Hi  Norit

I am sorry for your loss and that for years you have had to watch your mum deteriorate. Like Brandy said until she really wants and asks for help there is very little you or anyone else can do, only 36% recover from alcoholism.  You yourself know how hard it is to look after your mum especially if it is a thankless task . If your brother stays he is going to need loads of support, make sure that guilt & blame do not rear their ugly heads as they only make a bad situation worse. I hope that you find a support group  and that you and your brother get the chance to grieve properly.

kind regards

Roberta

Dear norit:

I wasn’t able to reply to you sooner. I am sorry to read about your father’s death and about your mother’s worsening addictions. And I am sorry to read about how her behavior hurts your brother and yourself.

Back on July 31, 2016, you wrote (at 25): “It’s like I’m looking at life through new eyes. I am actually an individual, and not just here for my family’s sake… I.. actually want to live a life for myself, but it seems hopeless”.

Later on that year, you wrote: “Putting myself down constantly comes naturally.. I feel like I’m being selfish if I am nice to myself. Things seem very hopeless in the long run.. being stuck at home is very uncomfortable because my mum’s an alcoholic…  A life away from this discomfort and anxiousness sounds like a dream!”

“When I was younger, I never thought about my own hopes for the future… I thought I was just existing for my mum’s benefit… I do not know how to make myself important in my own mind… Mum.. doesn’t seem to recognise my own feelings or listen to me really… I feel like I should be punished.. I just want to shout and rage at myself all the time… in the long run I feel  hopeless”.

In March 2018, you wrote: “I feel like I’m a horrible person to be around… I feel I am being a horrific abusive person”.

March 2019: “Last week I was offered an opportunity to move out.. It is only a few miles away from where I live now with my family, but it would be some space from the arguments, and my poor mum… I feel bad leaving my mum, as she is a victim of abuse and struggling with addiction.. I believe she will get worse if I leave.. I hate to think how alone she will be without me”.

Summer of 2020: “(I) have been living in my own place for a little over a year now. Enjoying the peace and quiet… Mum is still an alcoholic, yes. My father and brother both get angry with her now… it’s nice to live away. I find it quite difficult to visit as I don’t know what state mum will be in, and it concerns me to leave her alone.. I keep getting images of her in my head where she’s drunk and hurt and .. what if she overdoses and no-one is there??”

Norit, we communicated over a long time, haven’t we.. I don’t remember if I told you (did I?) about my similar experience with my mother.. not that she was an alcoholic or a drug addict, but she was addicted (so to speak) to getting angry at me. Like you, I felt SO MUCH empathy for her.

Growing up with her, even though I was the child and she was the adult, in my mind, she was the child and I was the adult. I saw her as a hurting, sad, scared child and I saw myself as the evil adult who was hurting this poor child. wanted so much to help her. It was My Dream to make her happy, to change her frown into a big smile. I would have done anything and everything to make that happen.

I wanted to help her so I kept punishing the evil adult (me, child and onward) who was hurting that good little girl (my mother) because an evil doer deserves to be punished, and if I am punished enough, the thought goes, I will become a good person and be good to and for my mother.

But I never made her happy:  her frown never changed into a smile.. thing is, a big frown became etched into my face, a deep, sad frown. All the while I was focused on her lack of happiness (and how unfair life was to her), but I didn’t think that my unhappiness was unfair, because like you, I felt that I deserved to be unhappy because she was not yet happy.

My mother sent me a very clear and loud message: that I was responsible for her misery, that it was my fault, and it was my job to make it up to her for all my alleged sins against her. So, I figured I have to fix my sins against her before I have the moral right to take care of myself and live my own life: I must live her life until I make her happy, and after that, I will have the right to live my own life.

My life was put on hold.. most of my life was lived on hold, waiting, hoping, dreaming that she will send me a different message, one she never sent: that I am a good little girl, deserving to live my own life.

In the quotes with which I started this post, you repeated the thought and feeling that living a life for yourself feels hopeless, that it is a hopeless dream that in the long-run will never come true. I felt hopeless too, in a similar way.. but fast forward, I no longer live my mother’s life. I am no longer trapped in that guilt.

I felt some of that trap in the last 10 days or so (you can read about my experience if you wish in the thread I started this morning), and it was very difficult, but I survived it and I feel strangely free this morning. I am not guilty of my mother’s misery, it was not my doing!

A lot of the pain goes away when you no longer feel responsible, when you know in your mind and heart that it was not- is not- your fault.. and therefore, all these years you believed that you were a bad person.. it was not true. You were a good, loving little girl all along.

I suppose the good, loving little girl is hiding, just like mine has been hiding, hiding from my critical, punishing awareness. She will come out of hiding, norit, when she feels safe, when she feels that you live your life- not for your mother, not for your brother- but for yourself. She will come out of hiding when she knows that you know.. that she is a good little girl.

anita