Easter and the Alcoholic Friend

I hope everyone had a great Easter. We had a great weekend, and did things differently. It was nice, for the most part. Saturday we went to a bible study dinner potluck and egg hunt. Nice company, good food, but I felt rather out of it. I mean, this bible study group was put together for people with young children. Well, our youngest child is 9-1/2 now. With the girls gone, I felt like my kids were old enough to be the babysitters. We will continue with the group for the year, and finish that out. I know the intention of the group is to keep going for several years and we've made some really great friends. Maybe my husband and I will be the mentoring couple, or something along those lines. I mean seriously, in the egg hunt, it was 2-4yr olds. We let our 9yr old in on the hunt. What did the older boys do? They hid the eggs prior to the hunt with the adults.

Easter morning went off with a bang: All three boys and my husband yelling, swearing, and fighting over lost clothes, unironed clothes, and missing shoes. I mean seriously. Do they think yelling, fighting, and swearing will solve the problem? What about a little advance preparation (like every Saturday night)? What about just fixing the problem, not the blame. I really hate that, the old "fix the blame, not the problem" sort of scenario. I turned up my radio really loud in the bathroom, finished getting ready for church, and promptly left on time, without my family. They really should have been ashamed of themselves. I've never seen any of them behave so poorly, especially on a religious holiday. So I sat in church alone (which was fine by me). I noticed my husband and boys slink in about 5 minutes late for church. I'm so short, you can't find me in a crowd of hundreds. After church my husband asked if I want to go to WalMart with him and the boys to get summer clothes for our upcoming Disney trip. Um, ya. Right. I told all four of them I'm ashamed of them & their behavior, and that they were appalling. I drove around for a couple hours alone to clear my head. Upon my return home, the boys & husband were eating chicken nuggets & fries. Since no one was particularly hungry after that, I got to skip the whole huge Easter dinner extravaganza. Worked for me. The boys and husband all apologized to me. We then watched "Karate Kid" and had a great rest of the evening. Yesterday I made our Easter dinner, and it was delicious. The evening ended with my husband asking me to adopt again. I think I have to dedicate a whole separate post about this.

OK. So onto the story about the Alcoholic Friend. Ya know, this relationship has gone full circle so many times over the years. She and I are like sisters to each other, that we do not have biologically. We've known each other over 25 years, and have always been in consistent contact. She is a tad weird, but I've never held that against her. We've always thought, "well, that's just her." And I love her as she is. The tough part is she has mental problems and she is a recovering alcoholic. Our relationship has gone thru phases of limping, more than relating, at times. She will end up in circumstances that are deplorable, by her own poor choices. And I've had to shake off my co-dependant wardrobe, put on the healthy layer, and decline her begging, asking, and guilt-tripping me for help. Since I won't solve her problems for her or rescue her, she often went into begging for me to watch her young children endlessly, while she could go off and "solve" her own problems (solving, to her, is doing things like borrowing tons of money from relatives, or putting on a bikini & hopping in someone's boat for the day). I watched her kids for her in an emergency, and another emergency, and yet another. I lost track after a point, but was getting resentful. She has parents & grandparents who can watch the kids. I don't even have that, yet she wanted to dump her kids on me all the time. Finally push came to a shove when I declined to watch her kids once. She told a mutual friend that "Esther owes her." oh, no no no no. That about ended the friendship. Since I keep a calendar, I had record of all the times I watched her kids. I sent her a note, with all the dates I'd watched her kids (in the last year or two), and told her I don't owe her. And that I wouldn't be watching her kids anymore. We could be friends, but I'm not the free nanny. She pretty much quit asking, and my family eventually moved to another city. Completely out of her way now to make it worth her time to drop her kids off.

To get up to speed, a year or two later, without telling anyone, she went to "visit her brother out of state." While there, she actually checked herself into in-patient rehab. Good for her, but alot of us really resented her abandoning her family with no notice. She really hurt her children. She didn't even try counseling or out-patient treatment first. Personally I feel like she wanted a 5 month vacation. She was gone that long, missing one child's birthday, and all the fall/winter holidays. Thank God I didn't live close enough for her husband to ask me to take the kids. Their marriage survived, and she went back to college to earn a professional degree. She now has a 4yr degree & professional job. She confided in me that she is only with her husband because she needed someone to support her during her college days, and she will leave him when her career is making enough money. Gee, not uncomfortable or anything. I've kept her confidence, but avoid her husband. He is a louse, and she should have left him years ago. I don't say those things lightly, but he has even given her sexually transmitted diseases because he's cheated on her. He's actually done so many unthinkable things to her and in/out of their relationship, that she legally separated from him at one point. I got called by their lawyers, asking for personal affidavits about them (character witness), as they were fighting for custody of the kids. Even with my girlfriends problems, the letter I wrote about her husband makes my friend look like a saint by default. I think her husband realized with that letter/affidavit, that he had zero chance of custody of his kids. I don't know that he wants custody per se, but more than that wants to avoid paying child support. Personally, I'd like to hit them both over the head with a rolling pin.

I finally felt like she was too clingy and needed to stand on her own two feet (about a year ago). With me always there for her to complain to, I feel that's all she did. And her husband is too cheap to pay for her to go to counseling. She even now won't pay for personal or marital counseling now that she is gainfully employed.

The final straw was seeing her at the wrestling tournament last week. She seemed higher than a kite, talking about things my husband and I felt totally bizarre. She also fell off the bleacher into the aisle. For no apparent reason. She and I were talking, and next thing I knew she fell straight over to her left, sort of on her back, with legs up in the air. I strongly suspect she had been drinking. I also saw her husband, whose eyes were red & totally glazed over.

I don't want to get together with her. I feel like it's perpetuating something negative. I would like our friendship to go somewhere positive, but with an addict, it's a whole nother ball game.

Any suggestions? She wanted to get together tomorrow for lunch. At the tournament I said sure. Today I cancelled on her, with the excuse that I'm too busy this week. I'm really just buying time until I can figure out what to tell her. How do you confront something like this? There are her personal problems and addiction, which is one thing (not my business), but I truly don't have desire to be in friendship with someone like this. Even though she says I'm her best friend. I truly love her, but don't want to be around her. And I have my children to think about. I need to keep them around safe people, and set a good example for them.

Please leave me your suggestions.