Today, the unthinkable happened. I'm not sure where to start. There's a long, 4 year history of what has been happening and why, with my mother and alcohol, but I don't know if I have energy to go through it right now...

Regardless, don't judge her off of this...she's a wonderful person. I love my mother.

Today she had too much to drink, shortly after dinner. I knew, I knew when they opened the bottle, my mom and dad, that she would have too much. And she did, and she came up to me to yell at me for things I didn't want to talk about, things that didn't make complete sense. I got mad, and hid in my room. I left my dad to deal with it.

My mom fell once, onto my guinea pig cage, bending some of the bars. No harm done.

She fell off the bed next, while yelling at my dad. I don't know for what. They aren't nice to eachother; he's mean to her, she's mean to him, when she's been drinking.

But after I hid in my room, my sister comes running in and says mom fell and was bleeding. My stomach dropped. I ran into the bathroom to see my dad pulling my mom onto the bed; blood was gushing from her mouth, dripping down onto her chest and arms. A huge gash is on her lip, she's screaming hysterically and it's 10 pm. My stomach is in knots as my dad asks me to run and get paper towels. I turn into the bathroom and my mother's front tooth is lying on the floor. the whole tooth, root and all; blood is spattered on the floor. I think, "this can't be happening", but my body tells me it is--I start to cry, knowing the terrible pain my mother must be in, as I've had tooth problems myself, and I'm only 19. I've had 3 root canals done because of fillings gone wrong, and the pain is unbearable. My wisdom teeth removal sites got infected; it was the worst pain of my life. I wanted to die. When I saw the tooth, my hands began shaking. I couldn't think straight. I felt like I was dreaming. I grabbed the tooth, poured a glass of milk and tried to focus; but to no avail, and the cup overflowed and i had to pour some out; I put the tooth in the milk, and all the while my boyfriend is running to give my dad some soaked paper towels for my mother.

She's combative, and my dad doesn't want to take her to the hospital. Hoping to be a nurse someday I've researched a lot of things, and tooth knockouts are one of them. I knew we had a small window, but I didn't know it was as small as it was. We convinced my dad to take her to the ER. The whole way my mother screamed at us; she was having flashbacks to when she was younger and her mother had her committed to a mental program in the hospital because of her anger problems. She thought we were leaving her to be committed, she wouldn't listen when we said we were going. As we arrived at the hospital, I felt relief--if we could just get her inside, it would be ok.

But she opened the car door as it was moving and threatened to jump. My dad got angry; he never handles this well. He gets mad. Sometimes, I'm afraid he'll lose it and hit my mom. He never has that I know of, but I worry. So he turns the car around. There was my dad, my boyfriend and his friend in the car; we could have carried her in. But my dad says, "No doctor in the world could fix her when she's like this." And we left. I couldn't believe it. So close.

She's screaming in the car, she keeps forgetting what's happening. She gets mad at my dad, says she doesn't care about her teeth, her Sjogren's disease has destroyed them anyway. She looks in the mirror in the car at her tooth and laughs, then yells more. I'm crying in the backseat, imagining the pain. Imagining about how when she wakes up tomorrow, I will have to tell her what happened because she won't remember why her tooth is missing. I will have to tell her that she refused to go to the E.R., that my dad refused to force her to go. That I didn't do anything, just stood by and cried and watched. That we probably will never afford for her to get a false tooth. That she'll be embarassed and angry and disgusted when she wakes up and may never go out in public.

I keep imagining it's me. How I would feel. Empathy has always been a strong point of mine, but I cannot turn the switch off. I feel for everyone. Animals, my family and friends, strangers. I imagine how much it hurts. I imagine how she'll feel. It hurts me inside. I want to run. I want to die. I want to punch out my own tooth so she won't be alone. I want to help. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to not think.

So many things at once. Crying wins first of all, and then through the sobs the anger, the desire to lash out, to punch something, to hurt myself so I'll feel how she does. She's my best friend besides my boyfriend. We've always been close; a psychiatrist I saw once said we're too close, that it intereferes with our mother-daughter relationship. All I know is I love her to pieces. I'd kill myself if she ever died. And now she has lost one of her teeth, it's 4 hours past all this and she's crying in her room, still a little drunk, and I dread when she'll fall asleep and forget, and I'l lhave to tell her, and hear her cry again. It breaks my heart.  I wish it was me that was going through this. I can fix me--I can't fix my mom. I wish I could. I wish it was my tooth.

I hate religion, and the whole car ride, I prayed to God that if he could just help my mother, I would go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. Saturday too, just in case Judaism is the right religion or whatever. But nothing happened. NOTHING.

I am all alone besides my boyfriend, who loves me but he has to go to school today, and I will be alone with these feelings. I don't want to tell my mother; she knows how I feel a hundred times over, we talk so often, and my siblings constantly give her ultimatums like if she doesnt quit drinking, they'll leave someday and never come back! They spew hate. But I know better, I know these aren' tconstructive ways to talk, they won't help as much as hurt. I've talked with her; but how many times can she hear people say, "You messed up and it hurt me again," before she tries to kill herself? I'm scared she'll break, and if she does, I will too.

I love my mother. But now she is hurting, she has no tooth, I can't get the image of the blood and the tooth out of my head. I'm shaking, I can't sleep. I don't want to sleep. I want to check on her. I want to go away, too. She and my dad were going to go to a hotel tonight. It made me want to rip my heart out, and even just thinking of it i do, it hurt so much inside when my mom was crying and said, "We were supposed to go to a hotel and instead I lost my ** tooth." Maybe if i had done more...persuaded my dad to leave...Checked on her...helped my dad out...she would have her tooth.

Now she's in her room, hurting, crying. I cannot help. The advil is not helping; i know from past experience it does not help enough. The pain gnaws. When it's your front tooth it goes into your nose, your cheeks, even your eyes. It's worse than a bruise; a biting, excruciating pain that sucks out your desire to live. It's unbearable. And now my mother is suffering through it, and I cannot help.

I don't know what to do. She went to a rehab place once and came back the same night for a good reason: The clinic was nearly medically impossible for her to attend. The bathrooms were shared with 4-5 people, for one toilet. My mother has IBD, irritable bowel disease, and they did not tell her about the bathrooms on the phone. Physically, when she gets anxious, she HAS to be able to go to the bathroom when she needs to, and with 4 other drug addicts--not just alcohol, heroin and meth and who knows what else--withdrawing from drugs, it's not likely she'd be able to. So that clinic is out, and I don't know of any others around here that to the, what's it called, the withdrawal treatment for alcoholics? The...I forget. But no others here do it.

I love my mom. I don't know how to help anymore. I'm scared my dad doesnt love her anymore. I'm scared she doesn't love herself. I love her more than anyone; my little brother got furious with me tonight for defending my mother when he just wanted to insult her behind her back. He's too young, he and my sister; they've never had an addiction. They don't understand it's not a switch. You cannot turn it on and off, and you don't do it because it's fun. It's an addiction. I smoke. I struggle to go without smoking for more than 3 hours at a time. They do not understand. They don't want to understand. They are angry and they want to vent it to my mother.

But it won't help. She needs love and encouragement. Only that will help someone decide to get rehab. Anger and hate will do nothing but hurt her feelings.

I've never posted here before. I've never gone to AA or it's subsidiary things like this Al-anon. But after tonight, I needed somewhere to go. Someone to talk to. Maybe people who would understand and not judge. Addictions affect the best of people, the people who are beautiful inside and out and love their kids. It's the addiction that is what we dislike, not the person. My mother is beautiful, a wonderful mom, kind hearted and intelligent. Alcohol ruins it all, but she is still a good person. I hope maybe some people here will understand. And I'm sorry for the long post. I needed to say it, once and for all. I've kept it in and it hurts.

As in a book I love very much:

"We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided."

"We must try  not to sink beneath our anguish, but battle on."

""It is important to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then can evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated.""

Peace.

Shellie

Your post brought tears to my eyes; thank you. I hoped I would find people like you here. I hope my mother will go to AA meetings and find similar people herself. Thank you, thank you. My mother is one of the things I cherish more than anything else in the world; my immediate family and my boyfriend and pets are the others on my priority list, at the top. She made me who I am and I won't give up on her, as long as I know she has not given up on herself. She's the reason I am who I am and we will keep fighting this, me supporting her all the way. But I'm terribly shaken up after all of this. :( I never thought it would happen to my family. :(
Thank you again. now where are the tissues? :)

I lived what you lived. Very similar experiences in my own childhood. My mom sliced her leg on a glass tabletop in a similar incident and needed dozens of stitches.

I am 43 now--you are so far ahead of the game compared to where I was at your age! I never would have had the strength to write about a scene like this. So good for you!

When I look back on my life, one of my regrets is that I didn't try and get "better" sooner. As I said, I'm 43 and only in the last year or two have I tried to deal with my issues. I lived half of my life suffering the effects of growing up with alcoholic parents. I am dealing with things now in therapy that should have been confronted when I was your age.

You can't do anything about your mom's drinking, her disease of alcoholism. But you can help yourself. Al Anon meetings are free and (at least in my area) easy to find. Try and go.

I have experiences like you did with the deer frequently; for me, that is my higher power, God, talking to me, showing me that he is there. I know you said you hate religion but for me knowing that there is a power greater than me is what makes this manageable.

Hang in there and keep coming back!

Welcome Shellie

I am so sorry that  are living with  the disease of alcoholism.  I too would urge you to find face to face meetings in your community . The entire family could use the support and just mayve your dad would also like to join you.  Here is a helpful web site

By going to the following link:

http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/meetings/meeting.html 

Please keep ciming back here as well

 

y