one of the very few conversations I've had with my father was on a night where I felt lost, I was recently heartbroken & kept to myself for a while. if you know me, i haven't had a relationship with my father for a very long time, if anything, I claimed to hate him. but for some reason that night I was feeling so low & walked in his room & sat on the floor with my eyes filled with tears. I think he saw the pain in my eyes & recognized it as his own, he said
"your mother was 15 years old when we met, I loved her instantly. when I first went to her house, there was a wooden chest at the foot of her bed filled to the top with empty liquor bottles. I knew at that moment I was dealing with a broken person. 20 years later, and she's still broken. you can't fix someone who is broken, no matter how much love you give to them"

& ever since then, it's all made sense to me.