What are you looking for?
Featured Topics
Select a topic to start reading.
(very long)
There's a lot of preamble for today's situation, and that's not even all of it. But I'll try to stay focused.
I live with my grandmother and my mother.
Grandma love her fireball.
To her, it's the only thing that kills the pain, not the morphine and percocets, but the fireball on top.
She's 82 and in lots of pain, and she's had a tough life. My uncle died very gruesomely last year and she's taken it the hardest, especially with her other son being murdered many years ago as well.
Fireball is numbing and forgetting.
She's gotten worse with it the past year.
She gets drunk and falls.
In September, she fell coming up the stairs, when she decided to grab another bottle of fireball one morning (when she could have just asked me as usual).
I was the one to come to her rescue. Luckily, she only had a bruise on her butt.
In October, she fell in the kitchen. She claims she tripped over the cat, but she was talking and swaying and slurring and praying the same way she always is when drunk.
I was the one to come to her rescue. She had a broken wrist.
THREE DAYS LATER, she fell out of bed.
I was the one to come to her rescue. This was the most drunk I had ever seen her, absolutely blackout at 82 years old. She knocked out her front tooth. At the hospital her bloodwork came back borderline alcohol poisoning.
And my mother and I couldn't do anything about her drinking, because she doesn't see it as the problem, but instead the solution to all her pains.
So she started being sneakier. The fireball was no longer in the kitchen, but hidden behind her toilet. So I couldn't even be aware of how much she was drinking. I have very acute hearing, and every noise she makes, every thud, every cough, puts a pit in my stomach. I've found her on the floor so many times now and my body and brain snap into the worst case scenario.
This went on until January 23rd of this year, when she fell again. Judging by the level of the bottle, she had 13 shots in her. And it's sad to see her rambling and crying about her dead sons, and not seeing what she's doing to herself now.
After that fall, I have been on bottle duty. We compromised on a drink a night of 3 shots, and I leave an extra shot out after I go to bed because she needs one more little punch before she can fall asleep.
This has worked most of the time. Sometimes she's extra stressed during the day and needs some, which I give to her without any negative comments. Because it's not about taking the alcohol away from her completely. I'm her little bartender now, and I know when her cutoff point is. It's about keeping her safe and avoiding those
nerve-wracking situations.
During the day, I keep the fireball one one side of the living room, while my desk (where I am most of the day) is on the other side. I can keep an eye on it without hiding it from her.
At night it's under a pillow right next to my head. I sleep on the couch. Another story for another time.
Last weekend, while I was downstairs, she walked right up to the bottle and poured herself a drink in front of my mother. She asked her not to tell. Of course my mom went and told me.
And it's heartbreaking. I feel like I failed to protect her. I feel like I can't trust her.
And she doesn't see it as the problem, but the solution. No matter how many talks, she refuses to consider how much of a strain this is on me. It's her solution.
So now, during the day, the fireball sits right next to me on the floor next to my desk. I've had no problems there yet.
Until tonight.
I never moved the bottle from under the pillow today, and I was doing some yardwork downstairs.
When I was done for the day, I moved the bottle to the floor next to me, not paying attention to how full the bottle was. I've been marking in sharpie every night, for my own reference.
Now tonight, when I go to pour her drink, there's a big discrepancy between the line from last night, and the level now.
It looked like about 8 shots.
She's the only one in the house that drinks.
And she swears up and down that she was sleeping all day or on the toilet.
I have no way of proving this, I was outside.
She doesn't seem like she has any alcohol in her, but she can hide it well.
And then she's in "poor me" mode, ranting how she's treated like a child in her own home, etc etc... I can't even remember it all, it's a blur to me.
I just want to keep track, because that's all I can do.
(Two weeks ago, when I went to pour, somehow the level was above the sharpie mark, by about 5 shots and that was very bewildering. If I believed in that "glitch in the matrix" sort of stuff, I'd say we have some whisky that travels back in time. Trying to lighten the mood here.)
But this time, it's her lying or I'm crazy. Well, I'm getting into therapy soon for other reasons, but that's besides the point.
She gets mad and I get mad but in the end I'm forced to give in to her.
All I can do at this point is keep track, and tonight makes it even more frustrating.
And now she knows about the pillow hiding spot, even if she won't admit it.
So tomorrow I'm going to the flea market with fireball in my trunk.
I'll give her a drink when she asks, but now this godforsaken bottle is never leaving my sight.
Which is a sucky way to live.
I'm 24 and I feel so stuck in my life and I have so many other problems to solve and I'm the baby sitter of a bottle.
Or I let her drink to her heart's content, come to the rescue again and again, and one of these times I'll find her dead.
If you see a comment that is unsupportive or unfriendly, please report it using the flag button.
She falls because she loses her balance when she is drunk. I am in my seventies and found that out after my last few falls. I don't drink any alcohol at all any more.
ReplyNo one understands pain unless you've been there. Nothing worse than not being able to relax....be it alcohol or weed, some folks cannot rationally handle the pain.
ReplyI think she needs a therapist because she's been threw so much. I know that's not always financially doable. I've struggled with drinking until last week me and my gf broke up and I really loved her and I realized what alcohol has destroyed for me. I would try to get her help maybe medication and a lot of counseling.
ReplyOP here. That's another problem, because she's been in a mental hospital before and had such an awful experience (electrotherapy) and has no faith in any therapist or mental health professional. I've tried to tell her how that's now how they do it nowadays, and when I get into therapy I'll tell her exactly how it works, but I know it will take a lot of convincing. She deserves some peace of mind that's not as dangerous as alcohol.
Reply