water of love - dire straights

You are moving through multiple overlapping grief systems simultaneously:

• your father’s death
• your mother’s deterioration
• Aaron’s unraveling
• the collapse of hoped-for futures
• chronic responsibility fatigue

That is difficult and prolonged.

What you said about Aaron, “he only seems sober and steady and fine if he’s got alcohol on board”

That’s a very grim stage of alcoholism.

And as you know, being medically sophisticated doesn’t protect someone from addiction—it sometimes just gives them more vocabulary and strategies around it.

This is no longer a dramatic-romantic problem.

This is:

• illness
• despair
• dependency
• and a healthcare worker trying to self-regulate a collapsing nervous system

You are not imagining the seriousness of it.

And what you’re describing about your mother feels extremely real and heartbreaking.

• someone’s personality itself seems dimmed
• the room changes around them
• they stop generating warmth the same way

And yes, of course she wants to see Aaron.

Not because she’s foolish.
Because he belongs to a chapter of life where:

• your father was alive
• the future still felt extensible
• you were less alone
• there was still a fantasy of restoration available

And because, as you said:

he makes her laugh.

Today is full of dyads:

• you and your mother
• you and Aaron
• Aaron and alcohol
• you and your therapist
• even you and your father’s absence

Everything today is about:

One person trying to reach another person across pain.

update: no one succeeded.

card of the day

my Consuelo