Suddenly, tension rises

[Lillymon]

Overdraft got cancelled, money is suddenly extra-tight, mum is thinking of getting the (rather friendly) landlord to serve us notice soon to try and get us in cheaper council accommodation sooner rather than later, and my dad decided the best thing to do would be to get the money he was given to pay for his prescription and spend it on drinking. Which has got me and my mum back to thinking that maybe we simply can't afford to have him living with us any more.

My stress levels are suddenly way up and major disruption is likely to hit soon. Worth noting that I could suddenly go offline at just about any moment and remain offline for a period of weeks or months. I really don't know. I'll try to keep in touch at least, but the situation feels really volatile right now.

 

[pipes]

I know you love him and all but,
God if I was there with some friends, we would fuck your dad's face up.

 

[Lillymon]

No offence taken, I practically consider him a stranger to me at this point.

But yeah, more interesting things happened today. It seems his actions yesterday (coming at precisely the wrong time) were the straw that broke the camel's back. My mum's pressing towards an official separation, and probably divorce eventually. In a strange twist of fate, this comes a week before their 25th wedding anniversary.

So, he just left the house at about noon for reasons that I still don't really know, not taking anything with him (not his mobile phone, not his keys, nothing). Unbeknownst to him, my mum was talking to my grandma and the Salvation Army (of which my grandma is part) and brought a captain round to talk with him once he finally came back. This was an unwelcome surprise as my dad prefers to keep up the pretence of his alcoholism not being publicly known (he didn't even want me telling the paramedic he'd been drinking when he fell down and broke his arm). In reality it's pretty much always been public knowledge.

So they talked for a while, and it has to be a bad sign when the Salvation Army captain says "I don't want to take sides, but I can see where you're coming from" to me and my mum. It seems my dad openly admitted it was his problem and his problem alone and he had to take responsibility for fixing it... but didn't really believe that. The fact that he said all that then immediately asked my mum for money probably had something to do with the above conclusion. Afterwards, dad left again (without getting any money) and is still out, somewhere.

Now, we're not sure what to do. I'm not leaving the house, fuck that. I've been bullied enough in my life, my dad's not bullying me out of my house. No way at all. Apparently under the law this is considered a 'marital household' and he has the right to stay here for the 'short term' even if he's taken off the tenancy agreement entirely (Yay for fucked up old English laws that we never bothered to repeal!), but we are going to at least encourage him to admit that marriage is done for and seek other accommodation. He's got no job, no income, and pretty bad health, so he should have no problems finding temporary shelter if he's made homeless. But will he go? Probably not, in the short term. But he really doesn't have a home with us any more.

As for the finances, I 'accidentally' leaked how bad it's got to grandma (I have a habit of doing this). I think my mum was hiding the worst of it. So I think we're going to be okay. If worst comes to worst, grandma will help us. But I'm feeling more optimistic about the long term overall, it's the short and medium term that's got me stressing.

 

[InVerse]

My stress levels are suddenly way up and major disruption is likely to hit soon.

When my stress levels skyrocket, I always find it best to relax with a drink or two. I prefer Jagermeister & Dr. Pepper, myself. Of course, if you're still living with your parents then I'm guessing you're probably not old enough to drink yet. I don't know what the drinking age is in England but I presume it's not quite as liberal as in some European countries.

 

[Lillymon]

Of course, if you're still living with your parents then I'm guessing you're probably not old enough to drink yet.

I'm actually 24, and the drinking age here is 18. Well that's actually just the age at which you can legally buy alcohol. The law says anyone aged 5 or over can legally drink alcohol. Also the concept of 'dry counties' is a strange and alien concept to us, you generally never get asked for ID if you look over 25, and in all of Europe we're second only to Russia when it comes to instances of cirrhosis of the liver with doctors now reporting cases in people as young as 22.

You Americans clearly did not take after us when it comes to drinking. Possibly for the best considering. The continental Europeans are the social drinkers, we're the binge drinkers.

I've just taken a very long time with the whole moving out thing. I'm also not a big drinker, relaxing for me tends to entail listening to my music collection and getting my words out on forums like this.

But, well the final developments for the night.

After dad left the house his final words were "You'll miss me when I'm gone". The next we heard of him was from our grandma after she'd got home. While trying to go to sleep she was woken by my dad, on her side door porch. Now don't ask me how since I have absolutely no idea myself, but despite leaving our house sober and with no money, he was now stinking drunk and had somehow come into the possession of a knife. After a confused conversation where he rambled about being kicked out of the house, being homeless, and making vague threats about harming himself, my grandma became tired of listening to him and just left him to his own devices. He said something about going to a friend's house, and wobbled off.

Grandma was fully unharmed and phoned my mum about the strange incident, after which my mum was rightly worried that in his warped state of mind he may end up coming home. The idea of a crazy drunk guy with a knife suddenly wanting to come back in had me pretty worried too, and we were both worried for our own safety for a while.

As it turns out though, he did end up going to his friend's house and ended up a drunk wreck on her sofa. Said friend has seen him in such a state before, got the knife off him, and he'll be staying there tonight. So we've sent another friend around to deliver his prescription medication and his reading glasses to him so he's got no immediate reason to come home.

Suffice it to say after all this, the separation is now effectively finalized. Everyone involved is going to try and get him to go to the council and declare himself homeless.

It's been interesting.

 

[The 9th Sage]

Well...the whole situation stinks, but now at least you and your mom might have a chance to get out from under this man's shadow. Sometimes it astonishes me that people can act the way he does and apparently think it's fine. @_@ Anyway, I hope you start to feeling a bit better. At least if he's gone that's one stressor that isn't really in the picture.

 

[Lillymon]

Actually, it gets even worse.

So, he stayed at his friend's house for the night. But then at about 6:30AM, she phones my mum to say he's upped and left, and she can't find the knife he came in with. Then we hear him knocking at the door.

My mum's first instinct had been to phone the police as soon as she heard he'd left, and they were in attendance within minutes. We thought he'd left because the knocking had stopped, but the police quickly found him hiding behind an alcove in the garden. They couldn't find the knife (he'd either disposed of it or just not taken it with him and his friend had simply lost it) but he was clearly very unhappy about being kept out of the house. He was detained by the police, given his mobile phone and a few other belongings he was ranting about, taken back to his friend's house, and told not to come back here today.

So now we're going to head down to the Citizen's Advice Bureau to get advice on obtaining a formal separation and getting things so he can't come back. Of course now he's got his mobile phone back, he's using that to phone us. Obviously the kicking him out and calling the police on him aren't strong enough signs that he doesn't have a home here any more.

Edit: OK, further minor stuff.

Citizen's Advice Bureau, closed. Lack of staff. We'll try again on Friday.

I forgot to mention when my dad had the knife and was talking to grandma, it seemed pretty clear he was threatening to take his own life. He said he'd rather kill himself than go to the Moorlands Housing Association, pulled the knife out, and said "What do you think this is for?". Crazy stuff.

Also, I think I may have underestimated his intelligence. We checked the kitchen knifes and none were gone, but we forgot to check the dining room steak knifes. Turns out he took one of those. He also did bring the knife to this house, but blabbed to his friend that he stashed the knife in one of our plant pots. We found it, and have informed the police, who should be paying closer attention to him now since when asked he actually denied ever having a knife, saying both grandma lied about seeing it and his friend lied about taking it off him.

He's currently down one of the local pubs, probably scrounging some more drinks. Tonight will be interesting, the police may be needed again.

Edit 2: Things may finally be calming down. A police officer arrived to take the knife as evidence, and noted that the whole police station knows about him now, and she's going out to patrol the town centre so she may end up seeing him at his favourite pubs, The Valiant or The Bird in Hand. She said if he comes back to the house, we should just dial 999 and get the police out. If nothing else, they'll arrest him for disturbing the peace if he comes back again, since he's had enough warnings to stay away.

Edit 3: Right...

Got a call from dad. Very apologetic, very pleading, very looking for sympathy, and very looking for a way back into the house. Mum wasn't having any of it, hung up on him.

A while later, we get a call from him saying he's in the back of a police van being taken to a mental hospital. He implies this is our fault. We check with the police, they say after an unspecified incident they arrested him under a section of the Mental Health Act and transferred him to the Harplands facility where he could be assessed.

Later still Harplands call us and we get the full story. The incident was dad leaning back off a bride at the edge of town threatening to throw himself off, and telling the police to stop the traffic below so he wouldn't hit any cars. More attention seeking. After his arrest and transfer, he agreed to voluntarily stay for the night. Harplands say if he wants to leave they'll have to assess his ability to make a rational decision. Even if they judge he's not capable of making one, they can only hold him involuntarily for 72 hours before they have to either release him or get the doctors to have him officially sectioned.

Bear in mind at this point that he's currently been drinking almost constantly for two days, has not changed his clothes, has not bathed, and has apparently not even eaten in that time. One can only hope that he looks at his situation and finally realizes he's got to sort out his life not for my sake or his wife's sake but for his own sake.

 

[The 9th Sage]

I sure hope so. Jeez that's messed. I'm trying to think of something more meaningful to say, but that's about all I can think of. I mean, man. Hopefully now that he's there he'll get some kind of help, or at least won't be bothering you for a while.