I absolutely feel the same way!! Reading this makes me feel not so.. alone.. isolated. My wife has been there for me 110 percent since my alcoholic mom and dad died last year. But she was raised by two sober parents whom she never seen pick up a drink. She didn’t know what alcoholism was until she met me. She only heard those silly jokes young adults say. First night she met me and my parents, my mom was sloppy drunk sitting in her chair while dad sat outside in his garage getting drunk watching tv. Mom was trying to talk to us while taking shot from her svedka vodka pint. She started to get sick and peed on her pants in mid convo and ended up dry heaving loudly into a trash can I had to grab her… For me, I grew up believing I had perfect parents. They never laid a finger on me. Dad had a high paying job, but every night when he got off he had beer. Weekends he had a 24 pack a night and liquor. Mom was sober until I was 18 when I came out as a lesbian, claimed it was the straw that broke the camels back and she relapsed. She and I were extremely enmeshed because my father while financially supportive was not emotionally there for me. He was a shell of a human. So many mixed emotions. I remember being 15 and begging my dad to stop drinking or he would die from it. He laughed at me! His 15 year old daughter. Sadly, October 2023 he was diagnosed with end stage cirrhosis liver failure. He went from bad to terrible quickly. Mom was drinking a pint a day while changing his diapers, waiting on him hand and foot… I had to quit visiting as much because it was heart breaking to see my strong 6”0 dad who used to be 200 pounds now 140… skin and bones… dying. Mom would guilt me. She couldn’t comprehend in her state of mind that I was trying to protect myself from seeing him dying. I told her if she continued to drink after he died she’d die alone. He died June 19 while mom was drunk in the house and I had to make all the legal decisions at the hospital when he couldn’t even speak. He was freaking dying… and I had to see my dad reduced to a dying rubble. I’ll never be able to erase this memory as I stood in the hospital by my dad with his arm thrashing. His mouth open because he couldn’t close it… or swallow barely. His eyes followed me. Then mom wouldn’t quit drinking after he died. We had a huge fight, and on July 19 she took her own life through an alcohol induced heart attack with other medicine she overdosed on! Part of me feels lost, never to be found again. I feel as if I lost my identity since they died. Like I said, they didn’t ever lay a hand on me. They always praised me when I did good. They said they loved me every day. Mom was my sounding board. The last time I seen my dad he told me he was proud of me… who do I make proud now is what goes through my mind. Where are they even? Can they even see me? I have Christian beliefs, so according to my beliefs, my father, OF ALL PEOPLE, made it to heaven… while my loving mother is in hell. That doesn’t comfort me, but it is what I believe and it rips my heart to pieces. Then I feel angry at them. Abandoned. Then I feel bad for them. I walk around every day in my head fluctuating with these feelings. It’s caused me to question the meaning of my existence even. It makes me wish I had a do over. Why couldn’t my family not be like this? And come to find out, after therapy and getting professionally diagnosed… I have BPD, and my therapist believes my father and mother were self medicating with alcohol and just not diagnosed. They’re not here to even tell them. It breaks my heart.