Pardon Me While I Totally Unload on You

This one isn't pretty or funny or even easy to read probably. But maybe some of you will identify and I could certainly use some support. Or maybe you should just skip this one, up to you.

I hesitated about whether to write this or not, as I'm sure some of my IRL friends have found their way here. But then, most of my IRL friends are aware of the situation, and if they aren't, it's not like it's really a secret. So, onward.

My parents are alcoholics. They will tell you that they aren't. That they "might indulge a little more than they should" but that they are not in need of any help or harming anyone. They have been for as long as I can remember, if I think back on it, though I didn't really catch on until my first (and only) summer home from college, when I suddenly thought to myself "God, has it always been like this? Or did it get worse after I left?"

The truth is, it had always been like that to varying degress...4 or 5 empty beer cans in the sink by the time dinner was on the table. Entire bottles of wine consumed in one sitting. Bedtime scotch and special occasion tequila shots. Drunken phone calls to my grown sister and midnight ambushes while I was trying to do my homework.

They are both alcoholics, though my father is far less an issue for me than my mother. His general response to drunkeness is to pass out in his recliner in the living room. He doesn't bother me when he's wasted. My mother, on the other hand, reveals all of her very worst qualities when she is hammered. And hammered she is on a regular basis.

Take this scene, for example, on a weeknight last week. Keeping in mind that I have been living there now since mid-March, truly making an effort not to pick fights and to just get along.

Daddy had made steaks and the 3 of us had sat down to dinner at 7:30. Steaks and potatoes and wine. I did not partake of the alcohol. Mom opened a second bottle at about 9pm. She had clearly already had plenty, but suggesting to her that maybe we didn't need another bottle is a battle I no longer try to fight. When we got up from the table shortly thereafter, my father went promptly to bed and I retreated to my bedroom with the door closed for some True Blood before bed.

At 10:45pm I left my room to go out front and retrieve some blankets a friend was returning. I walked back into the house to find my mother sitting in the kitchen floor. I put on my best smile and my perfectly calm and not-at-all-annoyed voice and said,

"Do you need some help?"

"Yes, I suppose I do."

"Did you fall or did you just decide to sit down there?"

"No, I'm just hanging out down here by the [air] vent."

"Are you hot? Would you like me to turn the air down?"

"No, I'm ok now."

"Would you like some help up off the floor?"

"Yes, but I'm afraid I'll just pull you down with me."

She then proceeded to crawl, on her hands and knees, across the kitchen floor, where she reached for the counter top and managed to heave herself, not so steadily, back up to a standing position. I continued to try and be nice:

"Would you like me to help you to bed?"

"I can't go to bed until the kitchen is clean. I need to wake up to a clean kitchen."

"OK, well how about we get you to bed and then I'll take care of it. It will be nice and clean in the morning, I promise."

She ignored me and started hobbling her way around the kitchen, but not before she POURED ANOTHER GLASS OF WINE.

"Can I ask you something?"

"What's that?"
"Why, if you're already so drunk you can barely stand up, are you pouring more wine in your glass?"

"That's a good question. Because the bottle isn't empty, I guess."

I'm not making that up, she actually said that. She refused to leave the kitchen a mess, so I went in to help her and try to speed up the process so that she would GO TO BED before she ended up on the floor again, this time not on purpose. While rinsing dishes she says:

"You think I'm pathetic." (this is a common tactic when she's wasted - guilt)

"No Mama, I don't think you're pathetic." (yes I do)

"Well I AM drunk. And I don't like it either."

"Well Mama, you are the only person who can keep that from happening."

"I know, but that would require self control that I obviously do not have."

"There's help for people who want it, you know."

I should point out here that the subject of AA is not well-received in this house, despite the fact that my mother has a cousin that she adores who has successfully completed the program and is still very active in the community. I do not understand this. I guess it's that whole "the first step is admitting you have a problem" thing. We're not there yet. Anyway, she then says to me, after a few moments pause:

"I know. You're sober and you just have all the answers."

To which I promptely responded "Alright. You can get yourself to bed then." and walked back to my bedroom before I totally lost it. Bitch-slapped her purple teeth out of her purple mouth lost it.

I'm not sure why I even try anymore. There have been many events over the years, total meltdowns and calmer conversations, that have resulted from their complete refusal to acknowledge that they have a problem. It has progressed from both of them vehemently disagreeing with my accusation to each of them telling me separately that they're worried about the other's increasingly ridiculous alcohol habits. It's gone from too many beers before dinner to entire bottles of wine in front of the TV to pouring another scotch at 4am to bosses calling spouses because someone didn't show up for work and no one is answering the phones at home. It is completely and totally out of control. And it angers and saddens me beyond words. Because there have been so many words and not one of them has made a difference.

Sometimes I think I'm getting through to them or we're making progress. Sometimes someone apologizes for how it affects me or one of them says something to the other, supports my cause. But the reality is that they don't want help. They don't want it and they won't get it, whether I use my not-at-all-annoyed voice or my hiccuping-between-sobs voice. I don't know if there's a singular event in the future that might end it or whether it will always be this way. I don't know if it will some day drive us completely apart. Lord knows it's come pretty close in the past.

And you know what the hardest part is? It's not the drunken ambushes, the guilt trips, the face plants in the hallway. It's not the ridiculous dinner conversations or the public embarrassments or the hypocritical statements. It's seeing, almost daily, plain and clear right there in front of me, how much they hate themselves. And the fear that I might someday end up like them.

They are barely functional train wrecks. They have so much practice they can fake it even to themselves. But not to me, (sometimes not-so-)late at night, sitting in the kitchen floor. I know how truly awful it is. How totally out of control. It is a sad, pathetic thing, and it's been going on for 20+ years.