Well, things have taken an interesting turn... one that, for many years, I thought would never come.

Last night, a somewhat distant family friend of ours visited to discuss a potential job for me, and also my father. He showed interest in this previously, but it requires a lot of interpersonal skills and for the past week, he told us how he was really planning on just taking the test to get the license and forgoing the social events, meetings, and further training offered by the company.

The first hour and a half consisted of us talking about whether it would be a good fit for me, and the family friend answering my questions. After that, I left so they could discuss my father's potential role in it... and somewhere in the discussion, my dad exploded and started yelling about a dozen things that had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Things like how my mother "spends too much," how I used to play video games too much in high school... all this to some guy that he really doesn't know well enough to blurt all this out to in this context, and it ended with him essentially kicking out the friend.

I think this was a big eye-opener for my mother. We had a talk together after that, just her, me, and my 14-year-old sister. And we all agreed that whatever he was dealing with is getting worse, has been really for the past 17 years. Divorce has been a suggestion from both my sister and me for many years now, but I don't think my mom was ready to really consider it until yesterday. In fact, she happened to talk with him just a week ago before I came home saying that he needed to stop treating her with so little respect after he had yelled at her over something trivial again. He agreed... and then went right back to acting as he usually does. This pattern has happened many times before in the past. While it might be something he cannot help, it really isn't something we can continue making excuses for either. He's done a lot worse than just yelling over the years... things that I don't really wish to describe here, and those are even less excusable.

I think she realizes now that she can't help him, not even subtly and indirectly (like by trying to get him to talk to this friend and figure out a potential career); as you all have been telling me, there really is no way to help someone who won't help himself. And she's spent a long time trying to turn him around for fear of letting horrible things happen to him without her actions, but that's just not going to happen and she's trying to accept that she can't be held responsible for that anymore.

So, she has decided to really look into separation and divorce. We (mom, sister and I) all agree that that would probably be best for everyone. A lot of my dad's demons can't be overcome if he stays around her, I think. He holds so much resentment from how inferior she made him feel that, even if she tries to help him, he can't bring himself to subconsciously accept it. And being around him is frustrating and stressful for her, since his current lifestyle goes completely against what she believes to be important and he makes decisions that she later has to try and fix.

I guess the point of this very long post is to bring some closure to the matter that I introduced on these forums. And it's also to thank you all. I knew before that it wasn't possible to help someone who didn't want to reach out and accept it, but you really drove that point home and helped me make that perfectly clear to my mother. Maybe this isn't a perfect solution and it will be a long process that will involve research and sacrifice, but there is no perfect solution and we all think it is worth the cost. I really do think the divorce will be something that gives them both a chance at the lives they want that they just keep denying each other.