watched show called intervention and im crying.
w/o knowing what we were doing exactly, my brother and i did a kind of mini intervention w my mother at the beginning of the year. by God’s grace, she went and got treatment and things are changing. we didn’t really think she would go, we just knew we had to stop enabling…
the worst is that it is my father who has needed help the most. he’s the alcoholic… and abuser… violent… he broke a conference table at his job, the company he was COO of and lost his job… and my extended family just tells my brother and i, “make him happy.” I have heard that my whole life. It’s not possible. he’s not in my life. my father disowned me 12 years ago, and yes, remains married to my mother whom i’ve been very close with – and yes, this is a mess i have the hardest time to explain to anyone. he used to “just” be violent. now he drinks… just like his father and his grandfather… now him… the one thing he never said he would do. he is trying sort of to be in my life, or rather just have his relationship w/ me or lack of it, not tear apart the rest of my family. my brother and mother confronting him on the fact that they will not keep spending holidays catering to him is the only reason he will be in a room with me. it is a mystery to the entire family why he has not spoken to me except twice in the past 12 years. the two times he spoke to me were mundane one sentence phrases around my brother’s wedding a year ago. On Christmas day this past year, i was stay at my brother’s house, and somehow, my father didn’t expect that and early in the morning (4am) he got up and left my mother alone and went camping because it was too hard to face being around me. my mother fell apart, but refused to also say anything was wrong – and that lead to three days of watching my mother totally fall apart emotionally. she would stay in my broither’s driveway for hours, “waiting for (my brother) to get home.” she got lost in the samll town we grew up in numerous times. she had panic attack after panic attack - and all through this, telling my brother and i, everything was fine. never saying anything was wrong or sayiong he was hurt or had any emotion about my father. "he just does this." my brother and i longed for an honest moment, a moment where she just said everything is not ok... but she couldn't... and we quickly realized that. we did what we could to make sure she was safe and stayed w her to the degree we could. at the heart of it, as she told us eventually, she was terrified to go to her home and deal with my father coming back from camping and raging about me being in town for Christmas. in the same town. me. she never said it was my fault or anything, but of course it was so hard for me to battle the thoughts of self blame anyhow - just trying to make any sense out of something that makes no sense.
when my father gets drunk, he gets quiet and dark. no rage. he's self medicating w/o the alcohol decades of pain he is unwilling to get help to deal with or deal with even on his own in any way. now since christmas his mother died, now he lost his job, and now he’s drunk so much…
thank goodness my mother has her own treatment to help her get through this. my brother and I are working on our stuff. and working on boundaries w/ our parents. we no clue what to do if anything about my father to help him other than lots of boundaries to just protect ourselves. we can't rescue our mother and that is the worst feeling in the world. she is in treatment now though, and we help her and support her in ways that keep us safe too - and yet my broither and i, if we knew it would actually help her, we would go to the ends of the earth or give up our own lives to help keep our mom safe, but not even that is in our power. my broither and i have worked with a domestic violence counselor in town who helped us figure out our roles a little - and my brother got counseling of his own on board, saying my going to a residental place last year helped him realize he needed help too for himself. my mother and i are building a new and very different and better relationship, with a lot of mistakes and struggle - but it's all going in a good direction overall.
but then i see the extended family, enabling my father. a family friend as well. one long time family friend was camping and actually invited my ahole of a father to leave my mother at 4am on Christmas day to go camping w him… and then called me to say merry christmas like nothing was wrong. oh, i called him back and said until he can not make it easy for my father to run away from us and his problems and f- up our family like this, don’t call me again. no, it wasn't his fault... but still... i was mad... the apple didn't fall far form the tree w/ me... i watched this family's friends sons when they were little and we connect up every christmas... i didn’t want to lose him (the family friend) but i couldn’t take this… wtf is this even anyhow?
i’m not explaining all of this very well. partly b/c hard to type, and partly b/c it is messed up and not something that makes sense.
i just watched intervention, and i don’t know why i watched it - other than to distact and keep me resting and recovering this weekend - and apparently do so by watching a terribly triggering show. i was curious i guess. but now i’m in tears. to see on the show the support and love and people saying look, you are hurting, we love you, we can’t do this unless you get help, please get help… i wish my family could do that w/ my father… instead of telling my brother and I that we have to make him happy. we are adults and have lives of our own and can’t ever make him happy. doctors, lawyers all kinds of very respected professional peropl in my family, and they turn to my brother and i and say you need to make you father happy. so he doesn’t break conference tables at his job and lose in another one of his rages and drive drunk and wtf?
i know my father is hurting and needs help but the help isn’t his grown children making him happy. not possible. or a good idea even if it was possible. how can doctors and lawyers and nurses and school teachers in my extended family not get it! wtf?
sorry.
i feel so alone in this and like such a freak. i just wanted my dad. my whole life i have wanted him. i still do. i don’t have a dad. i have a f- ed family telling me to try and make a drunk raging 6ft 4in man who doesn’t speak to me and lives 1000 miles away - to make him happy. dear extended family: you all make him happy yourselves. what will it take before you get a clue?!
so badly needed to express this and vent somewhere. sorry.
