For me it’s my dad. How he’s still alive, I don’t know.
My poor mum does everything for him and he treats her like dirt because she calls him out when he drinks. They are both late seventies and should be enjoying retirement, but instead it’s a slog. A slog through poor health for him. A slog through his constant lying for her.
Some days he is so breathless he can’t manage to make a cup of tea—yet if my mum goes out, he can somehow manage to walk (or even drive, whilst banned) to the shop to buy alcohol.
My actual dad is gone. He was a good, kind, loving, principled man. Now all that matters to him is the drink. It’s like he’s already dead and something evil has possessed his corpse.
I often pray for it to be over, for my mum more than anything. She is in constant emotional pain. She won’t leave. They had a lovely life until it very rapidly became not lovely anymore. Deep down I think she still hopes they can get back to how things were, if he would just stop drinking— but they’ve been cycling through this same merry-go-round of lies, regret(at least the show of it), hope, then more lies, then despair—for so many years.
I gave up on him years ago. After the five hundredth time of trying to get him to see how much he is hurting his wife. I don’t think he cares.