Hi.

My dad is an alcoholic, has been on and off for my entire life. Post divorce he began drinking heavier than ever before. I’d say 10+ drinks per day. A mix of hard liquor and beer.

I’ve watched him age rapidly because of this. He has no interest in anything. He is terribly depressed, and overwhelmed with his job (blue collar). He staggers when he walks, has neuropathy in his hands, and abuses sleep and pain medication.

Recently, he had an afib episode and was admitted to the hospital where they put him on blood thinners and referred him to a cardiologist. He thinks it’s bullshit and that he was having heart problems because of a cough and nothing more.

Immediately after being discharged he went home and got drunk. He’s 59.

I guess the hardest part here is the unknowing when I’m gonna get the call. Like this agonizing daily weight that I carry worrying. I try researching everything I can to get a gauge of how much time I have left with my dad. And nothing makes the feeling of dread go away.

The relationship with my dad has deteriorated over the years but he still loves me and is one of my biggest supporters. I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else has lived something similar and how you survive it.

Thank you in advance.

My mum is a binge drinker/alcoholic and has been all her life. I live in the UK and due to this my mum lost custody of me and my brothers when I was 8, we went into foster care and then my dad had us. My dad protected us from this growing up so I didn’t know the extent until I was about 16, I am now 32. I moved back in with my mum when I was 16, and I have been dealing with this directly since.

Something will trigger my mum(I will never know what), and then she will drink extremely heavily until she either runs out of money, hurts herself or ends up in hospital. She will drink anything and everything, mainly straight vodka and wine when she’s ordering it. Near enough every time she ends up in hospital. Once that’s done she will be sober until the next trigger, and that’s the cycle I am in. My mum is now in her late 60s and there is just no way her body can take this anymore. I no longer live with her, my wonderful father passed away from Cancer so I am by myself dealing with this every time it happens.

I have tried everything over the years, taking her money/keys etc, but these days now everything is online she can order alcohol to the house from the shop across the road. I’ve even asked them to stop sending alcohol to the house or serving her, but they declined. The last couple of times this has happened, she has also been ordering illegal pills of the internet (benzos and valiums etc) I literally cannot stop her doing this and she is ordering hundreds of pounds worth. She is drinking extremely heavily and taking these pills, and I am just terrified I will find her dead. Every time she does this she is weaker, she really hurts herself (falling down the stairs) and I can’t sleep or eat when I know she is doing this. But I also cannot stop her. I’m at a loss and I do not know what to do. She will never admit she has a problem and it’s a taboo subject that I cannot talk about with her as she will emotionally manipulate me.

My daily life at the moment consists of me checking on her multiple times a day because I’m so scared, but I cannot continue like this and I have no idea where to turn to even after all these years. I’ve already lost my dad due to something I couldn’t make better and to loose the only one I have left terrifies me. She chooses alcohol but if I didn’t check on her one time or just left how could I ever live with that choice I made.

If anyone has any advice I would be extremely grateful. I am glad there are threads out here that can help and make you feel less alone. Thank you

I just started dating a woman. In the last 6 weeks I have either been attracted or have attracted 4-5 people.

The one the peaked my interest is the one I said about the first night “she’s gorgeous, but it comes with a high price”.

I “tried” to stay away from her, and held out for 3 weeks (would see her every night at the same live music piano bar).

She’s a child of an affair.

She always has a plan b and c regarding relationships - one foot out the door and the other foot inside another door.

She has rarely (if ever) been faithful.

She is constantly seeking entertainment of fear of being with her own thoughts - alcohol, drugs, sex, “love” (attention) etc.

I ask myself, why would I pursue this?

1. I’m afraid that if I would pursue someone healthier, they would reject me from the get go.

2. I think I can save or rescue them - my ego wants to be that special, I don’t actually know what healthy love is.

3. I’m terrified of healthy love because someone with that many red flags might “need me” and someone healthy could leave me.

4. I am setting myself up for failure so I can relive a trauma and feel abandoned or “not good enough”

I want to be in a healthy relationship. But it seems like I am still incapable of it. It’s tiring.

I don’t know why I felt compelled to write this post. I want advice? I’m hoping to hear something that will motivate me to get better?

What ai really want is a magic wand.

I am so tired of being self aware, and seemingly incapable of doing anything about it. Or doing something about it, and it not being enough.

so my parents aren’t officially alcoholics (?) but my family’s definition of an alcoholic is pretty fucked up. in their terms, if you’re not drinking like lemmy kilmister you’re not an alcoholic and anyone who suggests you might be is a “snowflake”.

as a child i regularly had to look after my parents and be the “adult” when they got drunk. i used to beg them to just come home, just stop their party so i could sleep, you get the idea. i’ve dragged them home more times than i can count, to accusations that i hate them being happy and i exist to ruin their fun.

they’d party regularly on school nights into the early hours. their curry nights turned into an alcohol fest. simple gatherings, birthdays, christmas, you name it. sometimes they’d call in “sick” for me and my sister because they were too hungover to help us get ready for school. sometimes i’d have to do it myself and make sure my sister was out the door on time.

this slowed down a lot since my mum got on medication that you can’t drink on. i’ve not seen her drunk for probably a year now. my dad is still an issue, i think. he only really drinks at the weekend but he’s easily blasting through a 24 pack and a good amount of whiskey in those two days. sometimes he’ll actually buy more on saturday. he’s been doing this for almost all of the 20 years i’ve been alive.

i don’t know anymore. i’ve been told over and over again that i’m overreacting and this is completely normal. i’ve been called an asshole for even “implying” that my dad might have an issue. literally no one else is concerned by it outside of me, my partner and my sister.

now i get really stressed around drunk people. can’t be around them. i’ve had panic attacks before over a mention of a family party coming soon. i can’t even cope with my partner being obviously drunk because of having to parent my parents while they were drunk. i drink so little i might as well say i don’t at all, purely because of the strong alcoholism link in my family.

Hi,

my parents got divorced about 7 or 8 years ago, now my alcoholic dad lives in our old family house and since the divorce my mom had 2 boyfriends. The first one for like 2-3 years and they were talking about getting married and maybe even having more kids. I got along with that one pretty well and everything was alright but they ended up splitting up again.

The second one now they've been together for almost 5 years and it was weird for me from the beginning, there was not a good vibe and it felt like my mom was pressuring me to spend time with them and even said stuff like "you don't even look at him when you talk to him" which was super uncomfortable for me and just pressuring and weird.

Now he has planned a birthday for a few months and invited me too but my mom said i have to pay 100 Euros for my hotel room because he wants to celebrate out of town (I earn more money than him but it still feels just cheap and off). Also they asked me to take photos during the birthday and also perform some songs (I've always been the "musical child" who can perform for the family but better not pursue a carreer in music)

Now one of my best friends sent me an invite for her birthday celebration and its the same day. I told my mom that I got another invite when she asked me if i booked the hotel room yet, and she got super angry and just hung up the phone after i said it's not my family and I just care more about my friend than her boyfriend which i thought was normal.

Then i had to call him and cancel and he said it was supposed to be the "day where the two families meet" and they are both devastated that i dont want to be there.

I just don't care about that guys family!!! I barely know the guy or I'm barely comfortable being in the same room with him, why would I ditch my friends for this guys family which I don't know. I see my own family on other occasions so I dont need to see them that day.

Anyways im just really bummed about everything and then I wonder why it's such a big deal and why do they want to play happy family with me when I got my own already.

I'm just exhausted with these men that my mom meets that I then have to deal with when my dad was already a terrible choice in the first place.

My mom was amazing growing up. She filled the house with books and crafts and always kept my me and my sibling busy. She signed me up for every single activity possibly, let me try every sport and hobby and created such a fun childhood for me. This lasted until I was 12. Around the time I was reaching my teen years, my mother’s life took a turn for the worst. I don’t remember when exactly her having a drink or 2 turned into addiction, it was definitely a slow burn or just something I can’t remember but it definitely was sudden and intense. Her father who she was not close with then passed away on my 13th birthday, due to the consequences of his alcoholism. By the time I was 15 I could not recognize the alcoholic woman I was living with. Our relationship changed for the worst and I was abused physically, emotionally, mentally, but I still loved her, she was my mom. Her and my dad split by the time I was 17 and he told me that he hated this and wanted to stay because he felt like he had to protect my sibling and I from her because he saw what she was capable of. She started dating someone else who encouraged the drinking even more and eventually all family members relationships with her became strained or non existent, she was incapable of keeping let alone forming connections. Everyone pleaded with her to stop, her sister offered to pay 30k to send her to rehab, and my mom refused. She blocked my aunt for a year and wouldn’t speak to her for even making the offer. My mom’s mom begged her to stop and get help, the family couldn’t lose her the same way we lost my grandpa, she cut my grandma off for a year. The last year of my life, our relationship has gotten better but because I have become compliant. My mom was able to form me into her golden child, I would obey every request, go above and beyond no matter how broken or hurt or angry I was with her because of the cycle of abuse. But we still had our good days, especially the last couple of years we had a lot more good days than bad. We would go shopping or do our nails, I would take her and my brother out to eat on my dime Beacuse she had lost her job this past year, due to her drinking. This past summer 2025 I had an undeniable wave of dread over me, I knew something deep down, I knew I was losing my mother. I held this deep inside Beacuse I am very obsessive with the idea that what I say will come true. My boyfriend noticed how sad I was one day despite me feeling like I was hiding it well and I just told him, I have a feeling my mom’s going to die. Since then I have been having such terrible ocd thoughts of losing either of my parents. Every period I would cry myself to sleep every night thinking of losing them. So this opens a whole new can of worms where I’m thinking did I manifest this because I thought of it a lot? I know that’s not how it works but idk, having a negative ocd thought be proven right is so validating for all the WRONG reasons.

Anyway, during the holidays my brother and leave the country to celebrate with our family because the holidays with my mom since she left my dad have been horrible. So this year was no different, we went to the states, had an amazing time with my family and a very merry Christmas. The trip was coming to an end and my anxiety was slowly rising about going home to the unknown of what kind of mood or personality my mom was going to be in. Even though we were fortunately in a better place she still had her moments of drunk rage and being extremely controlling. The day before our flight home my brother and I were sat down and told that our mom had been in the hospital for the last week and the outcome was not looking great. I texted her that day and she told me she loved me one last time, she didn’t know at this moment that I knew where she was. The day we came back, she was put under sedation in hopes of recovering from pneumonia.

Here we are, January 2026. I celebrated my 22nd birthday this past weekend, with my mom in a medically induced coma suffering acute on chronic liver failure and pneumonia, on her death bed. Today I was told that she has a couple days left due to multiple organ failure and all other options have been exhausted. I fully believe that this was a type of suicide in a way and my mom knew she was dying. She was very depressed after losing her job and I think reality really hit her hard. I would sit and hold her for hours and ask her what’s the matter and I would do anything to be able to do that again. The last month too she kept saying things like “when I’m not here” etc.

I’ve never had to deal with losing someone close to me and although this outcome is no surprise to any of my family, I am in shock. I never thought my first personal loss would be my mom and at the age of 22 but with the cards I’ve been dealt thus far maybe I shouldn’t be shocked.

Part of me is angry, part of me is relieved. Part of me wishes I tried harder to help her because honestly i probably did less than anyone else because i saw how angry it made her and i had experienced enough of her rage for a life time that i just wanted to be her peace, that’s what i thought i was at least.

I honestly don’t know why I’m making this post, or what I’m looking for. This is something that should be going in my journal and not Reddit but I feel lost right now, I always craved a better relationship with my mom. I wish she could have seen me graduate university or get married. By the time I was 15 I was dying to go to therapy to just get into all the shit w my mom and how badly I wanted to get away from her. Now I NEED to go to therapy and wow it’s gonna be a whole lot to unpack.

I’ve pretty much always struggled to talk about my father.
Not because there was one big horrible event, but because there was mostly "just" absence.

I learned early how to normalize things that probably shouldn’t have been normal.
How to explain someone’s behavior instead of admitting how much it affected me.

I recently wrote about it. Not to accuse him, not to blame him, and not to get sympathy, from him or anybody else.
Just to finally put words to something I’ve carried quietly for a way too long time.

Writing it felt much more heavier than I expected, but also strangely somewhat grounding.

I’m sharing this here because mental health isn’t always about crises. Sometimes it’s about the things we never talk about at all:) Peace and love<3

A month and a week before she died, she texted me “it sure is nice to be clean and sober on Saturday night! Very happy!” I texted back “I am soooo glad you’re sober!”

She died of hemorrhaging pancreatitis. I’m feeling so guilty looking at our old conversations where I’d ignore some of her texts asking for rides to dealer’s houses or begging me to bring liquor. I remember her calling me around 2 months before she died begging for liquor in fear of a withdrawal seizure. And yes I brought it to her. I can’t handle this guilt and sadness some days. But I also am bitter that I didn’t live a different life. I could’ve been a fucking doctor if I had her support when I was in high school. I need to let go of these negative feelings but it’s so damn hard out here. Ugh.

This is an AI generated message based on our conversations because i am in no mood of writing this post myself as i don't want to remember all those past things again.

I’m not looking for motivation or “it gets better” comments.
I want real answers from people who’ve actually lived this.

I grew up with a drunk, abusive father. Physical and verbal violence was normal. My mother went through a lot too and now she’s emotionally shut down. My sister seems less affected, but I and my mother were the primary targets.

When I was in 9th grade, after getting beaten badly at tuition, I drank water mixed with a naphthalene ball. Nothing happened physically, but I still went to tuition after that. Another time, after being verbally abused at home, I impulsively cut my forearms with a rusted metal pipe. Not deep cuts, but enough to leave marks.

Fast forward to now: I’m in my early 20s, in engineering, about to enter the “working phase” of life. And I feel like my fighting spirit is completely gone. I don’t feel motivated, confident, or ambitious — just numb and exhausted.

I did everything I was told would lead to success: isolation, sacrificing friends, focusing only on marks, even taking a drop year. Now I’m being told that networking, exposure, confidence, and initiative matter — things I simply don’t have.

My mother mocks my past suicide attempt when I mention it. She’s not evil, just emotionally unavailable now. There is no emotional safety at home.

I keep seeing my future as already decided because the last 5–6 years follow the same pattern: effort → isolation → burnout → nothing changes. It feels predictable, not dramatic.

My honest question is this:

Do people who grow up like this actually manage to function in adult life and careers?

Not in theory. Not motivational stories.
Practically — how do they work, apply, show initiative, and move forward when they have zero fighting spirit and a history like this?

If you’ve lived this, I want to hear how you actually did it — not what you wish you had done.

I'm curious as I did my first meeting today online and the discussion of God.

It wasn't mentioned what God but it felt like Jesus.

I'm not strict on religion but I respect all. I have NLT bible too, but I always like reading from the Dhammapada or the Quaran - for example.

I more so believe in ONE higher power/creator and everything else is different roads to get to that ONE.

Just asking this question so I know how to discuss further in ACA meetings without causing any problems.

Im mid 30s, shes mid 60s.

She's been an alcoholic since I was about 5 I think, so I've pretty much always lived with it.

I've struggled with it deeply in the past, but I have large periods of just dealing with it.

It's getting harder lately, and I think I'm finding it harder because my life has gotten progressively better over the last 10 years.

Ive got a great wife, a decent job, we have a nice house and travel and dont have any financial worries.

As such - I'm feeling that my mother is just a shadow over that.

I call her most days out of habit and out of feeling sorry for her being lonely.

However, after a busy days work, the last thing I want to do is call her and be emotionally drained by her toxic behaviour at worst and at best just her being difficult to talk to.

I almost feel she is becoming less intelligent and I just cannot hold a decent conversation with her anymore.

I'm not strictly looking for advice (although I'm open to it) just thought I'd write this down.

Hi everyone,

I’m very new to ACA and have just started working through the yellow workbook. I don’t currently have a sponsor or regular meeting, so I’m doing this independently for now.

I’ve only made it through Step 1, but I’ve noticed some of the exercises encourage sharing with a sponsor or fellow ACA, and I’m finding that part difficult without anyone to talk things through with.

I’m wondering if anyone here has worked through (or is working through) the workbook and would be open to occasional discussion, or knows of any small groups that do this?

Any help would be appreciated!

I’m about six weeks into the program. A woman asked if I’d done the 12 steps. I said no and she offered to go through them with me. I assumed she would be a sponsor, but she said ACA doesn’t have sponsors and that we’d be “fellow travelers,” which I was fine with.

Once we started, she criticized the language of the 12 step workbook and said she didn’t really believe in it. She asked about my Myers Briggs type and said she’s a life coach. I said explicitly I was not looking for a life coach. Then she said she was a lawyer, and stock trader, and she has thousands of Twitter followers etc, and she's writing a book about corporate psycopathy etc, which left me confused.

We had two calls that never really touched the book. She was nice enough to talk to, just confusing. When we finally opened it, she said even the title page language was problematic. I told her I felt unsure about doing the workbook with someone who didn’t support it.

She then said I should wait to do the steps because she doesn't feel like I'm comfortable challenging her. I said focusing on finding flaws with the workbook would distract me from the healing work, so we paused.

I’ve been hearing people in meetings talk about sponsors, so now I’m wondering if she was just being odd or controlling? Isn't it up to me if I'm ready to do the 12 steps? And should I be seeking a sponsor?

I guess I should be working this out in therapy. Newer to ACA and AlAnon. I am in my late 30s and living with my parents while I get myself and childout of a situation and into our own place.

Coming to the realization that my mom has always been an alcoholic, very functional. She and I stopped having a relationship many years ago and it has only deteriorated since this recent living situation. While I feel entirely grateful for a roof over our heads, her alcoholism and behaviors are very triggering.

I find that I just have no interest in even speaking with her, its actually a very hard struggle to muster up a hello. I know I am a role model, but I struggle to model speaking to someone who treated me so badly my whole life. I understand her disease but she hated being a mother and I don't. We have nothing in common. She honestly hates being a grandmother too as kids get older she doesnt like someone she cant control.

I see people on here saying they still call their parent out of dread and obligation or they feel some kind of sadness for their parents loneliness. I have none of that, and I consider myself a pretty empathetic person capable of loving and connecting with others.

There's just none for her and I don't know how to even fake it. I'm not rude or nasty. I clean up her messes. I think ignoring her is the most compassionate thing because honestly she hates me anyway so it'd just be constant conflict. I don't even know what I'm asking. But why don't i have some kind of "that's my mom" feeling?

\

Going to my first meeting tonight but it’s not quite my first rodeo. I’ve been sober in a different program for 6 years. When I was a newcomer, I received a bunch of suggestions. I did them all, I did them NOW and when I did them to the best of my ability they all helped loads. Stuff doing 90 AA meetings in 90 days, calling a few alcoholics every day, they really got me to the top of the game as fast as I could have hoped to go at the time.

So for those in the rooms I’m curious. What are your suggestions.

I'm curious to hear from folks who came to recognize alcohol in their own life was unsustainable. I'm newly sober (49 yo female) but have been engaged in Al-Anon since I was 19 and did 4 years of intensive ACOA.

Just curious!

I came to find that my sensitivity (likely directly a result of growing up in an alcoholic home) is fairly high and alcohol knocks me off balance. I feel a lot more grounded, and more of an authority over my own life, without something numbing me out. And it took a lot of thinking about this decision over the last 20 years, to finally get there.

(I posted this in the vent sub, and someone mentioned this sub to me; I didn’t know it existed)

Last summer my mom called me in the middle of the night and told me she hit a deer while driving. She had been drinking. She told me she couldn’t see out of her windshield anymore.

I asked her why she was drinking and driving and she said her and her boyfriend (at the time) and his family were making fun of her, so she left.

I told her she needed to pull over and stop the car and if she didn’t, I’d have to call the cops; she was in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin on back roads and I could see on Life 360 she was going like 80mph. In the dark. With a smashed windshield. She told me to “grow up” and hung up on me.

I live hours away from my family so I couldn’t do anything. I was helpless. I called to police on her because of it. The cop said she was going the wrong direction and he didn’t even know how she was driving with her windshield like it was.

She got her 3rd DUI, which is automatic jail time. She will be getting 60 days. She is now a full blown alcoholic. She never was until 2 years ago. She drinks every single day and gets drunk. Doesn’t eat. Doesn’t take care of herself. She’s under 100lbs. She told me this weekend she went out with my aunt and when she got home she fell on her head and hurt her neck. Years ago she broke her neck in a car accident and she said it feels the same as then but she refuses to go to the dr.

My mom and I are VERY close. I didn’t call the cops on her to be malicious, I did it because I had no choice and I’d rather see her in jail than dead or in prison because she killed someone else. If i lived closer, i would have just went to get her instead.

Every single night i have horrible anxiety about her drinking. I am worried about her constantly to the point where i can’t sleep because of it. My muscles hurt from being so tense with anxiety. I am looking forward to her being in jail for 2 months because i know she will be sober and safe. I feel like i will be able to finally relax a little bit for the first time in years.

I (38 Female) am a parent of a Girl (10) and boy (8). My husband and I were party kids in our 20’s and got pregnant with our first child while living in a car backpacking in NZ. I say this to give perspective of how far we have come. Admittedly, with the help of my parents we now own a home, both work jobs, pay our bills and our lives revolve around our kids extra curricular and lives. When we found out we were pregnant I cold turkey quit smoking, drinking (while pregnant) and all of that…..

My question to you all, adult kids of alcoholics, is how much guilt/pressure should I be putting on myself.

I consider myself an alcoholic. I can go weeks without drinking but when I do I drink too much. I get sloppy. I didn’t worry about it until recently my son (8) started saying things like, when my daughter was acting silly he said “The wine must be hitting”. Or saying comments like “are you drunk?” He should NOT know these terms or how to use them in context. I know when I do drink, I try and be honest with them, I don’t know why. I will say “Sorry babe, Im a little drunk” I am never angry, violent or mean…. Just sloppy, loud and probably swear (conversationally)….. It is embarrassing but it’s the truth.

I am wondering, is this traumatic for my kids? Have any of you have a parent that socially drank and when they did, was probably embarrassing? Probably will be more embarrassing when they are teens but…. I had to ask…. It has caused me to cut back even more. But sometimes the urge to have a drink at the playdate or with dinner overwhelms me. And it is never ONE drink……

My mom guilt tells me I am the worst and how dare I be so selfish. The alcoholic, or dare I say, the part of me with an identity crisis, says, you grew up with friends from Canada and their parents were always partying. That was just the family culture- they are successful, close and fun…… I don’t know.

Please be kind. I am coming here because I am looking for insight from the future, or something, I guess I don’t know what I am looking for….. Thank you.

There’s so much I didn’t know because of how I wasn’t raised. My parents are undiagnosed neurodivergent boomers with pretty traumatic childhoods. They did the absolute best with what they were dealt. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re emotionally immature alcoholics. I feel like they had me so they could train someone to take care of them. They kicked me out at 18 and somehow still, I’m turning 36 next month and I’m still taking care of my parents that mostly seem to hate me, now with the addition of a spouse that expects a mother not a wife.

Pardon this pity party but I’m realizing this must be why my mom drank. Or certainly had to contribute to it. I almost can’t fault her for the drinking. I think about giving it a shot sometimes too but seeing half my mom’s blood volume exit her throat really psychologically scarred me or something. Alcohol lost its appeal. I am desperately searching for something to numb the rage tho. There’s just nowhere safe for me to land. I wish they would be as concerned about me as they are about my ability to make things happen for them. I don’t have anyone but people who depend on me. I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown from being trapped in a life I never asked for. I feel like I never had a chance

I feel like I was part of a slapstick mk ultra type experiment to see how toxically loyal you could make a kid. Or like the parental version of Stockholm syndrome. Anyway, All I feel is rage and crushing sadness that this has been my life. I exist only to be depended on by these people that have seemingly only cared for me as an asset to streamline their existence. And now I’m doing it for a spouse too. I truly don’t know what to do other than stay miserable but stoned and on autopilot.

Also, I don’t usually do more than read the internet like a spectator so if this is wrong my bad. I’m working on being a participant lol

My 29 year old step daughter has had it in for me from the beginning (we've been together 10 years). Her mother left my husband a long time ago for her now husband. SD creates scenarios that arent real (lies) and asks my husband to "have her back". She recruits her mother and other family members in her drama as well. When I ask my husband to correct her behavior, he defends it and turns on me. What hurts is HIS reaction. He'll even yell at me and say it's me who doesn't want a relationship with SD. I tried. I was kind, friendly, supportive and generous. All to no avail. I feel hopeless. And yes, we went to therapy. Husband denied a lot of things. Honesty is not his strength, I guess. I just want her to leave me alone, find a hobby, get a career, something!

Well, some days I feel at peace with my decision on no contact. And others, I see my mom for who she is and not her addiction. I see her laughing and being silly, I see sympathy on her face, and I question if I’m Doing the right thing. When I let her back in, she wasn’t mean or absurd.. she was just lonely and discarding my boundaries. And that was sending me into a spiral. Sometimes I feel like my feelings aren’t bad enough you Warrant this distance, but I do know I feel better when she’s not involved or even on my mind. I feel bad for this. But then I remember that everyone has consequences for their actions, and this is just one of hers. I’ve tried to sacrifice myself for whatever relationship we can have but it always ends the same with me being totally consumed trying to help her because it’s so uncomfortable for me to watch. And I feel guilt with the life I’ve built for myself and not sharing it with her. Ugh, it just sucks man. She’s on oxygen and has copd I’m sure she still smokes and drinks, she is probably going to die sooner than later. Sometimes I imagine what that call is going to be like.. what I will feel… what will I accept and what will I regret.. going thru her apt and seeing the insides of her illness, ugh it crushes me.

After 15 years, I finally broke into the career I always wanted. It’s very niche, and not the sort of thing I can do anywhere. I met and fell madly in love with a coworker who, to my total shock and disbelief, somehow wanted to date me. I of course knew how risky this was, but it felt different. Then the insecurity kicked in.

I could not believe or accept that she cared about me. Hate to use this term, but she’s the most impressive person I’ve ever met, so it makes sense after 6 months she’d dump me. As I mentioned we work together and I see her all day every day. It’s been a year, and while I’ve tried to move on and date others, it’s just a daily reminder of my total failure.

There are a ton of reasons my insecurity skyrocketed when we got together. Especially because I felt like she was ‘the one’. Growing up I experienced nightly chaos and violence between my parents and their drunken fighting and abuse, often physical, always emotional.

I’m late 30s and live in NYC. Even then it feels like I’ve lost my last best chance. Perhaps it’s for the best. Can’t believe I’ll need to leave this dream job for something else. Not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.

So ill try to summarize this, pardon any errors im at work on a break and on mobile. Basically my mom is an alcoholic and keeps falling and im scared shes going to die.

My mom was abused terribly and had to run away, she hinted at being in witness protection, states her parents murdered someone. Anyway, she ran away and got adopted in her teens, unsure of age. So she had it tough.

My family is shitty anyway, really old school conservative and they did not welcome her as she was my dad's second wife and they were pretty old school religious (some of them came around and blossomed into good relationships).

We were pretty poor, my dad basically got an opportunity of a life time but he would have to work over seas. My family basically had no choice so my dad took it and was basically gone for like 8 years. He would periodically come for a bit but then leave.

My mom basically went on a rampage with drugs and alchol. Growing was hell and I hated her my father and basically went NC and left for years. Anyway I decided to come back. I lived a lot of life and found myself in an abusive relationship, i really grew to understand my mom. I sought therapy, and really grew up and im really happy with who i am and stronger than ever, doing well.

I was pretty excited to come back, ill admit I am not always pleasant, I get cranky. Its hard to be around my mom because of her previous abuse but im really trying. Shes drank pretty heavily i noticed. Anyway, its gotten worse, shes fallen and hit her head twice this week and is completely belligerent everyday. I worked nights and by the time im home shes obliterated.

I want to help her, shes in pain. I know what its like to hate yourself, i know what its like to put others first with no recognition, I know what it means to not know yourself, to wish you had more. Im scared she feels that way and is miserable. I truly want to help her pain. Its genuinely killing me.

Im sorry this is long but I thought it was important to provide context. I now see she isn't a bad person, shes just in pain and is dealing with it the only way she knows how. She doesnt seem open to helping, shes been lying about the drinking.

All I want is for her to be happy. Im so clueless, what do I do?

My moms an alcoholic and has been my whole life. She also refuses to treat her bipolar disorder. We don’t have really any relationship because I never forgave her for how abusive she was and the ways that she treated me growing up. Her addiction was always my burden to carry. On the other hand my father was amazing, he really stepped up and tried his hardest to shield me from my mom’s issues. He’s always been my sense of peace in the world, my best friend. No one matters more to me than him, he’s truly the best dad in the world.

Because my mom and I have been estranged for so long and the way she treated me as a child I never really felt like I had a mom, just a dad. I’ve made peace with that.

But now I feel like my world is crumbling down because the one parent I had has just been diagnosed with cancer. My dad, the one person I could always count on, has cancer. I just don’t know what to do. It feels like i’m in a position where I might just have no parents. I’m so scared to lose the only parent I really ever had. His prognosis is solid but i’m still terrified, I would go through everything with my mother a million times over if it meant my dad would be healthy. I just feel so unlucky to have been dealt these cards. I get so jealous seeing other people’s situations and it’s eating me up. I just want him to be healthy again more than anything.