Thank you guys for the well wishes... and thanks for sharing your story too. I think a small part of why this is so frustrating for my mother is that she probably feels like she can't talk to anyone about this except for me, since I'm literally witnessing this whenever I am home and I have an understanding of what both my parents are like. It's easy for us to become very self-centered in thinking about all of this because we just don't get the chance or don't give ourselves the chance to really get advice from or hear about others. If nothing else, I thank you for reminding me that complex situations like this might happen to more people than we think.

It is, indeed, hard if not impossible to help those who don't want it. And yet, it is almost harder for us to leave my father to his own devices. We can see whatever funk he's gotten into getting worse, we're not sure what's waiting at the end of all of this, and as much as we want him to be happier for him, I think part of it is we also don't want to feel guilty for not trying, because we do care about him and we don't want him to reach that metaphorical rock bottom. I know my parents had a good relationship at the start, though I don't think that's really the big reason why my mother doesn't want to give up on him. My sister is still a kid and, ultimately, I think my mother thinks that she benefits more from having a father.

The notion of having my mother seek out someone whom she can talk to in hopes of finding better ways to manage these difficulties is definitely one that I have thought of before, though I was always very doubtful of it. For one thing, I think it's hard for her to feel like she needs to get therapy to deal with, of all things, her own family. It's a bit of a blow to her own pride as well... your family isn't supposed to be such a large source of stress in your life, in this way. It's not something you're supposed to be spending money on to feel like you can cope with. At the moment, whenever I happen to be staying at their house for any extended period of time, she comes and talks to me about it... and while what I want more than anything else in those moments is to be there for her, it kind of just results in being her time to vent and we never really come up with solutions to the problems he creates. It makes me feel helpless in a way because, well, I can't solve the problems she talks about either and even though she might not expect me to do more than just listen, I feel like it just results in a lot of worrying on both our parts that we can't really get rid of. And any time I mention that, she takes it very personally and claims that I just don't want to relieve her of some of her burden, but it's really not that simple. I'm not really sure how to give her the push she might need to find better people to talk to about this than her twentysomething daughter who might understand the situation but has no idea how to solve it, especially since she gets offended by it so very easily.