this yet. I want to, and I do actually believe that one day I will, especially with the help of this place.

I don't understand how or why this disease seems to push people to sever all natural human inclinations. It forces mothers to turn their kids out on the street. It forces husbands to let their wives drive off into the sunset at 4x the legal alcohol limit. It forces children to abandon their fathers to a long slow death. It forces fathers to have their kids arrested and put into jail. All the while, we were built by evolution to stay together. We are conditioned by society that family is everything. Helping family is a no-brainer. This disease seems to challenge and destroy every human connection we have. I'm scared about what it will mean about me if I no longer care. If humanity did not have this urge to help each other, to make things better for one another, you could forget about crowd funding.

WTF is the point of this? It's like this path is trying to turn us into narcissistic sociopaths. "Oh yeah, fine, my teenage sister is homeless now! That's her problem, nothing to do with me. OK, that's that then, what's for dinner?"

The thing is I really really really genuinely know that God isn't made up. It's a real thing. And I feel It, I always have, like it's an intrinsic part of this path, like this alcoholism thing is a particular path that gives us the opportunity to find real spiritual gold. That's what makes it confusing for me because I thought God was all about being with each other and oneness and love and sharing and caring and carrying each others' packs sometimes. 

I keep checking in with myself and I am genuinely OK with the fact that our mother is drinking again. I seem to have somehow come to terms with that.

Last night when I meditated I kind of understood that all my focus is always involved with the past, the future, or other family members. It is never on me, here and now, which, according to the meditation's sane voice, is all I actually have.

So HP seems to be steering me away from involving myself mentally and emotionally with the outcomes for these people.

I guess many of my beliefs are being challenged. Maybe you CAN'T intervene early, or at all. Maybe people CAN'T be saved from lifetimes of pain if you just get in early enough and address their core wounds. Maybe humans CAN'T really help each other, at all. Maybe we DON'T have any responsibility to others or to our community. Considering I came to most of my conclusions about life before I was 10, maybe it's a good thing for them to be challenged.

What's the difference between surrender and indifference? The reality of where my little sister is going, is dreadful. HP keeps reminding me that I don't know the outcomes, but I'd put money on it.

I guess something to consider is that God is everywhere, and it's true that I don't know what will happen, and it's true that I have worried myself senseless about things that have never happened, and it's true that I feel very differently today than I did about topics I was staunchly entrenched in this time last week. 

Thanks sunmustshine :)

That's how I was first interpreting it - her behaviors were requests for help. I've done that myself, plenty of times, particularly from 15-17. I think sometimes when we start modifying our behaviour to communicate that we need help rather than saying it with words, we can get a bit carried away with it and buy into our own act. Then it becomes the identity we act from, we get attached to it. We forget it originated as a way to communicate we were hurting with the intended outcome of receiving help, and start seeing it as our actual selves. I did that anyway. I totally lost touch with myself. Maybe my sister started out as crying for help but is simultaneously resistant to help?? She certainly doesn't trust me any more, since I took her away for a break, and I don't blame her. I can see it from her perspective. The last thing she needed was more feelings of abandonment.

But because I have offered to help her and she has said no, all I can do now is take it a day at a time. She knows she can come here if she ever needs to. Or at least, she has that in writing, who knows what she does and doesn't know.

I'm sick of letting this disease rob me of my entire life.

I'm going to play a game with myself: every time I catch myself thinking about another person's life, I'm going to stop and think of one thing I can do to improve MY situation. Then do it. Cos focusing so much on all the squeaky wheels is definitely, in part, an avoidance strategy.

Maybe surrender is is actually moment to moment. I think I was taking this stance that I would only surrender if I knew everything was alright and I DEFINITELY knew I was doing the right thing at all times. Lol. I was making it really intellectual. I think it's more a feeling of being here now and doing the next right thing.

Great thoughts a4l. Lovely to see you again.

Thank you both for staying with me and reading all that too! It was more of a journal entry than a post fit for public consumption. I feel clearer having written it though. Gotta get all my racing thoughts and objections and confusions out sometimes.