A contemplation of the situation.

I found out yesterday that it's not just my brother who is moving out from the house in which I grew up, but my mother is going with him. In other words, my parents are getting a divorce.

Ever since I was a child my mother has threatened to leave my father if he doesn't stop drinking. She said it so many times, and sometimes she even took off her wedding ring. But every time she gave in; she never left him. I am the eldest of the three children and I moved out when I was seventeen. My sister also moved out at the age of seventeen. Now that my brother is seventeen it was expected that he would move out like the two sisters before him. But for some reason, the possibility of my mother going as well never occurred to me. They are moving next Friday.

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I cannot pretend not to feel slightly worried about my father, despite everything he did to me, to us, to the rest of the family. The house is located twenty-five kilometres outside the actual centre of the town, near the town's borders. As far as I can remember, he has never been too social, and all the times we've had to leave the village (to visit relatives on national holidays or the like) he has seemed reluctant to go. All my life he has left the house for three reasons: to buy alcohol, to go drink alcohol with other drunkards in the village or for work. Before I moved out and ever since after it I have had the image that his visits have become rarer and rarer. He can no longer get much work due to the alcohol abuse and even his drunk buddies have gone (some died, some moved elsewhere, some have turned their backs on him).

I'm worried that of the two possibilities he will choose the bad one. I'm worried that, instead of getting a grip of himself and getting rid of alcohol and making things up with my mother, he will isolate himself from the outside world once my mother and brother leave.

I'm worried that he will take his abandonment on the two cats that have to be left behind since they're used to being able to go outside whenever they feel like it, having forest around in which the little predators can roam freely; they're not used to being locked inside an apartment, as they would be if they went with my mother and my brother.

I'm worried that he will sink even deeper in alcohol. My mother already told me that his reaction to her announcement of separation was the usual: he’s been drunk since Tuesday.

I'm worried that he is going to die within a few years. He may kill himself (would not be unexpected, he has tried it before); shoot himself with the gun he killed our dog, or take an overdose of sleeping pills, or get in a car with a tube from the exhaust pipe to the inside, start the car and keep it going until he dies of inhaling enough carbon monoxide. Or he may have an accident while he’s drunk; he might trip and brake his neck; he may trip and brake his legs, and wither away after laying on the floor alone for days; he may drop a cigarette as he passes out after drinking enough and he sets the wooden house on fire. Or then he may keep on drinking until his liver simply gives up. He may be dead for days, or weeks, before anyone bothers to check up on him. That person is likely to be a neighbour (they used to be our friends), or maybe my father’s parents, but even they cannot live forever to take care of their first born.

What the hell can I do? I can’t make him realise that this was caused by his alcoholism, and to make things even a little better he must get sober for good, not only for the family but for himself as well. I can’t force him to go outside the house; he hasn’t done it before and he sure is not going to start now. His self esteem is so low, battered to the ground by everyone (including me), not least by himself. But I can’t force others to keep him company, either. The loneliness, the abandonment, these are the consequences of his actions as well as those of the rest of us. If others don’t want to have anything to do with him, I cannot do anything about that. But I don’t want to go there either. The bus connections being so poor I couldn’t get away without hitchhiking a lift to the nearest bus station, as he would likely be drunk and unable to drive a car. I remember when I had to ride with him when he was drunk; I was afraid. Of course I was afraid.

I’m worried people will even call him, to know how he’s doing. But that means me as well. I know more than well what he’s like when he’s drunk; I left to get rid of all that and talking to him on the phone would bring me back to that shit. Funny… right now, thinking of him dead, I think I would regret that I stopped answering his calls a year ago. He has ever only called me when he’s drunk, and I don’t want to talk to him in that state. But what if… what if they were all cries for help, brought out in the only way he knows? What if I should have answered them, at least I wouldn’t have blocked him out so completely.

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I see I already write about him in past tense, as he were already dead. I’m worried my father’s funeral will be held before my brother’s graduation party. I stare at the keyboard before me and some words jump out on their own from the randomly set letters: “after”, “drunk”. Maybe I’ve just written them too many times.

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I don’t drink alcohol at all (for obvious reasons) but I know most people, especially here in Finland, use it to great extent. Tukiasema spread information on mental issues via Internet, including alcoholism. For the sake of yourself as well as those around you, see if your alcohol consumption has got out of hand at http://www.tukiasema.net/gallup/default.asp?gallupID=26.