A Boundary-am I doing this right?

[Weird Fishes]

My mom is coming to my city with friends for a visit.  We have a plan to have breakfast and maybe get together again at some point.

Mum isn't really PD, but is an alcoholic. 

This is really an ideal situation for me, as I will not be responsible for her and she will not be staying at my place (that will not happen again!).

I want to set some sort of boundary about her drinking when I see her.  I do not want to be with her when she is drinking or has had anything to drink.

I tried to set it up in Value/Boundary/Action:

Value:  I treat other people with respect.

Boundary:  A person cannot treat others respectfully under the influence of alcohol or other recreational drugs.

Action:  I will not stay in a situation where someone is under the influence of recreational drugs.

This is a general boundary I uphold anyway.  But, it doesn't feel very mom-specfic (after all, I have friends who drink or whatever with restraint and few consequences... .  her issue is that it is all the time to the detriment of everything else). 

How do I phrase this?  Is it ok to give an explicit warning, ie "If you are drinking or have been drinking I will not stay to have breakfast with you"?  Or is that manipulative?

[InaMinorRole]

My mother was alcoholic and H/BPD so I've walked this path.

May I assume you have already at some point made it clear to her that you don't like to be with her when she's been drinking?

I don't really agree with your Boundary statement because it's too black and white. People can be kind when drunk. It's your whole history with your mother and her drinking that shows a pattern of disrespect toward you, in the sense that she chooses drinking over you, and has probably been unkind while drunk, that makes your boundary more personal. Your boundary is more like this: people's use of alcohol has caused you pain, and you have the right to not put yourself into that setting.

Breakfast is a good choice for your meeting, since that will be the time of day she's least likely to arrive drunk or be offered cocktails. Something to keep in mind with an alcoholic is that they're nervous wrecks. If she perceives her meeting with you as stressful she is going to self medicate beforehand, no matter what time of day it is. The more you can let her choose where and when to meet the better. Let her have as much control of the situation as possible.

If she shows up drunk get through it without making a scene and do not allow the second visit. She will know why, but if she doesn't you can tell her. Trust me, it does no good to argue with a drunk. Tell her and leave.

[Weird Fishes]

Hi InaMinorRole, thanks for your response.

I have made the no-drinking point in the past, but as a thing we explicitly talk about, not really.  I've never said to her, "Your drinking is damaging our relationship".    I have told her not to bring alcohol into my apartment and that I will not pick her up from the train station if she had been drinking on the train (she honored the latter but not the former), and she is well aware of my general anti-drinking stance. 

But, I've been inconsistent about things til recently (like continuing to talk to her on the phone while she is drunk) and this is the first time I'm trying to confront it.  I've been avoiding these situations for years.

It's fair to say the boundary statement is too black and white.  (I might argue that a person who is actually "drunk" is still disrespectful regardless of intentions, but not sure how relevant that is).  The boundary you stated is true and more useful.

Not sure if she thinks our meeting will be stressful.  Or, I am unaware of how I cause her stress, I guess.  When she is having "fun" with her friends it is an excuse to blatantly drink nonstop.  I let her choose as much as my schedule would allow. 

[Weird Fishes]

Whelp... .  I'm a mess, in case anybody reading my posts hasn't figured that out. 

tl;dr: I'm a victim!  (incessant whining)


I avoided doing or saying anything or being actually proactive AT ALL. 

We set a time the night before while she is very very drunk.  An hour before I'm supposed to be at the restaurant I get a call from her friend (mom doesn't have a cell) that they are at the restaurant and they're gonna go ahead and order.  This is the first I hear that other people are going to be there, and I am using pub trans and cannot get there for an hour.

I arrive at the restaurant an hour later.  There is a line waiting out the door.  My mom is with NINE friends I had no idea were going to be a part of our brunch.  They are done eating.  My mother is drinking and lightly to moderately drunk and it is 10 am.  The establishment (rightly) refuses to serve me because I joined the party so late.  My mom shoves a pile of half-eaten, dry, picked to death pancakes at me and tries to get me to eat them. 

This is our Very Important Brunch That Had To Happen Because I Haven't Seen You In Two Years And I'm So Old And Other Attempted Guilt Trips.

So I shut down.

The next couple of hours involved her wandering around making a big deal about how she had to get me breakfast, even though I repeatedly said I'd eat later and all the eating establishments were full.  It was just... .  arguing with a drunk person.  Trying to get them to focus on a thing for .5 seconds, long enough to actually complete a task.  The same old crap. 

I'm just so mad at myself.  For doing NOTHING, STILL.  No boundaries.  Chickening out, because I'm too afraid to cause conflict. 

And for having unrealistic hopes.  Every time I see her I have really low expectations, wow I think, she can't hurt me now because I know what to expect.   But I'm delusional.  She can't function on even the most base level.  It's like taking care of a toddler, even in the rare cases that she's sober.  Break this, fall here, lose your stuff, lock yourself out, wander out into traffic, don't know your hotel room.   Why do I forget?

And guess what I did?  GUESS?  I told her I'd MEET HER TOMORROW.  How did that even happen?  Because my narcissist/codep butt wants to be a martyr?  Because I melt when FOG is applied, due to lack of spine?

But I guess... .  I'm an adult.  I don't have to go, do I?

Ugh.  thank you if anyone reads this. 

[InaMinorRole]

It sounds like you made a decision on the fly and now you regret it. If it were me I'd say something came up and I couldn't make it and just not go. No confrontation, and you aren't putting yourself into that situation again.

[Weird Fishes]

I went.  Lame of me.  After that tantrum I posted the other day it was just annoying.  For instance I had to reroute on the way because they got thrown out of the hotel... .  out of 9 women none of them knew what the check out time was.  When we had lunch my mom dropped the innards of her sandwich all over the floor. She can't eat without getting it all over herself and the surroundings, like an infant. Etc.

And she was sober this time.  It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Oh, and she had to take a picture of me standing up to prove to my BPD, ailing grandmother that I'm not "fat" (read: pregnant).   

The saddest part, to me, sounds inconsequential.  I tried to show her a couple pics of me and my bf from a trip.  I had only recently confessed to dating him.  But her glasses were MIA so she couldn't see them.  I realized that she hadn't really seen anything I'd shown her for years, because she can't keep track of her glasses.   It is a pattern, she always forgets them, they're lost, they're broken.  The tiny bit that I'd tried to reach out to her was dashed because she can't function on even the most base level. 

Ugh, this all sounds so... .  dumb.  It's not like my mom is stalking me or physically abusive like some of the mothers I read about on this forum.  And it was only 2 days I had to deal with her.  And lots of people have to take care of ailing parents who can't function very well and do the things I described all the time. 

I guess I just wanted a place to talk about it.  Thank you InaMinorRole so much for your input.   Maybe I can do better next time.