emchi.co.uk

So I’ve read a post by the mental health nurse who was talking about getting help for her brother.  Which reminds me of the situation with my own mother.  She never got help and my dad and I never knew what we should do.  We lived with her much like she was Jekyll and Hyde.  Never knowing from one day to the next whether she was going to go off the boil and loose the plot.

There doesn’t appear to be help for families who have a member that abuses alcohol.  The person with the problem has to actually admit there’s a problem.  What happens to those who have to live with this person among them? They suffer.  Silently or not, it’s a life term that they are in for.

I was the one who found my mother was the drunk.  I found her stash of empty brandy bottles.  I was only a teenager, and I knew my mother was a drunk.  That didn’t mean I could excuse her behavior.  I took the full force of that from my classmates.  My mother was a freak and by proxy I was a freak.  This affected my relationships with people; it still does to a degree.  I cannot stand people shouting at me, yet I take criticism easier than I take compliments.  I don’t seek attention but I’m frustrated when I don’t get it.

My dad chose to walk away, which wasn’t easy for him to do.  I took the brunt of the onslaught from the fall out.  I hid my dad for six weeks, and kept his whereabouts silent from her for the rest of her life.  I too turned my back and walked away.  There was nothing else I could do for my own sanity.  I guess that’s why I now choose my battles carefully.  I have to know the fight is worth it, whether mentally I can stand the strain or if the odds are just not good enough to take it on and win.

For a while she obviously managed to survive.  The booze anesthetized her from the rest of the world.  She didn’t try to find me; I didn’t exist any more.  No birthdays or Christmases were remembered.  I saw a photo of her taken a year or so before her death.  She seemed happy but I couldn’t help look at the photo and wonder how much she’d drunk that day and if it was worth it.  Was it really worth what she drank and the price she paid?

I wish there was help available.  The medical profession knew she had a problem, but all they did was stop her from working.  She was a nurse.  She got struck off the nursing register.  She lost her driving license, twice.  She destroyed relationships with her own family, to the point where some of her own sisters wouldn’t turn up to the funeral.

I was told she’d given up the booze a good year or so before she died.  By then the damage was done.  She’d been hospitalized with encephalitis and scurvy.  Her liver was gone, she had emphysema, and god knows what else wrong with her.  There was a black bin liner full of drugs in her flat when she died.  Perhaps she sobered up and realized how much she’d pissed away.

Perhaps that’s why she stopped taking all the medication and died?  I’ll never know, the coroner couldn’t determine cause of death.  I never got to tell her how angry I was with her.  What was the point in doing so at her funeral?  She’s dead now.  She’s not coming back.  The damage was done long ago.