Then, in 1994, our house burned down. The house my mom was trying to buy. The house that my mother loved and had made hers alone. The house overlooking everything beautiful that Hawaii had to offer. Everything went down hill from there. Mom sent us all to stay with friends while she tried to find her sanity and decide what to do. I feel for her, I really do. I can't imagine how hard that must have been for her. Everything that she had worked so hard to make, everything that she had earned and that she deserved was gone in one night.
She moved in with the guy she was dating, his name was David and I still to this day hate his guts. He was possibly the biggest asshole I have ever met in my entire life. He may have loved my mom or he may have just loved the idea of what my mom could be to him, but he killed what was left of her spirit either way. He took a strong independent woman and her damaged spirit and let what was left of it die. He encouraged her drinking and her dependency upon him because he knew that was the only way he could keep her. And she, with no hope left and no idea what she was going to do, leaned on him and eventually became the dependent obedient woman he wanted all the while drowning her sanity in alcohol. She has never been the same.
She moved all of us in with him and back to Texas. I was 14, Noah 12 and Ruthie 8. I moved out when I turned 15. David hated us. He didn't like kids and as far as he was concerned we should all stay in our rooms or outside, but he wanted nothing to do with us. He would ground us for asinine things (I can say this now honestly as I am a parent) just to get us out of the way. He continued to make my mother believe that she was worth nothing. He didn't allow her to work and on the few occasions that she tried he would sit where ever she was working and watch to make sure that she wasn't doing anything he disapproved of. Did I mention that I hate this man?
After I moved out, David and my mom moved to a town near San Antonio. For the next two and a half years they lived together. My siblings were miserable. My brother finally cracked and moved in with my uncle in Dallas. While trying to better his life, he had the ongoing guilt of leaving my mother and sister there. The breaking point for my mom was when she made Thanksgiving dinner and he came home and threw everything on the floor. She moved out but she wasn't the same any more. She was barely a shell of the person she had been and she was continuing to see David while not living with him. She went back to work and he sat around and watched her. And months later, when it was finally officially over, she sunk further into depression and drank even more.
She lost the house because she was too far gone to remember to pay for things or save the money for the house payment. She drank and drank. She became verbally abusive towards myself and my sister. She never remembered what she had done. I tried helping her as much as I could but she was just too far gone. Then she met Mike. Mike seemed great and she seemed happy. He wasn't like David or my father. But she sure turned that around. My opinion on this is that my mom was so full of hate and ugliness inside for both her situation and her loss of dependence that she had to project it out to feel better. She drank more and became bitter. She hated everything and the only way she could cope with so much hate was to project it outward. Her marriage with Mike dissolved and she moved back. She did ok for awhile, but Ruthie was miserable living with her because when she was ugly Ruthie was the one who had to take it. Ruthie moved in with me again a few months later.
And here we are. Ruthie lives with me and my mom floats from one place to the next. Ruthie loathes her and I don't understand her. I try to help her, to encourage her to get help but she rejects it. She wants things, I know she does. She wants to be independent again but she can't seem to make the first steps, not with pushing, not with help and not with encouragement. I don't think she can stop drinking nor do I think she wants to. She is looking at her life as a failure and is so set in that frame of mind that she doesn't think she can fix it.
She failed at being independent (in the end), her relationships and marriage failed, she has fair at best relationships with her children and she has no plans for the future. I can spend five minutes with her and find 10 signs of depression but she refuses to try and correct it. I want to help her but the more I am around her, the more she upsets me. She is belittling and antagonistic. She is searching for confrontation and I just want to help her become independent again. I have no idea how.
~Kate
