Someone, please, remind me that I’m not alone.
It’s been a while, and I need to get this off my chest.
Do you have someone you love that has an alcohol problem? I’m struggling with someone who has one. My father has anger issues, is bi-polar, paranoid, and an alcoholic. It was much worse a few years ago, this was also before my attitude change. He would yell at me while he was drunk, in this forever loop about whatever it was that pissed him off. I would be trapped there, broken down in tears from being yelled at, waiting for it to be over. Then one day I thought to myself “You know what? I’m an adult and I don’t have to take someone treating me like this. I have a car, I can just leave.” So that’s what I started doing. I avoided him. I would either go to my room, or I would leave. After a while, it got to the point that I just didn’t care anymore. I would come home and he would be drunk. I was sick of hiding out and running away, I live here too and I have every right to be here. I started standing up to him. He didn’t really like that, and it usually made things worse. Anything and everything could set him off. One day it was because I didn’t want to sit in a chair. Many times it was because I didn’t want to sit and watch a youtube video / listen to a song he wanted to play on his computer.( I wouldn’t mind giving him my time, but it’s always when I have to meet someone or go somewhere. When he asks for 5 minutes of my time, it’s never 5 minutes. It always ends up being half an hour or even longer.) Half of his stories just looped around to other ones he’s already told me during the same session. I was annoyed and sick of hearing about his work being out to get him.
One day I was making dinner and he came in there to complain, again, about how they were trying to get him fired at work and such. I think I said something like “I don’t care”. Good god, that really made things blow up. I wasn’t emotional during any of it. Once I started standing up for myself a wall was put up and nothing he said or did would cause me to loose composure in front of him. I’m not going to let the bully win, and that’s what he has become - a bully. As he continued to yell and cuss at me, I just stood in the kitchen making my food. Yes, I was responding which made it worse. Then he called me a bitch, he dropped to his chair wailing, and then got on the ground and crawled to his room. I left my dinner on the counter and left. It didn’t hit me until I was half way to my friend’s house and I started crying. My father has never called me a bitch before, and I never thought in a million years he would. It hurt and I was shocked, my mom once told me when an ex had called me some names, that she would leave my dad if he ever called her those things. A few days later, he was sweeping and just casually told me that he tried to kill himself after I had left that night. He took a bunch of pills. There is no way of knowing if he did or not, and that’s not something I like to take lightly, but at the same time.. my father is great at manipulating people. He does shit to get what he wants. We were all nice to him for a while after that, which is exactly what he wanted. He got away with treating me horribly. He goes through phases were he doesn’t drink and he’s okay, a lot of times he’s moody (he’s bi-polar and constantly takes himself off his meds) and he often picks on me about eating things. He says he’s not making fun of me because no one is around to hear it, as if that makes any difference at all. I have told him before I don’t like him “joking” like that, and he continues to do it anyways. He makes sideways comments all the time. My ex heard one and told me after the fact. He said it took everything in him not to do or say anything. It’s weird because he can tell me how smart I am and how proud he is of me, and then just like that he can turn it around and cuss at me. He wasn’t always like this. He does have good moments, but they seem to be few and very far between. Last night, was the worst. My family and I came home and waited for each other before going in. We knew he was pissed off and knew that he was drunk. We went inside and the house was a wreck. Chairs had been knocked over in the kitchen, his clothes were all in bags on and around his car, a closet had everything pulled out on to the floor, the computer tower was laying in the living room on it’s side with the printer thrown on top along with something else I couldn’t recognize, the computer room was trashed. Papers were all over the floor, the drawers of the desk were laying about, a chair was over turned, the computer desk and the shelf thing on top (desk with a hutch looking piece attached to the top to give you shelves) was laying on the ground. He yelled and cussed at all of us for half an hour before the police were called. He’s drunk in his own home, there is nothing they can do about it. He hasn’t been physical with anyone, so again, nothing they could do. Fucking up the house, well that’s a civil matter and they can’t do anything about that either. They could talk to him though, which was better than nothing. Oddly enough the officer that responded had been to our house before and remembered my father. “I see you haven’t gotten your car fixed from the last time I was out here. When you drank and drove back home.You may not remember me, but I remember you” My father bounced back and forth from being angry, to doing that crying thing he does, to being okay, and then angry again. He also likes to throw in that he was in the military (he was in the air force and was discharged due to a back injury from holding a heavy box while on a latter. He never saw any kind of battles or action, but when he brings it up, he likes to make you assume he has.) and had to throw in that he has a mental problem. At one point the officer gave him a warning that he would take him for disorderly conduct because he kept interrupting the officer, talking over him, and then yelled at him. Silently, I wished he’d continue and get taken away. Maybe that would have been the wake up call he needs The officer advised us to leave for the night, since my father can’t. They can’t force him out of his own home, and he was too drunk to drive anywhere. So we did, the officer (and two others that showed up randomly) walked us out of the house. The whole time I had been rock solid, my heart had been beating fast, I could feel my body shaking the whole time, but I showed no emotion. Not even when his nose almost touched mine and he was yelling at me about something that had nothing to do with me. He has called me heartless because of this new attitude, but it seems to be the only way I can handle him. I feel better being solid in front of him and not backing down. It’s not like seeing me cry ever made a difference, so why let him see how much he hurts me? I’ve tried to talk to him about it while he was sober before, which went no where. I got a passive aggressive letter flipping it around to be my fault. My father’s behavior makes me sick. He does this wailing crying thing, but then turns around and gets in my face pointing and screaming at me. He’ll give me some half ass apology only to do it again. His apology means nothing anymore. He says he’s sorry like a coward (he says it from another room “I’m sorry.”) and then does the same thing again. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t make him get help, I can’t make him do anything. As long as he continues to live with no consequences, I don’t think he’s ever going to change. Why should he? He gets to drink all he wants, stay home and watch TV, get on the computer and listen to music, or sleep. He gets to treat all of us terribly and then he acts like nothing ever happened. I. AM. DONE. I can’t afford to move out, I can’t support myself due to a whole other situation. I am going to sit down and talk with someone about this later and see what we can do. I’ll give up whatever I have to, whatever I can afford to give up (I can’t stop making car payments for example, but I could give up my gym membership.) I have to get out of that house. I can’t go back to living the way we did a few years ago. I never knew what I was going to come home to. I can’t fucking deal with this abuse anymore. He won’t admit he’s abusing us, but he is, verbally. I don’t know what else to do. I hate to leave my mom alone in that mess, as if I am abandoning her, but she has the same options I do. She could leave him if she wanted. She could go stay somewhere for a while to make him see that he is loosing everything. Maybe that would change his mind, but I doubt it. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want help. You can’t make someone change, they have to want to change for themselves. It’s a hard reality to deal with and accept. I am going to find a way to get out of this though. I will not continue to live like this. I have nothing else to say to him and he can leave me all the passive aggressive notes that he wants. I won’t bother to read them. The man that lives in my house is not my dad. My dad would never treat me or anyone else the way he has been treating us for years. I don’t care if he has a mental issue (bi-polar), he chooses not to take his medication. I don’t give a fuck what his excuse is going to be this time. I just don’t care. Flat out. I don’t fucking care. After dealing with this for, what four years now?, I just can’t anymore. I use to feel bad for feeling numb or that I didn’t care, but I don’t anymore. No one should have to go through this, no one. I know I am not alone in dealing with this personally (my family has to deal with it), but I know there are many people out in this world who has to deal with someone in their life like that too.
