Obviously Ari exists as part of Alex’s ongoing struggle to accept her limitations and shortened lifespan. She desperately wants to be normal and to make her disability out to be like it’s totally fine. She wants to do what other people do: fall in love, get married, have a baby, make a life. Everything else is a cope.
I don’t know how I would cope with Alex’s existence tbh. It’s very sad. She’ll never be normal, she’ll never be active, she’ll never experience life the way 99% of other humans do, and she’ll die long before she otherwise would have. Can you really blame her for just not giving a fuck and trying to drink herself into a death she chooses instead of the one looming ever closer day by day?
She tried to manifest a happy ending with Noah except the only men who would willingly touch her are BPD drug addicts, so that failed. She can’t care for Ari beyond button-mashing “Add to Cart” on hoe-phase toddler outfits. Ari will be raised by someone else. I don’t think it makes much difference at all whether that raising starts now or in a year, aside from the benefits Ari will reap from being away from her dying, drunken mother.
Now that Ari is out of the picture, I say someone should fashion Alex a Big Gulp sippy hat ala
@LonesomeDud ’s suggestion and just let Alex send herself to the Big Margaritaville in the Sky.