LIFE SUCKS

Stress

I'm 14. My mother is an alcoholic. She leaves all the time because my father finds the beer cans she hides and confronts her about it, and then she comes back the later that night. I ask her to stay because leaving can only make things worse, but she says that my father doesn't even care about her and so she should leave. I told her that I cared and asked her if that was a good enough reason to stay...she replied with a simple "no". She did this tonight. She took about $80 from my wallet from a recent trip i went on for our school band (I almost cried on the way home knowing what awaited me at home. She also left with three beer cans. She leaves, it gets dark, and we (my father and I, since my brother is rarely at home) and I cry myself to sleep those nights. Last year, on the last day of school in grade 7, my mother and father got in a heated fight upstairs while my brother and I tried to block out the yelling downstairs.My mom then stormed downstairs, went into the kitchen and grabbed a large knife, held it to her wrist and yelled to my dad, "is this what you want? Huh? Do you want to see this? I'll do it!" right in front of my brother and I. I started crying hysterically, and my brother and I went into the backyard where we hugged for about ten minutes, just standing on our patio, not knowing what happened inside, hoping that my mom was alive. She was, but later tried to leave. My brother got her stay, how he did I'll never know. We had an "intervention" type thing that night just amongst the four of us, and my parents went back to a happy loving couple, like everything was okay. This happens everytime she drinks. It's a cycle. She'll drink, and no one will say anything because we aren't 100% sure. Then my father will confront her about it. They'll either have a big fight and won't talk for awhile, or she'll leave and then come back, and then they'll fight and not talk to each other for awhile. Then, they'll have another big fight, and then they'll go back to normal. She won't drink for a week. And then she'll start again. And the cycle repeats. I don't know how much longer I can take this. I've had too many nights where I couldnt finish school work because I was crying or sulking about this endless circle. I'm slowly spiraling into depression because of the constant stress. It's becoming hard to hide my mother's alcoholism from my friend who comes over to my house all the time after school. I'm worried she'll find out and tell people. I'm already an extremely emotional person, and with graduation coming up, I'm accumulating too much stress. The sadness and anger if my mother's drinking. The sadness of leaving my old school. The fear of my friend finding out about this secret. It's too much.