Dear Anita,

I know it sounds very stupid. But my mom is exactly like that. According to herself she’s perfect. And a guy like my boyfriend is a loser. And perhaps I should not care about her opinion, because she is a drunk who wasted her life. But you have to understand I’m extremely loyal to my mom. I don’t have any other relatives living in my country. They all live in my birth country, 2500 km away. I grew up with just my mom, her boyfriends would come and go, just the one guy – my ‘dad’ – with whom I still have a relationship with.

My boyfriend is smarter than my mom in the way that he understands he has a problem – his addiction. He acknowledges it. But that’s it. He doesn’t move forward from it. He’s a very sweet guy to me. Really loyal guy, not only to me as his girlfriend, but also to his close friends and family, even though they don’t talk anymore. I see a lot of great stuff, but this addiction is like a dark cloud holding him back. He has childhood traumas. I don’t want to label him, but to make it more understandable he shows symptoms of PTSS. And he finds comfort and safety in his weed use. I just want him to realise that it’s not a way to deal with problems!

I keep praying for him everyday for him to realise it and quit his habits. I don’t want him to give up on life like my mom did.

Dear Adam, thanks again for your reply. I will think about it. As for your advice to sort things out with my mother – I can’t. We can’t communicate. She’s still heavily drinking and still in complete denial. According to her, the last time she was drunk was at 18 years old at the beach with friends. It’s me, and everybody around her that’s acting weird towards her. To her – I have a problem. I can’t sort things out with her. I have given up on her. She’s my mother but that’s it.
As for my biological father, he lives in another country and the last time I have seen him it was 5 years ago. I tried mailing and talking to him the last time we physically met (this was the 2nd time in my life btw). I tried to build a relationship, even if he was no part of my upbringing at all, he’s still my father. He stopped replying. He has my contact info but he doesn’t want to contact me. I guess it’s his new wife that doesn’t want this – but that’s just a random guess. I have given up on him too.

The only other person I ever considered family – I don’t want to give up on him. Because he still has potential to turn his life around. He’s still young. He doesn’t have a marriage or children. Even if it would be without me, I would very much love to see him make something out of his life. I can’t just walk away if it were nothing!!!

I realise I don’t know what is love, because I have always been put in second place, next to the addiction. I don’t know how to love someone else because the people I ever really loved are addicts and supposedly I’m very familiar with the caretaker role but never really what’s it like to be in a loving relationship without addictions standing in the way.

And it’s very frustrating because alcohol is available everywhere, and I live in the Netherlands so weed is also extremely easy accesable.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Alavos.