When my mother left my dad about three, maybe five years ago, he couldn’t have handled the process tself better, with more grace and humanity; I had heard things about divorce and how it normally goes beforehand, so I was actually proud of him. The way he handled it afterwards, though, was awful. Since my mom left, he’s gone through these very drawn-out cycles of beginning to drink; just a small, harmless bit a day, an amount that’s even supposed to be healthy at his age–but progressively, it becomes worse. Eventually, he hits a peak in his drinking where he does something so bad, he finally gets a grip, stops drinking altogether, promises never to touch a drop again, rinse and repeat from step one. He becomes angry when he’s drunk; irregardless of how tipsy he is, it usually ends in him getting into huge fights with my mother over text, and occasionally, he used to fight my little brother. Both times, I could have gotten involved. I can’t remember much about his interactions with my mom, but I have two vivid memories of what has happened (in the relatively distant past) with my brother nearing/at his peak in drinking: one time, when I stood my ground as I witnessed a fight with unspoken intentions of potentially reporting it, he warned me that if I didn’t leave, he would watch him give my brother “the shittiest time” among other things; when i left, I learnt the next day that he had slapped my brother behind the head hard enough to bruise him. My dad was helping him with math homework. My dad and I have fought a lot about his drinking, and I remember another one of his breaking points was when, during the night after a fight, he had apparently sent me texts so awful, that after he woke up and saw them, he had to delete them before I could read any (he had taken my phone before sending the texts). Unlike my brother, however, he hasn’t lain a hand on me, period. That doesn’t stop me from being afraid. Right now, he’s only drinking a tiny glass a day, so he hasn’t become severely drunk for me to have any real reason to be afraid, but just moments ago he accidentally terrified me. We’ve been having problems with our dog, who is vicious, but I love her too much to let go of her. She attacked someone nearby today, and because I apparently didn’t seem to understand where my dad was coming from, he tried to illustrate the problem by “lunging” at me at the distance we were at; that meaning, he barely moved forward with his arms slightly out. He was sober, and I’m still in tears. He doesn’t know. While I do absolutely plan to call CPS if he goes too far one more time, I don’t want to risk telling my therapist about any of this because the last time he got anywhere near a peak was last Fourth of July, and virtually nothing happened then; his aforementioned last breaking point involving me was years ago. Because of that, I’m not certain if he’ll hit another one, and even though I wasn’t ever put directly in harms’ way, I sometimes still find myself afraid of him, and am always terrified if I see him so much as look at a wine bottle. As he told me a few minutes ago about our vicious dog, “I just don’t know what to do.”