I just wish my Mum wasn’t an alcoholic

[ShakeYourTambourine]

NC for this.

All I want is for my Mum not to be an alcoholic. It’s all I want and I know it’s just not possible but I don’t know how to ever accept it.

She’s been an alcoholic for as long as I can remember - about 25 years - since I was a young child.

Childhood was rough. She “raised” us as her and my Dad were divorced. We saw Dad every other weekend.

It was awful.

I could understand it all and possibly even forgive if she wasn’t still an alcoholic but she is. She was sober for a few years in my late teens/early twenties so she can do it. But she can’t. Won’t. I don’t know.

She lives alone now. Unemployed. Living in squalor. No friends. No hobbies. No life.

When I had my first baby 5 years ago I realised what I was missing. All of my NCT friends waxed lyrical about their super star Mums who they “just couldn’t do this without”. I had no one. Not even a mother in law. Not even my Dad (who lives miles away and I see twice a year). Nothing. No one.

I’m jealous. I’m jealous of everyone I know who has a Mum. I don’t speak to my Mum anymore - I couldn’t cope with such a one-sided relationship. She hasn’t tried to get back in touch.

I just feel so sad, angry and lonely. I’ve had a huge amount of therapy over the years but I don’t think I’ll ever not wish things were different. It hurts so much.

Can anyone relate? Feeling really fragile today.

I know exactly how you feel, I really do. My dad has been an alcoholic for 30+ years, my mum is mentally ill (not an alcoholic but presents similarly in that you never know what mood she will be in, quick to anger, very unreasonable). I haven’t seen either of them for years. I feel guilty in ways but I know continuing to live under the stress of having them in my life wasn’t an option. My kids haven’t met them.

It was, and still is, shit. Other people with nice attentive mums who help out will never understand what it’s like to struggle how we do. I have felt very alone in motherhood - I have DP obviously but the lack of a maternal figure to guide and help me has left a massive hole.

What also pisses me off is my grandparents were wonderful and my parents heavily leaned on them for childcare when we were little, yet now I have kids they’ve made themselves too unsafe to give me any kind of help.

It’s fucking shit tbh, I find it very hard to even think about forgiveness. 💐

This resonates with me.

I was the mother to myself and my mother from a young age. She was just vacant.

When I had my DC alcohol meant more to her than her grandchildren. But by then, I preferred to keep away from her.

My mother is now paying the price with liver disease. Her friends and people who don't know us well believe her victim story and judge me for not doing more. I do as little as I can get away with doing. She never apologises, talks about what a terrible disease it it and I'm so angry.

@MaryMaryVeryContrary I’m sorry you’ve gone through similar. It’s awful isn’t it. The gaping hole is what gets to me now. There’s just this nothingness where I should have love. My grandparents were amazing when I grew up too - spent many school holidays staying with them. I won’t let me children near my mother’s house. I’m sad that my mother has deprived them of a relationship with a grandmother.

@ProvincialLady2024 I’m sorry you’ve been through similar. I get the judgment thing. When I explain to people I’m NC with my Mum, that it’s because she is an alcoholic with severe mental health problems, I sense people judging me and I feel the need to immediately explain “trust me, I’ve spent most of my life trying to help her but I can’t do it anymore”. People don’t get it. It’s such a unique situation to be in - outsiders just don’t have a chance of understanding it.

I think I find her birthday and Mother’s Day the hardest. Having only gone NC in the last few months, this is the first year I haven’t sent her cards and it was a relief. I was sick of standing in the card shop, trying to find any card that didn’t gush about a “wonderful Mum who means so much”. I would always end up in tears.

What I would give to have a Mum that I could buy a card for without bursting into tears.

Yes. I could have written this. It is so hard. I’m so full of anger and having my own kids now just really brings it home how awful she was.
if I ever mention it it’s poor her, it’s an illness, I’m a bitch for being mean. I can’t be bothered anymore.
I really wish for that support with my own kids.
Thank you so much for writing this, I always feel so alone

Someone at work asked me why I couldn’t ask her for childcare (I had a situation recently where I was desperate). The idea of her doing it is just laughable. No one in my life gets it

My mum wasn't an alcoholic but she has mental health issues and wasn't able to parent any of us kids. I parented myself from a young age and then ended married to a man who I had to parent as well. I basically married my mum.
I was like you, it wasn't until my kids came along that I actually became aware of how disfunctional my upbringing was and began to realise I didn't want the same for my own kids.

You need to grieve for the mother you wanted but didn't get. I don't know how I made peace with the fact that my mum was never the mum I wanted or needed. I just realised one day she wasn't able to do it. I suppose it's easier for me to say that she couldn't help it and it wasn't her fault. I suppose the same is true for your mum OP.

I will never forget being in such a bad place that I wanted to kill myself. I told my mum. She sat in absolute silence for five minutes then started talking about the weather. It was like her brain short circuited and rebooted! I think that was the point when I knew she could never be a mother.

Snap. Now I have my own children I don't understand how she could let it get so bad

I don't care if it's "a disease". That's an easy excuse.

One day soon she will be found dead at the bottom on her stairs

Shit isnt it!
No advice but solidarity to you all. All
of the above posts articulate how I feel so well.
It’s so unfair. Unfortunately I haven't got the balls to go no contact.

I also haven’t got the balls. I know I should

@MouseAnony yes my Mum is all too quick to play the victim card too. “It’s not my fault, I’ve got mental health problems” and “there were good times too”. I’m sorry you feel alone. I understand why. It is a lonely place. I completely relate to the childcare thing. My Mum recently offered to look after my children for me. I couldn’t believe she had the audacity! I had other family members telling me it’s not fair that I didn’t let her. Honestly.

Thank you for your perspective @ProjectEdensGate I think I have been coming to terms with it but it just really hurts still, some days more than others. I also find it hard because although she doesn’t want to be an alcoholic and never made that choice, she made some terrible choices when bringing us up. She had options - she could have relinquished custody to my Dad, she could have not put us in direct danger so so many times, and she didn’t. It’s hard to forget. I’m so sorry about the way your Mum reacted to your admission about suicide. That’s awful.

@footgoldcycle I can relate. It’s awful but over the years I have often thought to myself “it’d be easier if she were dead”. It’s not a nice thing to say but I’m not a horrible person. It’s just really, really difficult living knowing your parent is alive but not able to be a parent.

@QueenVictoria6 it took me YEARS to decide to go NC and in the end it was something quite trivial that broke the camel’s back but I don’t regret it. It’s really hard and I get a lot of criticism from other family members but eventually I realised I was compromising my mental health in a (futile) bid to improve hers by maintaining the relationship. My children are my priority and I’m a better, happier, healthier person for going NC. It’s certainly not easy though and every situation is different.

💐 for us all

Thanks again for starting this thread. I have been considering starting one recently. I’m so sorry you’re all in this awful situation! Maybe you’ll give me the courage to go NC

@MouseAnony feel free to use the thread to tell your story too. I find talking about it helps so much. I can literally talk about it non-stop but don’t really have an outlet for it.

I understand...my dad was an alcoholic. It is absolutely hellish xx

It has been about six months since I last spoke to my Mum. I can’t say I miss her because it got to the point where there were she had no endearing qualities. There was nothing to miss.

Over the last four years (basically since the pandemic) she had become more and more dysfunctional and had less and less to give. The relationship was hollow really - a futile fantasy where we all had to pretend she wasn’t an alcoholic. I had moved to limited contact a while ago - visiting only 3 or 4 times a year and I hated those visits. I hated her interacting with my
children. I hated talking to her and watching her pretend she was a normal, decent human being.

It got to the point where I didn’t even care if she had been drinking, it was the lies about EVERYTHING - it became too much to deal with. I can’t trust her.

She claims she loves me but she hasn’t shown me anything like love for years. She doesn’t know me enough to love me.

I would do ANYTHING for my children. I told my Mum all she had to do was engage with the support being offered (that I’ve offered to pay for) and I would be there for her. It’s not enough. She’s not interested.

"I think I find her birthday and Mother’s Day the hardest. Having only gone NC in the last few months, this is the first year I haven’t sent her cards and it was a relief. I was sick of standing in the card shop, trying to find any card that didn’t gush about a “wonderful Mum who means so much”. I would always end up in tears."

It's so hard to find cards that juts say "happy birthday Mother". Not every has the "world's best mum" some people have "you shouldn't have had children mums".

I completely understand

My own mum has gone downhill rapidly over the last decade. Our relationship has deteriorated badly over this time.

She can't understand why she doesn't have a close bond with DS like she did with DD (I have a large age gap).

The reason is because I've come to hate spending time in her house over the years. We've fought so many times.

Believe it or not we used to be so close and she was the one person I could've spoken to about anything, but those days are gone for good. She crossed a line last year and it's never been the same since.

The names she's called me over the years (both to my face and to other people) will never stop stinging.

We have a strained relationship now, mostly through guilt as like your own mum, OP, she has no job, friends or hobbies.

I want a mum to go into town with, without the fear of knowing she's been drinking that morning.

It's really, really shit.

@ImDuranDuran I’m sorry. It really is utter shit isn’t it. I can relate to what you said about name calling. I realised last year when I was having a lot of therapy that actually my Mum wasn’t a very nice person. During her sober period she didn’t speak to me for months because I broke up with my boyfriend. I was 22 years old. I had found someone else and she couldn’t accept it. She called me all sorts of horrible names. It was awful.

She is the ultimate victim. In her mind, no one has ever had it worse than her.

She once told me that I shouldn’t criticise her parenting because “[her] Mum wasn’t perfect either”. My lovely Granny, who was strict but not an alcoholic, not an addict, not a narcissist, but a wonderful, warm, loving woman.

I’m starting to wonder if we have the same mother! This sounds so similar. It’s all about my mum. We all have to play this merry dance of not noticing or commenting on her being drunk. If ever I confront her it’s everyone else’s fault and the self pity is just something else. My childhood was spent trying to work out how i could make her happy. And yes my mum hated my Granny just how you describe with your mum. Apparently she was awful to her!
I honestly just think this will only end when she dies now and I’ll be relieved if I’m completely honest (I know that’s awful).

Solidarity OP, from a very, very young age my siblings, and I, were aware of our mum's alcoholism, she was cold, hard, emotionally unavailable, pissed most of the time, argumentative, confrontational - I never invited school friends round, it was too embarrassing, mum sitting in her chair, spouting nonsense, with damp patches across the front of her trousers where she had wet herself. We lived very rurally and, after tea each evening, she would take her goats for a walk and a graze - an hour or so later they would wander home on their own and we would have to go and look for mum - usually finding her stretched out, comatose, with an empty sherry bottle beside her. The daily expeditions to the COOP to stock up again...

It did an enormous amount of damage to us, to this day I find it triggering to be anywhere near alcohol, the people who consume it and the places where it is served - I detest pubs and bars, avoid them like the plague, noisy, alcohol fuelled people and the vile stench of stale alcohol.

I am so sorry OP, that you are enduring it too. My mum died 3 years ago ( in her 80's and, astonishingly, not from alcohol related causes), but all I ever wanted was a mum who was 'normal'.

@DracunculusVulgaris thank you for sharing. My Mum is a binge drinker so wouldn’t always drink every day. We would occasionally bring friends round after school and I’d find her collapsed in the kitchen, passed out in a puddle of her own urine etc. I remember it all too well. She used to sit in the same spot on the sofa, chain smoking and drinking (secretly) until she pissed herself and fell asleep.

She would often nearly set the house on fire by falling asleep with a cigarette in her hand, or trying to cook while drunk.

Drink driving was another one. She would drink drive - unforgivable anyway - but sometimes with us in the car. We were too young to realise at the time but looking back I realise now what was going on. She once crashed a hire car while we were abroad - she had been drinking.

Is anyone else following the thread in AIBU about whether or not addiction is a choice? I’m finding it very triggering.

My mother was an alcoholic, my dad passed away when I was just 7 years old and mum turned to drink. I would often be out playing after school and go home when it got dark to find her passed out sometimes having fallen with blood up the walls and all sorts. She never stopped, one by one we left home and left her to it (I was the youngest).. my memories are a little blurry but it was pretty shit. She died eventually very slowly and I had to care for her knowing all the while she wasn't the best mum. As kids we told no one, we hid her secret drinking and the cupboards were bare often - drink always took priority. It would have been my mother's birthday today, I have some fond memories but reading this today the reality hit hard. I'm a mother now and I couldn't imagine my boys seeing me like that!! A life lesson if nothing else. You have my sympathy, people don't get it. Sending love your way xx

Yes. I only read the first few and stopped reading because I was very triggered indeed.

It seemed the majority of responses were quite happy to not consider the addict responsible for their actions at all and we should all just feel sorry for them! The narrative I’ve had from my mother for my entire life

I know how you feel. My mom is an alcoholic and potentially got NPD. I’m currently no contact (she is blocked) after a tirade of abuse and her saying horrible things to me and behind my back (including that my MCs were because I am overweight and that I am cold and selfish)
I still worry about her. But the impact on my own mental health at the moment with the struggles of TTC were too much