u/JaePD

Following from my post yesterday, I wanted to thank everyone for encouraging me to be direct. It’s something I skirt around a lot.

So I want to post it here to remind all of you that you can also be direct. I’m sending this to her, wish me luck

“Hey, I’m now about to get on the plane so I won’t be able to speak for a bit, we’re now going to Poland. But I wanted to give you some time to digest this anyway.

I wanted to talk with you about last time you came over, because my feelings were really hurt, and I want to make sure my boundaries are clear.

Last time I asked not to have any alcohol in my house and you left a bottle of wine out in my living room. We went to dinner while you and Sam went to the Cavern Club and you hugged me after and said “thank you, that meant so much to me”, but that was the only time you were away from me and drinking. Plus there was that poor girl on the bus.

It’s something that’s been a pattern since I was a kid, where you’d sneak wine into dads and ask us not to tell him and it caused tonnes of arguments between the two of you. Nothing has changed in the 20 years you’ve been apart and I’m at the end of my tether.

It’s your life and your choices and I’ve long acknowledged that I can’t do anything to stop you drinking but I can protect myself from being around it.

I am slowly watching dad drink himself to death, he’s been openly talking about euthanasia and cirrhosis of the liver and whatever, and it was a clear sign to me that I don’t want to be dealing with drunkenness, it’s part of the reason I moved out of his and got my own house in the first place.

Every time I see either you or dad lately, I feel shut down afterwards. I’m still in therapy and working through a lot, especially around the fights you guys had when I was a kid and your attitudes to your relationship with dad/alcohol.

When I came home from Christmas I basically didn’t speak to anyone for three days (and we had guests over, it was really embarrassing). I actually reorganised my entire office and got rid of a desk because I just needed to do something to remind myself that I am in control of my own life now.

It was the bottle of wine in my living room that really upset me. I watched you sneak around dad my whole life with wine in sports bottles, and thought “well at least she wouldn’t do that to me because I’m her daughter and she loves me/respects me too much”. But alcohol has been a problem with you seeing me and Kyle as well. Like that time I thought you were dead because you stopped at the pub on the way to ours and then I didn’t hear from you for three days.

When I tried to work with you and offered to go to Wetherspoons as long as you didn’t drink, I trusted you to do so. But I ran out of drink and took a sip of yours and found vodka or rum in your coke. I didn’t make a thing of it at the time because I just felt so deflated and somehow not surprised.

Last time you came over, we even poured out our cooking wine because I was worried you’d find it.

I love you but I’m not sure how to navigate this. I want to talk about it because it’s important to me to keep our relationship. I respect myself and I know my boundaries well enough now to not be lied to about this. I need to know that when I’m spending time with my mum, I’m spending time with her and not the alcohol.

I’m sorry this is coming to you in a message, but I think more clearly when writing than speaking out loud. “

I’ve posted on here before about my mum coming to visit from my hometown. She messaged asking if I’m free at the end of next month and I told her I’d check my schedule. That was five days ago, she’s called me since and I haven’t answered her because I have no idea what to say.

“Last time you came over you lied about bringing alcohol into my home and hounded the locals for their accent, so no.”

“I lied about checking my schedule and I haven’t even thought about it since.”

Like I’m already LC and working through therapy but how do I get this across to her without completely ripping that band aid off and destroying contact with the rest of my family? My dad is just as bad but he doesn’t even try to see me.

I am stressing 🤩

This is such a stupid one but I’m currently at a gig. I went to a meet and greet in tall boots and ate shit on the floor in front of a musician I really like.

I want to get the CCTV footage so I have something funny to actually come out of this situation rather than remembering it as the horror it was.

I’m fine with making a SAR request and have done it in the past, but I just want to know if I have a legal ground/phrasing I can use to request this, since “I fell over and it’s funny” probably wouldn’t result in me being given the footage. I worry that saying I was injured or something might scare the venue into thinking I’m trying to sue.

Hi all, I'm looking for books (or articles if anyone has any good ones) about the lives of people who worked doing manual labour on excavations during early Egyptology. I'm thinking between 1900-1920. I'm mostly looking for the conditions/day in the life/roles and responsibilities of the native Egyptian labourers, but anything is useful and interesting!

I know this is a very intense question with no definitive answer, I just wanted to hear the opinions of some other people who may know what he’s going through and potentially some men with mental health issues who can give me some of his perspective, because he won’t talk about it and I’m losing the energy to keep prying.

Had a really heavy therapy session yesterday and I’m feeling strangely light today and wanted some advice.

We talked about how my Dad went to work despite knowing that my dog was dying at home and how I thought it was unforgivable. I live across the country from him and was trying to coordinate vets with my sister.

I have resigned myself to the fact that dad is not the person I thought he was, and I saw a lot of my childhood with Dad with rose tinted glasses despite the negativity all around.

And now I want to quietly let him go. It’s been years of emotional manipulation and shitty decisions, but my dog really was the straw that broke the camels back.

But he’s severely mentally unwell. I know that he needs help and although I know I’m not the person that can give it to him, I want to know if it’s a good idea for me to still be in the background supporting him.

In the past he’s had ideations, saying things like “when the dog goes, I go.” He even made a post on Facebook the other day saying “[me] is living across the country and [my sister] can go live with her mum. Nobody needs me now the dog is dead, it’s about time.”

And part of me wants to call a welfare check and book a ticket home to see him, while the other part of me just wants him to hurry up and stop crying out if he’s just going to reject any help that comes his way. He has BPD so he needs to be at the centre of attention but there are other ways of getting people to talk to you.

I’m just scared of overextending myself and it not making any difference. Would I be doing the wrong thing cutting him off? I’d never block him completely because he’s still in the immediate vicinity of all of the rest of my family, and we do have some good memories together, but at this point my ties to my family are so loose anyway that I could get away with seeing him once a year and nobody would consider that strange.

Edit: Spelling