TL;DR - My mom and dad, married for 35 years, have only lived together sporadically in the last 7 years, and not at all for the last 3. My dad has recently made a new ‘friend’ and has decided to move on and my mom is blown away. Thanksgiving night I brought her to my boyfriend’s family dinner and she told several people (that she had just met) that my dad was cheating on her, then rolled up her sleeves to show them her arms covered in 60+ dark marble sized bruises with a smile on her face. I don’t know what to do.
Mom got laid off 13 years ago from her long time factory job. She did local temporary work for about three years, before taking out of state temporary/seasonal jobs, where she would live away from dad for 4-6 months at a time. She did that for about 4 years, before finding a winter job between summer jobs and staying away for about 11 months. Three years ago she found a permanent job in another state and has been living with one of her family members since. She’ll go visit my dad for a few days at a time when she runs out of medication because she can’t get her Xanax refilled from any of her doctors she sees locally. She takes that trip once every 3 or so months.
My dad recently made a new ‘friend’ and has decided he would like to pursue it. He’s told my mom and she’s blown away. At first she was going to quit her job and move back home to fix things, but he’s told her that he’s not interested. This has devastated her and sent her spiraling.
She’s doing things like calling his friends and their SO’s confronting them about keeping his girlfriend a secret from her. He’s called my dads mom and screamed at her for making my dad think it was okay to cheat. She’s adding people on Facebook that know my dad or used to be family friends, people like my high school friends or old neighbors, and sending huge novel length messages about all the awful things my dad has done and how he’s a cheater and a liar.
She’s also messing with her medication. She’s done it in the past when something gets hard in her life, she’ll stop taking her medications all at once. One time she did it and was hospitalized when she told HR she stopped taking them and had all these extra pills so she might as well take them all at once. Another time she stopped taking them right before a cross country trip on her own and was suddenly out of contact for a week. When she finally called someone back, she said she was too tired to get out of bed and was snowed in on a dirt road in the middle of Colorado, where she wasn’t even supposed to be. In the last two weeks she’s fallen at work twice and has had some blow ups with her family member, one of which resulted in her being found walking on the side of a busy highway by her work supervisor and being made to sit on the side of the road until her family member could come get her. She’s pretty unpredictable in general sometimes, but these issues seem to me to point to another round of her reducing, if not stopping her meds again.
The latest incident was last night at thanksgiving dinner with my boyfriend’s family. She’d only met his parents once, and none of the other family. I overheard her talking to his sister, telling her that my dad is a cheater and how terrible he is, the she rolled up her sleeves to show dozens and dozens and dozens of bruises covering her arms. She was laughing and smiling and talking about how she had no idea what cutting or anything was until recently and how giving yourself bruises are waaay better than taking Xanax. My mom told me the same story a little later, starting with “soo I’ve been doing something bad...” then laughing while she rolled up her sleeves and told me how much better it is than taking too much Xanax. My boyfriend said he saw her show his mom a little later.
Growing up with her, my siblings and I have learned to not react when she does crazy things and last night I was the same. I know it wasn’t productive, but I didn’t know what else to do. All I could say was ‘ouch’ and that it probably wasn’t a good idea.
How do I help her? She’s obviously having a really hard time and not dealing with things healthily. I’m afraid she’s going to hurt herself worse or do something crazy like take off and disappear. She’s always been one of those people that always test how much you love her, like pack all her things just to get you to beg her to stay, or park her car around the corner from the house to see how long it takes for someone to call her to see when she’ll be home. I don’t want to play these games with her, but I don’t want her to feel abandoned. My dad finally saying he was done is a huge thing and I don’t want her games to turn into her actually disappearing or getting hurt.
When she was last hospitalized, it didn’t seem to do much help. After she was released it was just back to the same, they even sent her back home with her huge zip lock bag of mixed up medications that she was originally threatening to take all at once. We’re in a different state now and she has access to great health care, but isn’t using any of the counseling/mental health services. I feel like the first reaction is to get her admitted again, but I don’t think a 3 day hold is going to help, and I don’t know what else to do.
Submitted November 29, 2019 at 02:05PM by Spaghetters7 https://ift.tt/2R5dWLu
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