Day 3 & 4... Only almost 3 years to go before it's in the past. According to 'science'.

Why hello my pretties...  

I didn't write yesterday because instead, I spent my energy being in a total stink.  I am so grouchy and I'm not even PMS'ing.  It feels weird.  I don't think it's even necessarily the not drinking. I have actually been taking stints off drinking for a long time.  This last patch started around October/Nov and I have not drunk much in that time. A drink on Christmas (wasn't worth it. Tasted gross. Made me tired.) 

I had a few drinks after that due to my family life melting down around me.  Let me tell you a few things about parenting a teenage girl.  Ohh  yessss.... and I'm sure you can tell me a few things too if you happen to find yourself with the absolute blessing of having daughters. 

My daughter is brilliant. Loving and optimistic and quite literally like sunshine in human form. She went a bit off the rails recently and I was very worried and pissed off when her dear friend of many years finally cracked and told her mum what she's seen my daughter getting up to with these new friends from school.  In the mix was vaping, taking an overdose of magic mushrooms, getting into cars with P platers going 120km's an hour, on top of the drinking and getting stoned at parties.  

Now, perhaps my amnesia set in because as I've mentioned I was not the most innocent young adult, but my daughter here was 15 at the time and a very young innocent 15.  Maybe I'm being over-protective. Maybe my own mother didn't really notice me as much as I would have liked and maybe I am trying to be the parent I felt I never had.  My daughter and I are very close, unlike my relationship with my mother.  

Anyway, whatever it was, when I heard about the vaping and her freaking out in public on magic mushrooms that was the last straw.  I rang my own mother, who lives on the other end of the country, and asked her if I could fly my daughter to her place the next day. I needed to get her away from these toxic friends and figure out what to do next.  The deal was no social media and no letting her go out on her own because she had a history of asking strangers for drugs! (who is this child?!) 

So popped her on a plane, many tears from both sides, and 2 days later my mother has given her a smartphone so she's straight back on social media talking about wanting to vape and talking smack about stuff as usual.  Thank you, mother. 

There's a lot of history with my mother.  Long story short the poor woman has been through a lot of trauma. She's a sensitive soul who has always struggled with being overly innocent coupled with paranoid and delusional.  It's a confusing mix.  It took me a year or two with a psychologist to be shown that my dear mother probably has Borderline Personality Disorder.  I still don't quite know what that is.  But it's something.  I can see that.  My beautiful brother who was 3 years older than me took his life 9 years ago, and if she was crazy before, that took her over the edge.  I am still navigating how far gone she is. It's unbearable to live with and to watch and not be able to do anything.  I have tried forever. My brother and I both did. She lives a good distance away now and I believe it was my brothers doing from above, to protect my family from her unfortunate tendencies to destroy our relationships. 

Anyway, whatever is happening to her made her cancel my daughter's return flight and create the story that she would be staying with her and attending school. This wasn't part of the plan. At all.  So now I'm dealing with a mother who's gone off the rails, my daughter who won't talk to me as she has her smartphone and her friends and has made me an enemy, and a mother who instead of supporting me to create some boundaries has completely betrayed me.  I couldn't talk to my daughter.  My mother said she didn't want to talk to me.  Doesn't matter that she's a child and I'm her mum.  

So I called the police.  And then I booked a ticket home for my daughter. And after a lot of texting back and forth, my daughter agreed to get in a taxi to get on a bus to get to an aeroplane HOME. 

Do you know why she wouldn't talk to me?  Because she didn't want me to take her friends away from her.  It didn't matter that I gave her a 'dumb' phone so she could still text and call her friends.  She had to be on social media.  How crazy is that? She is so addicted.  I can't quite compute.  It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have 2 little boys in the house who soak up everything they see... when she has her phone plastered to her face 24/7 it hurts me to see that.  Does anyone else feel compelled to throw their teenagers phone into the nearest cow paddock/bin/under a truck?  

So anyway I bought a few bottles of wine over a week or so.  I kept the non-alcohol beers coming too, which are great. But the wine slipped in, and I got to slip out for a while.  Sometimes I felt without it my head might actually explode.  Especially the day that my mother decided to call the police to my house at 1am.  This was a week or so ago.  They came the next day at midday and told me my mother had called them in the night.  They were lovely.  Obviously, my daughter was fine and she chatted with them for a bit, and then I chatted with them and told them what had happened.  They said it might be a good idea to call the mental health support in my mother's local area to go and check on her.  I want to do something... but I know she will not like that and may retaliate somehow.  I don't want to engage in any crazy drama.  I am trying to raise a normal family! So I don't know what to do except send her my hope. Far out man. Life is  SERIOUSLY hard sometimes. 

So that's the little blip of wine drinking that I am coming out of.  Stuff's been extra hard.  I realise things will always be hard, and when it gets extra hard we need some tools or support or all of the above.  I tried AA once and I didn't feel like I was right for the group.  It was too extreme for me.  Somehow.  Also, I'm not yet ready to call myself an alcoholic even though I know I am one.  Why else would I drink while pregnant? That's F'd up.  

I have thought about going to church for the spiritual vibe there.  I also want to hang out at the Hare Krisna temple in a neighbouring town.  I feel like I need some help from the divine... its everywhere and I would like to tap into it for a bit.  That's how I'm feeling today.  Seeking.  But ok.  Happy to not be drinking.  And waiting for the time in my life when I never desire alcohol again!