It’s amazing how quickly my mood can drop with one single phone call to mum. I simply don’t understand alcoholism, so I don’t understand why dad keeps doing this. He went for two weeks this time without drinking. Despite this happening before, and then him going on another bender, I stupidly, naively, thought that this time maybe things might be different. I don’t know why I keep thinking that. Each time I do, I just get disappointed, and this was no exception. I stupidly thought that maybe this time, he might realise how destructive his behaviour is and how it is tearing the family apart, and that we all love him if he just behaved like he used to. Clearly I was wrong.
And I don’t understand the addiction, I just don’t. It just makes me angry. I just keep asking myself, is life with us so awful that he needs to keep pushing us away? What have we done? We’ve shed so many tears, had so many sleepless nights, hell, I’ve even cleaned up his vomit on more than one occasion, and for what? Does he even acknowledge it, does he even remember??
And I don’t know how to help mum besides giving her a place she can stay when she needs to, and being a shoulder for her. It feels like I’m not doing enough. So I feel guilty about that too.
I hate that this keeps happening. It’s such a horrible, horrible addiction (but I suppose any addiction is). I hate that we’ve reached out for help but unless he wants to take some responsibility and get some help too, people can’t do anything for us. I hate I don’t know how to help him.
I keep hearing about family friends or friends of friends who gave up drinking after some incident happened. SO MANY THINGS HAVE HAPPENED and there’s no sign of him giving up drinking. I know I sound like a teenager but it’s just NOT FAIR that things have gotten so bad and they just keep getting worse because he won’t, and doesn’t want to GET IT!
I am so weak that I annoy myself too. I have said I want nothing more to do with him and then I feel sorry for him and I check on him and I keep talking to him instead of cutting off all contact with him.
Sorry for the vent, but this is my blog after all, and having dealt with this getting progressively worse for a couple of years now, I can’t keep his ‘shame’ a secret anymore.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Monday, August 08, 2011
Not Mel time at all
As seems to be the case lately, my intentions of updating this blog more regularly, including a few posts about our honeymoon in New Zealand, have fallen by the wayside. I still intend to write about our honeymoon but that will now involve referring to our itinerary and guide books so rather than research right now, I thought I should at least post something in the short term.
I have taken a fair bit of time off from work this year with the best intentions, making myself a list of what I planned to achieve and having grand illusions of lots of time for me. This is now my second week back at work and unfortunately my grand plans fizzled for a couple of reasons.
The first was that my dad decided to be a complete jerk. Without going into detail, because of him, my first week of leave was good, second week shit, third week good, and then weeks 4-6 were crap again. His behaviour resulted in my mum staying over our house for a few days, something I think will likely happen again in the near future until she decides to formally leave him and find somewhere that she can settle more permanently. I didn’t mind having her stay with us though, she’s a nice house guest to have.
The other thing that happened in my last 3 weeks was that my grandma, who has lived on her own for 17 years and was diagnosed with dementia a couple of years ago, had a fall and was taken to the hospital. When she was found she was conscious but couldn’t get up, and the bathroom had stuff thrown everywhere so she must have been in a very confused state before her fall. It was decided that it was no longer safe for her to live on her own so the hospital kept her while the social worker helped us find a nursing home for her. My aunt from QLD and my uncle from VIC came across to help mum with organising things and cleaning out my gran’s unit. Gran has now been in the nursing home for about a week and a half. She’s slowly settling in but has said a few times she wants to go home, so it’s been sad. But the nursing home is great and it will be the best for her in the long run.
So now I’m back at work and Uni has also started again which means starting work at 7am 4 out of 5 days, so I am perpetually tired and think I may have been too ambitious trying to do 3 subjects this semester instead of 2 but we’ll see how we go. All 3 are really interesting though so at least that helps.
Perhaps I can have some Mel time in the near future…
I have taken a fair bit of time off from work this year with the best intentions, making myself a list of what I planned to achieve and having grand illusions of lots of time for me. This is now my second week back at work and unfortunately my grand plans fizzled for a couple of reasons.
The first was that my dad decided to be a complete jerk. Without going into detail, because of him, my first week of leave was good, second week shit, third week good, and then weeks 4-6 were crap again. His behaviour resulted in my mum staying over our house for a few days, something I think will likely happen again in the near future until she decides to formally leave him and find somewhere that she can settle more permanently. I didn’t mind having her stay with us though, she’s a nice house guest to have.
The other thing that happened in my last 3 weeks was that my grandma, who has lived on her own for 17 years and was diagnosed with dementia a couple of years ago, had a fall and was taken to the hospital. When she was found she was conscious but couldn’t get up, and the bathroom had stuff thrown everywhere so she must have been in a very confused state before her fall. It was decided that it was no longer safe for her to live on her own so the hospital kept her while the social worker helped us find a nursing home for her. My aunt from QLD and my uncle from VIC came across to help mum with organising things and cleaning out my gran’s unit. Gran has now been in the nursing home for about a week and a half. She’s slowly settling in but has said a few times she wants to go home, so it’s been sad. But the nursing home is great and it will be the best for her in the long run.
So now I’m back at work and Uni has also started again which means starting work at 7am 4 out of 5 days, so I am perpetually tired and think I may have been too ambitious trying to do 3 subjects this semester instead of 2 but we’ll see how we go. All 3 are really interesting though so at least that helps.
Perhaps I can have some Mel time in the near future…
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