The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I am so very new to this. I did attend some al-anon meetings what seems like it must be 20 years ago, but I have no idea what EHS is, etc.
anyway... please understand how very much i love my mum, but her alcoholism is toxic for me. I live about 20 minutes from her and try to see her every sunday. EVERY time i see her, she is drinking. she's not always drunk yet (understand, i get to her house early and am out by 1 pm, lest i have to witness much.)
my relationship with her is very strained. she has always been extremely depressed and has been an alcoholic since i was young. my bio father (not step-father) was an alcoholic, they divorced when i was very young. she's always had crying fits and gets falling down drunk, forcing the people who love her most, her 5 children, away because it is all just so overwhelming difficult.
as she's aged, she is constantly complaining about the people who don't come to see her, she doesnt understand why? needless to say, i am the child left in the picture and left holding the proverbial bag. she needs me. she is constantly trying to 'pencil' me in, months in advance.
back to her alcoholism... she's always ruined gatherings. lately, i've been more vocal to her about respecting me and not putting herself in that condition. well,,, yesterday was mother's day, so i had her, her husband and my poor brother up for lunch. i watched her consume well over a liter of wine, i'm tempted to call it two liters, and i asked her to please not drink like that. she made the mistake of assuming that it was because my friends were coming over...
mum: why have i EVER embarrased you in front of your friends?
me in my head: well, only about a hundred times.
me out loud: this is about me and my feelings mom... please don't do this to me. for crying out loud, it's sunday afternoon, drink some water.
needless to say, she cannot see my emotions and is only concerned with her own.
whenever we have some conversation like this, she tells me that i should want her to be happy and accept her for who she is.... well, this is who she is: i am watching her die in front of my eyes. she barely eats, drinks over a gallon of wine a day, her body is falling apart (her stomach bothers her so much, i'm sure its destroyed. she's already had most of her stomach removed due to bleeding ulcers - almost died that time.)
i just can't handle watching her kill herself, but i can't abandon her. i get soooo depressed. then i get angry at her for her selfishness.
disclaimer: i have difficulty accepting the "disease" label. she chose long ago to turn her back on all of us.
Oh yes, I can definately relate. For me, I tell her good bye when I call and she is drunk, I leave when I stop over and she is drinking. She looks foward to when we plan things together and stays sober to enjoy those things with me. She knows how I feel about acholicism and we just don't talk about it. It's a touchy situation for me...the two people I love most in my life are A's = my mom and my hubby. Good Luck, Sincerely, Tonya
I am so sorry your Mother's Day was the way it was. You tried your best to give your Mom a good day. She is the one who made the choice to ruin it for everyone.
My alcholic daughter does not get invited to family gaterings because, even if she is not drinking, her attitude is so horrible, no one wants to be around her. Being her Mom, this hurts me so much. She is missing out on so much with her family. We just do not want to take the risk of her ruining our gaterings.
My other daughter, who does not drink, does not want her around her 2 daughters. My other daughter and her husband do not have drama in their house. No drinking; no fighting; no cussing; just peace and quite. Therefore she does not want her two twin 8 year daughters exposed to such drama as would surely occur. Very heartbreaking for me.
__________________
Clara
------------------------------------ What don't kill you, makes you stronger!!!
I'm hearing alot of expectations here. That your mother would change for one day because you asked is a very big stretch. I did this too-I wanted my mother to be a different person countless times because of countless reasons: my prom, high school graduation, college graduation, etc. But every time it was the same thing: she was drunk or high or both and whatever. And, after a great deal of struggling and anger, I came to see the truth in my friend donna's statement: "Pigeons do what pigeons do, sit under their tree, they'll shit on you." My mom is gonna drink, she'll behave however she wants, no matter how important the deal is to me. It really doesn matter because she is powerless against her disease, just like I am. She can't see it because her disease makes her all the more powerless because she is wracked in denial. I'm also hearing alot of daughter guilt. That you're seeming to feel as if that you owe your mother a relationship because your her daughter. I'm uncertain if you've worked the steps. When I worked the steps, especially 4-9, I was able to see that reformatting my relationship with my mother was the best thing for both of us. Whenever we spent time together, our relationship suffered tremendously; whenever we talked on a weekly basis by telephone, limiting our conversation to no more than 15 minutes, we did so much better. We further limited it to "surface things" like family news: someone's getting married; someone had a baby; etc. When this was the topic, instead of her former marriage to dad, my weight, my job, etc, fights didn't break out, buttons didn't get pushed, etc.
First of all I think it is very hard to see how sick they are when we are still wanting something from them. I wanted a mother until the day she died. I managed to set a lot of distance and have some reflection. These days I can indeed see that really she was very very ill her entire life.
I am sorry you had expectations of having something loving. I know I stopped having that with my mother for a decade before she died. Nevertheless there was tremendous grief for me to go through.
