I'll do a TL;DR now, cause I don't know what I'm going to write yet and it could be messy or just jumbled. So, TL;DR: Saw my mothers bf have a bit of an outburst while drunk including violence and threat of suicide, and I'm experiencing pretty frequent re-runs in my head of parts of it.

My mum and I drove 14 hours on Friday after a family holiday that both our partners couldn't attend due to work. When we got to her house, her bf wasn't there and was obviously at the pub gambling. He has a severe gambling addiction and has hundreds of thousands in debt he had added to their mortgage. A few days earlier he'd promised change - "new year, all honesty" - so my mum was really disappointed, sad, and angry. They've been together 9 years, he's had a problem the whole time and his his debts most of it. She started finding out, and stopped being able to trust him with money, a few years ago. He'd do things like spend an entire weeks wage in one afternoon; borrow large amounts from friends and families with false reasons; get countless bank loans and dodgy loans, etc etc. Anyway.

So, mum was sad and pissed off. With his big promise to change that she believed, and mine and her talk few days earlier bout reaching out to gamblers help and getting things on track, she was just so disappointed that he hadn't kept his promise and had lied to her face, let alone further jeopardize their financial security and home.

He got home extremely drunk. At first he wasn't angry. But when she said she was disappointed he'd not cared to see if her 14 hr drive was safe, or been here to have dogs fed or dinner organised - he started getting mad. He started yelling he hated his job and was quitting, and basically only worked there for her and the house, and was done. No matter what she or I said, he was screaming now and repeating all of that. He threw a bottle of Pepsi across the room, kicked the couches, all the whole screaming at my mum about his job. He shoved her at one point and I stepped between them and told him not to hit her. He said he wouldn't, but he was so drunk and angry and gone, I didn't trust him. Mum got angry back, which she now knows didn't help but at the time I guess didn't think clearly either. He picked up a glass butter dish and smashed it forcefully, glass flew all over the house and I grabbed mums hand and made her come outside. We were both shaking, I remember noticing I was trembling a lot in my legs and hands.

I wanted us to leave but she insisted he'd never done anything like this before, and would pass out soon. She wanted to go sleep in my guest room with me and for us to leave in the morning. While he was sobbing loudly in the living room, we snuck into the guest room. He came in after a few minutes and made comments about killing himself. When he left the room I called the suicide hotline because I didn't know what would happen if I called the police and I guess I just didn't know what to do. After that phone call he came in again and said he needs to go to a mental asylum, and wanted to kill himself, and said he didn't want to hurt us, in a voice that made me terrified for all of us. I asked mum to take him out the front carefully while I called an ambulance as advised by the suicide hotline.

While on the phone to the ambulance people, he walked into the kitchen, grabbed a knife that I hadn't noticed had been sticking out of the countertop which he slammed there earlier, and he put it to his throat. Still holding the phone without thinking I ran over and put my hand on his hand that was holding the knife and starting talking him out of it, asking him to not do it for me, not make me see that. My mum was standing kind of motionless, and I mouthed for her to pull his arm away. That didn't help n made him hold it closer. Eventually he let go, mum took him outside, I hid the knife and informed the ambulance person on ph what had happened. She hung up, n soon after police showed up, questioned him privately and my mum and I inside.

He was taken to the hospital - he wasn't physically injured -and my mum and I followed. After this its all I guess not relevant to mention.

Since then I've had flashbacks where I see him yelling, and I see him holding the knife to his throat. It happens a few times throughout the day, maybe once or more an hour. It all happened only 2 nights ago, so I know that's normal. Yesterday I felt extremely tired and not hungry, just slept most of the day.

Today i feel hungry again. Made myself follow my normal routine, go grocery shopping, exercise, pick flowers. I feel way less immobilized by what happened. But I still, maybe once an hour or so, remember what my mum is going through trying to A, support her bf with his medical stuff he's going through, and B, knowing that one more gamble or one more drunkenness and she's leaving the relationship and her whole world will change. I know all I can do is all I can do. I am getting updates from her regularly. I'm being supportive, available, trying to say the right things. And I also know I need to, and she'd want me to, enjoy my moments and try to make my days normal and take care of myself.

I'm going to try to take care of me, as much as her, and remember that I can only do what I can do, and that time will be the most important and necessary thing here for us all.

I wonder how long I'll have these flashbacks for, and get randomly sad and feelings of guilt for my mums situation. I guess it'll get less constant each day? And I guess as her situation and future becomes clearer there'll be less for her and therefore me to worry over in that sense.

Yeah... I don't know if anyone will ever read all this. It was hard and weird to write it, I felt hot and stressed again. So I'm really sorry if anyone else felt that way reading it. I think it feels good just to write it where maybe someone has been through similar things and has come out the other side of the initial shock I might still be experiencing.