I'm honestly not sure how I'm going to handle this one. My grandfather was an alcoholic, and while not physically abusive that I know of, he was certainly neglectful of his family, and it affected my mom & her siblings in different ways. My youngest uncle is maybe 12 years older than me, and turned into a full-on, mean, abusive alcoholic very early on. (I have a story where I was about 17, at a family birthday party, and I got bored and was practicing karate in the backyard at my grandparent's house. My drunk uncle decided that "karate shit" was worthless and decided to full on surprise-attack wrestle me into submission. After I got him off me, I kicked the living shit out of him. That was the end of that; he never messed with me again.) I haven't talked to that uncle in probably close to 20 years now.
My other uncle is the one I visit occasionally, and it's possible that he's started down the same destructive path. Over the last few years, the pressure on him has increased tremendously. He is an intensely private, fairly paranoid, and very judgemental & unforgiving person, but he's also generous, hard-working, and respectful of other people. A man not without his flaws, but essentially a good person. A few weeks before Christmas last year, his older sister & brother-in-law (who we all haven't seen in years) flew in from Virginia to visit, and we had lunch together. My uncle had 3 or 4 drinks at lunch, which is a lot at a meal but not excessive from my p.ov., and we were there for several hours. Apparently, some time after this visit, my aunt & uncle had some kind of judgemental passive-aggressive exchange of he-said-she-said comments, which lead to hard feelings and a big long dramatic conversation between myself, my uncle, and my uncle's wife on Christmas day.
Now it seems that this stuff is continuing, and other people are getting drawn into it. The strain on my uncle has caused a lot of problems with his marriage. The downside to being a very private person means that as people we tend to face our problems alone, and I can tell that my uncle is very much feeling isolated. When I'm around or when I talk to them, I try to be supportive and talk and listen, and offer to help however I can, etc. I've made it clear that I'm always available to talk or just to get them out of the house and to do something to get away from things for a bit. But I can't be around every day, and I can't make somebody reach out to me. I think I understand the place my uncle is in, because I've been there myself, and it is very difficult to get out of -- when it's happened to me, I've had to look within to drag myself out and back to a normal place.
My uncle & I have had some drinks together on a number of occasions, and I've never seen him drink to what I would see as excess. Not to say that he doesn't when it's the end of long day of work and it's just him & his wife around. But my perspective is probably biased. Even in my own depression, I've never seen or treated alcohol as an escape, and I've probably consumed a lot more alcohol than he has over the last 18 years. So, while I'm not convinced it is happening, I have to consider the possiblity that my uncle may legitimately be descending into alcoholism.
No, I would never do something like that. I don't play games with people's emotions, and in serious circumstances, I don't misrepresent my opinions to people who trust me. I value my own honesty & integrity too highly to do that, and in the case of my uncle, doing so to him would pretty much destroy that relationship forever.
My cousin in Maryland (my uncle's niece, not his daughter) is the one who messaged me yesterday about all of this stuff. She's sort of New-Age-y. Emotional and prone to endlessly share cliched pictures on FB about friendship & family. A good person as well, but one who, I think, tends to seek attention. I'm not really sure why my cousin thought to bring this up now. And frankly I have no idea how I'm going to respond to her message. There's a high probability that I won't respond at all. I'm not sure if ignoring the situation is the best thing to do, but it's most likely to be my response. It would be good if my cousin & her mother would avoid antagonizing my uncle for a while; but he also needs to learn to not be so sensitive and to let some things go. He understands this intellectually but putting it in action is a different story.
