My Mom’s Mental Illness and Alcoholism Is Consuming Us Both

She refuses the help I am trying to provide

“I need pictures of the things that happened to me. Now. Before it is too late.”

This is the final text in a barrage of middle-of-the-night messages from my mom. I read them the next morning. None of it made any sense.

In that set of messages she was telling me to come and bring my camera so “the police can work it out.” Telling me not to bring my 12-year-old son along but not explaining what I would actually be photographing. Or why this was necessary at 2 a.m.

When I called the next day she didn’t want to talk about it and said, “I need to sleep. I just cannot tell what is real and what is not.” Later, she admitted she had recently cut back from two bottles of wine a day to one.

I worried about what the change might be doing to a 70-year-old woman’s brain chemistry and gently told her as much. She meekly agreed.

About a month later, she told me that the night before those messages, she had gone outside to throw out her trash. She stopped to gaze up at the moon and that is the last thing she remembers. She awoke the next morning in her bed, pajama-clad, but her back was covered in bruises and she was in pain.

From this, she deduced that someone, a former neighbor she had argued with several times, had snuck up on her, drugged her by injection and “did terrible things to her,” even though he had moved, she had been alone, remembered nothing and still managed to get ready for bed and go to sleep.

It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her drinking.

Initially, I was speechless. When I softly tried to expose reason, she adamantly insisted someone had attacked her. So I gave up.

Sometimes these midnight messages from my mom are a jumble of words that don’t make any sense.

“Yeah, well, sleep time, Vrrrr…. That is what is it all about that yes so,” with some random emojis scattered in, followed by days of no contact.

The “no contact” is mostly on my end, to protect myself.

Her father was an abusive, neglectful alcoholic. He moved my mother, her two siblings, and my grandmother down to Florida from Ohio farm life when my mother was 14. He told them they could only bring what would fit in one, small suitcase.

She hated it here.

Her parents divorced two years later.

She married an abusive alcoholic upon graduating high school. A year later they were divorced, then she married my father, 28 years her senior, a renowned doctor (her boss), when she was 20. They divorced 10 years later when I was five. She’d had an affair with another abusive alcoholic who became my stepfather a year later when I was six.

When I was a kid, I lived with my mom and stepdad and spent every other weekend and summers with my dad. I used to cry when I had to leave him. I would try to hide it, though, to spare myself the criticism the tears wrought from my mother and stepdad.

When I was older, my mom said I cried because my dad filled my head with poison against my stepdad, even though I remember nothing of the sort. Now I know it was because I felt safe with my dad in a way I never felt with my mother.

She didn’t drink as much then, but she was always unstable.

With her, I was always walking on eggshells. Ticking time-bomb. Can’t get too close or the shrapnel will hurt me.

My father used to say, “Your mother is not the type of woman who can be friends with other women.” When I was young, I did not understand this statement. Now I know it speaks volumes.

I used to assume it was because she was beautiful. That other women were jealous of her. That was the picture she painted. But now I know it is because she has no understanding of how to build a trusting relationship. She knows no reciprocity. Her opinions oscillate from one extreme to another, with no explanation. Due to the early abuse and who knows what genetic component, her brain never emotionally matured beyond adolescence.

My mom worked from the time she was 16 until her retirement at age 65. She was a successful corporate manager at the time of her retirement. Self-sufficiency for survival. She has married herself to the idea that her lack of activity is the reward for her retirement. She says for as long and hard as she worked, she deserves to rest and relax.

I fully support this, but I see other retired people still living life. They spend time with friends and family, volunteer for charities they believe in or travel occasionally.

She only leaves the house for groceries. She no longer owns an alarm clock, and sleeps and wakes as her body tells her, which sometimes means staying up all night and sleeping all day.

I see her body aging rapidly, her movements stiffening, her skin sagging.

Throughout my 46 years of life, she has never had any friend beyond an acquaintance.

She does nothing but for the time she spends with me and my son.

I think her work is the single thread that kept her held together all those years. Tightly. So tightly that she vacuums the air out of everyone else around her.

Maybe that is why she is all alone now as it’s hard to live without breathing.

I have decided the only way I can survive our relationship is to implement the boundaries I was not capable of initiating when I was younger.

About fifteen years ago, I pieced together that she showed many of the signs of borderline personality disorder, with a history of trauma to match, and is attempting to numb this pain with alcohol.

Traits of borderline personality disorder exhibited by my mother include “splitting,” which is either completely love-bombing or hating someone and vacillating between the two, fear of abandonment while doing the things that will push someone away, fierce mood swings, and substance abuse.

I used to be my mom’s drinking buddy. But that all changed when I started my own recovery.

Our relationship suffered because I was no longer a party to the drama with drinking. The ups and equivalent downs all went out the window.

After my stepdad died, she took us on extravagant trips, flying first-class, staying at five-star hotels in big cities, and boutique shopping sprees. Binge-drinking champagne-fueled all-night emotional talks littered with tears, followed by dance-party hilarity, followed by bloodshot-eyed, Bloody Mary mornings, then start the whole charade over again. Epic highs, nasty lows.

I used to listen intently when she went on about how great someone or something was, then a week later that same person, thing or experience was utter garbage to her.

This makes it hard for me to know what is real with her. And the frenetic nature of that energy makes me think of her as a time-bomb on the edge of explosion.

Now I just don’t give the time-bomb any time.

And lately, there isn’t much to talk about.

I keep her at arms length, only sharing the parts of my life I am willing to let her see. I have had to accept detachment as reality with her. I am sure she feels it, but this is the only way I feel safe with her.

But I worry about her. Especially since I know I am the only one she has.

Recently, when the texts and phone calls started getting crazier, I called Judith, my former therapist (I was doing well enough to “graduate” from therapy a year or so ago) to book an appointment for us, but mostly for her. My hope was that she would go with me, then feel comfortable enough with Judith to start going on her own.

The possibility that she could heal — maybe at least a little — and we would have a healthy relationship for the first time in my life, possibly the first healthy relationship she has ever had, was the dream.

I made a plan to speak to my mom privately and tell her I was worried about her, that I had made an appointment with Judith and would like her to come. I dreaded the conversation. When it happened, her immediate response ranged from outraged statements such as, “You are just trying to control me,” and “I don’t need any help,” to shaming me for my previous mental health struggles, which emerged following my husband’s suicide when our son was a baby.

I knew that even though she initially declined, in the next four days leading up to the appointment, I would be receiving more dramatic texts, possibly calls, and eventually she might come around. But the meantime would be…challenging.

There was indeed more text raging, then finally complacency, and when the day of the appointment arrived, she said she would join me.

When I picked her up, she was trembling slightly, like a scared child. She was in jeans and a flannel, her hair was unwashed and I could tell she had applied some light makeup, but her eyes were incredibly bloodshot, yellow and glassy. This from a woman who used to dress impeccably, her highlighted blonde hair blow-dried to perfection, her bright green eyes gleaming.

We barely spoke on the drive. When she asked what to expect, I told her that Judith was very kind and had been doing this longer than I had been alive. She would ask some questions and I would be there to help.

I had briefed Judith.

When we sat down, Judith asked why we were there, and my mom looked at me pointedly, expecting me to take the reins, so I started to explain the “drugged” incident and let my mom continue. She embellished from the initial telling, painting the picture of the presumed perpetrator, the former neighbor, as someone who was “obsessed” with her. When she had finished, I clarified that no one else was around and she had been drinking.

Judith asked about my mom’s history, exploring some of the more traumatic moments of her past. I could tell it was difficult, but my mom opened up and let go of some of the weight she had carried for so long. For the first time in years, I felt an increased sense of empathy toward her.

At the end of the hour, Judith suggested my mom come back next week to begin her process. She asked my mother if she was ready to start healing and maybe start to lead a happier life. She agreed she would.

I was elated. Maybe there was hope. Maybe she would work on deep-rooted wounds that led to the behavior she had exhibited for so long. I knew the chances for any kind of dramatic rehabilitation were slim, but a thread would do.

My first clue should have been when on the drive back to her house, my mom said, “Well, it didn’t seem like she thought this was life or death.”

The day before her first solo appointment, my mom confirmed she was going. She said she would call me and tell me how it went.

No call came.

The day after her appointment, Judith called to tell me my mom was a no-call, no-show.

My mother was not there when I got that call, sitting with me in my office at work. Yet, she still managed to suck the air out of my lungs.

Where do we go from here? It is obvious to me now that she is not ready for therapy. Maybe she was only going to satisfy me. She is scared. The thought of having to talk with someone about her trauma, to unravel the mess, and attempt to work through it is daunting. I understand.

But I also understand that I cannot keep listening to the tick-tock of that deadly clock.

She may not consider this ‘life or death,’ but I know fallout can kill.

I refuse to be suffocated. I need to breathe.

I will keep going along as I have, attempting to remain detached and hoping maybe someday the bomb will be defused.