Happy Christmas 2025

I suppose the pressure was too immense. Somehow my mum tends to “season” each and every holiday with her unpredictability. She harps on me about telling her that’s she unstable but it’s absolutely true in her case. Unstable people can hold jobs and live in one place for extended periods of time. It’s the people in their life that endure the chaotic instability. Let me start from yesterday:

It was great! She got her errands done (last minute shopping), we all made a family trip to the Honey Baked Ham store… we watched AFV, ate Chinese food and opened all of our presents. Everything was calm. It was so nice. I even recall thinking how nice it was before falling asleep. It was nice because she hadn’t had anything to drink. 

Fast forward to Christmas. Vivian woke me up by telling me that Santa had left a gift for her, it was “Trouble” so we played a game to familiarize her with it. Mum woke up, she made pancakes, we had a nice breakfast with the ham from yesterday. We put batteries in Viv’s remote control car and just relaxed. She mentioned wanting energy drinks to get started on dinner so I go and get those as well as some prerolls. I come back and can hear the hip-hop music from down the stairs. She’s blasting it and my daughter is watching it, while she is “dancing”. It’s quite obvious that she’s drunk and I’m irritated and I’m not hiding my anger like I did a few days ago or during our really expensive vacation. She asked me what was wrong and I told her. I said that everything was fine before I left, why did she have to drink? We were happy and having a good time. Now we have to listen to inappropriate hip hop and deal…. Of course this upset her. For about three hours, we talked/argued while I finished cooking dinner. I thought we had ended things on good terms because she stopped being so argumentative but I was wrong. She finished dinner quickly and turned her attention to Viv, which was nice. But while playing “Hall Ball”, a game that Viv and my mum made up: basically dodgeball in a hallway with kicking allowed, my mum kept pretending to/actually hitting me with the ball… while I’m trying to eat my Christmas dinner during a stupid football game that she put on, which to be honest, I wasn’t even hungry for dinner after fighting with a drunk person. When I excused myself into the kitchen to calm down and try to just enjoy the day, she followed me and asked what was wrong. She was literally restarting the conversation we just argued about… For four hours. When she started talking about how she was the ultimate loser, having done nothing with her life, in a condescending way, I had had enough. I calmly asked Viv to put her shoes on, quietly packed up some stuff but not a lot because I just wanted to get out of there, and told Mum that I was dropping Viv off. I did not say that I would be right back, on purpose. My heart was racing as we walked to my car. Viv was totally oblivious to what just happened and I had to keep my cool. 

Everything about our day changed once Mum started to drink. I’m not as argumentative as she is when I used to drink but still, I did/said some stupid stuff. I’m sick of “acquiescing” to her drunken behavior, especially while trying to remain sober myself. I’m not trying to tell her how to live her life and I appreciate the fact that she drank in private instead of in front of me, but her silliness and unpredictable behavior was just too much to bear. When she gets drunk, it’s like having a second child around. I have to think for her and make sure she’s okay and help her find things that she’s lost like the remote she had in her hands not five minutes ago. I have a child of my own that I have to do that for. I shouldn’t be doing that for my mum, every time she drinks. The other day, I literally had to scream at her to stop “play fighting” with Viv. In my defense, Viv was yelling for me to help and not in a funny, playful way. She gets drunk and takes things too far, not knowing when to stop. And I mentioned tonight that I’m not on the same level as she is anymore because I’m not drinking. She don’t care. 

I’m really glad that this is happening before making the jump back into her arms/flat. We’re like best friends in school, spending too much time together when all of sudden, we hate each other because we’re spending too much time together. It’s weird. We can’t seem to find a balance and it’s like being in an abusive relationship with my mum. I keep going back to her because she’s my mum and she’s supposed to be a safe space but then she’s hurtful; Mocking me with things I never said in a disgusting hateful tone. I don’t like it. I wish that we could have a normal relationship. I love her unconditionally but in my sobriety, I have to set boundaries. Her behavior is extremely triggering, on many, many levels. Being around her drunkenness and having to pretend to be happy with it or that I don’t notice it, I can’t do that anymore. I don’t want to do that anymore. Cringing at Mum because she’s putting on another Saweetie or Latto song at full volume on the TV so my seven year old daughter can hear all the bad language and see all the twerking, I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s not funny anymore. Mark takes a stand for stuff like that, as should I. 

I told Mark when I got here too. Well, I mentioned in a text that Viv’s drop-off would be more than just a drop-off. He got the hint that something happened and I told him. I’m not keeping secrets anymore. I also told him that I don’t think I’ll be moving out now because I don’t think it’s safe for me or Viv. I don’t want to subject Vivian to the stupid shit that my Mum put ME through at her age. I didn’t like how unpredictable things were then and thirty years later, I still feel the same. She doesn’t understand that and I will not be putting my child through it if I can help it. I even said that I was hypocritical about wanting her to stop before she could because it’s true and I didn’t want to be mocked, like how she mocks me for being so against her usage of puff when I was a kid but now as an adult I’m an avid puff user… perhaps that’s her fault for having it around. It seemed to be my destiny. Anyway, it’s clear that I’m not drinking anymore and don’t want to be around it. Even the behavior that comes with drinking. 

It really, really breaks my heart that my Mum is spending Christmas evening alone, especially after we just talked about how great everything had been going this holiday season. Then this bullshit happens. It literally makes me want to drink and that’s the whole reason why I shouldn’t move in. 

I sent her a text, composed entirely by AI, saying that I love her but can’t come back tonight and that we’d reconnect tomorrow. I was expecting a barrage of emotional torment but she came back with “I completely understand”, changing the reunion to Sunday and to let her know when I’d be coming by for stuff. I can only imagine what’s going on over there right now: she’s probably angrily packing up everything Christmas and everything that I bought for her or brought over in the last couple months. It’s probably all going either in front of the TV in the living room or on top of the bed in the room that I was sleeping in regularly. She got me a really fantastic Christmas gift and I stupidly took it when I fled this evening but I had already uploaded my data to it and damn it, I want to relax with it. I hope she doesn’t think I was just after a good Christmas gift because that’s not it at all. I genuinely enjoyed my time with her when she was sober from alcohol. It was so nice being in her presence. Something else she said that bothered me as well: I should or rather she should “send me” to live with my Dad so he can give me a good Christmas since she can’t seem to ever get it right. That really pushed me to the edge because she couldn’t be more wrong. She wasn’t making any sense and I didn’t want to be there with her anymore. I hate that I felt like that again and I don’t want to feel like that anymore. I don’t want my daughter’s holiday memories to consist of fighting and crying and fleeing. She needs a stable environment, like I had growing up with my Dad while my Mum was figuring things out. I don’t blame her for living her life after having a shitty childhood but when she keeps bringing it up after I’ve forgiven her, what is she looking for? What am I “acquiescing” to? Anyway, I feel like shit. I can’t relax knowing my Mum is probably in tears, holding her cat who has no escape. Or maybe she’s trashing her apartment since she doesn’t care about stuff like that when she’s drunk. 

Me continuing to live in Mark’s folk’s home doesn’t change how I feel about him now. I confessed my feelings, multiple times, and received nothing in return. Either I’m dumb or he doesn’t feel the same and I’m not barking up that tree anymore. I’m going to seriously focus on myself, including marrying myself since ultimately I’m all that I need.