8 May 2026

This week had one of those. A good day, genuinely good, the kind of day where you let yourself think that things might be stabilising. And then, a few hours later, a message. A neighbour. The floor. An ambulance she sent away and told she had no family.

She has family. She knows she has family. That’s not the point.

I’ve written before about the pattern, the way alcoholism moves through families, the way you learn to furnish the space between loving someone and watching them be consumed by something you can’t reach into and remove. What I didn’t write about, because I was being careful, is what it feels like when the pattern repeats in real time. When the same thing happens again, slightly differently, and you find yourself going through the same motions: the same phone calls, the same hospital apps, the same calculations about who goes, who stays, who takes the dog.

Same soup, just reheated.

There is a specific kind of tired that comes with this and its at the end of a long story that doesn’t resolve. Of caring deeply about an outcome you cannot control. Of watching someone you love make choices that hurt them and knowing, with absolute clarity, that there is nothing you can do to make different choices on their behalf.

You stay present. You show up. You check the triage notes and monitor the wait times and make sure the dog has been fed. You do the practical things because the practical things are the only things available to do.

And then you go home, and you try to remember that your life is also happening. That there are other things in motion. That the pattern does not have to be yours just because it was handed to you.

I wrote once that the curse is not inevitable. I still believe that. Some days believing it just takes more effort than others. But the underlying cause, alcohol-contributed, may not be substence abuse; it may be age-related, and made worse by drinking. The sooner it stops, the more of the person can be saved.