With a heavy heart, I must admit that my family and I are in dire straits. With the challenges of losing my mother after Christmas and sorting out her affairs, I never expected that the hardest challenge would be seeing one member doing everything possible to undo any progress we make as a family.

While I understand grief and depression from losing such a dearly beloved family member like my mother, it never justifies falling to addiction. It never justifies neglecting duties and responsibilities. It never justifies leaving others to sort out preventable crises.

My wife and I are now in a toxic loop of waiting to see how much tighter our meager funds need to stretch to make up for the staggering losses my mother's husband takes every night he goes to the game rooms, leaving us hoping that we can scrape something together before the next bill is due.

My wife and I need to move. We need help to escape from someone clearly sinking and dragging us down with him. Before we lose our chance to begin our own lives.