No Amount of Liquor....

I had a grim realization on Christmas. There is no amount of alcohol in the world that can make me tolerate my mother. Laugh, if you want, but it's true.

I don't like her, and I think if she had the emotional maturity to be self-aware, she'd admit that she doesn't like me either.

We are complete opposites. She sits back and laments life happening to her, and the raw deal she's gotten from life. I go out and make life happen. I get knocked down -- a lot. But I always get back up and keep moving forward. She takes no responsibility for her actions or her decisions. It's almost as if she's allergic to self-awareness. I, on the other hand, operat like the general manager of the universe, constantly trying to figure out what I can personally do to effect change.

On Christmas Eve, I would have paid my husband to go out and get wine. He even offered (he still seems clueless that his wife is an alcoholic). On Christmas Eve as I was cooking our entire family meal on my own while my mother made comments here and there (some biting, some benign), I really thought about wine. How much wine would I have to drink to be content during one of her visits? The current visit was five days. Would five bottles be enough? Nope. That's only 4 glasses of wine a day, enough to keep a happy buzz for most of the day but not enough to let her words and mannerisms fly overhead. Would 10 bottles be enough -- 2 bottles a day? Definitely enough to keep me stupid drunk throughout her visit, but I'd still have moments of sobriety when she could say something that stung or annoyed. Would a case of wine -- 12 bottles -- do it? Maybe, but I'd be useless to the rest of the family -- unable to plan and execute meals or do the things with my husband and daughter that I loved. I would have no memory of her visit, but I'd also have no memory of five consecutive days. That wouldn't work.

So, my fianl answer is none. There is no amount of alcohol that would enable me to tolerate my mom without suffering unbearable consequences. Huh. What am I supposed to do with that information?