Less impact

I've heard through the enabler grapevine that my mother is up to her usual shenanigans. This is not to say that I had any doubt about this, but having confirmation always makes it more real, puts it in context, and I can picture her in her current state a little more clearly.

Picturing her in this state is not a joyful task. I hear she has gone back to a friend in Boston 10 years forgotten who, in quite a state of alarm and panic, called my little sister repeatedly (even at work) to tell her of the bad shape my mother is in. Yes, we know old friend, unfortunately sounding the alarm is unnecessary and redundant.

If you listen closely, you can hear the alarms going off in her wake from Atlanta to Boston over the last 8 months, and, sadly, to no avail. I am tired of hearing them, for they seem to serve no purpose other than distracting me from my life and my sister from hers.

In the conversation with an old friend I hear the shattering of yet another image of my mother as a healthy, functioning woman and mother.

A confused mass of feelings come over me: sadness to reveal this truth, anger with having to mop up behind her, relief that the truth is out and a bizarre appreciation/disgust for the sympathetic feelings people then bestow upon me for having to deal with it.

I am thinking of creating a document that I can send to enablers as they begin to see the frayed edges and missing liquor...

Dear ________,

I know you have been helping/housing/caring for/worried about my mother. I want you to know that sadly this has been going on for many years with this latest cycle starting in earnest Spring of 2010. She has repeatedly and consistently refused treatment for her mental illness and substance abuse issues and is burning through all old friends and acquaintances, often leaving heartache and disaster in her wake. For her sake as well as yours, I advise you to direct her to the hospital and to not help her any further as that is only serving to enable her unhealthiness.

Sincerely,

Her eldest daughter

Writing such a letter, sending such a letter, feels like a kind thing to do. But it also feels like a mean thing to do. It feels like too much involvement and too little.

The good news for me however is that I am beginning to feel at peace in the middle of this paradox. And maybe that is the key to my well being as I make my way through this unwanted journey.

Joy in the midst of sadness

I derive so much joy from my children. They are a constant source of laughter and delight. I feel such gratitude for them. I feel honored to be their mother, to be able to shepherd them through their childhoods, to be the one whose arms they run to when they are hurt or scared or sad. It is a tremendous blessing, the good and the bad. But there are days when I am just sad and down and I have at times struggled with these days in how to best parent through it.

On exhausted days I remind myself that there will come a day when my kids are older that I long for R (my one year old) wanting to crawl into my lap continually and bring me a "boo" (book). Or for L (my 5 year old) to have a seemingly endless list of questions about stars and the solar system while upside down on the couch and kicking his legs around. They will likely not be doing this same thing when they are 18 and 14 or even 9 and 5. I want to appreciate it in the moment, while it is happening, really soak it up and let it feed my soul. But, and isn't this always the kicker, it is exactly at those moments when you have been home with your kids for 5 continuous snow days that you feel like a crazy person who needs just a moment of silence with her body to herself. Yet, here comes R with another "boo" and there is L with repeated and increasingly loud questions about the Sun.

When I fall short in moments like this, when I do not react with loving warmth and patience, I have, in the recent past, been hard on myself. When I say, "No R, not now," Or "L, enough with the questions for now. You need to find something quiet to do," I feel that I will kick myself down the road for this missed opportunity to connect with my children in a mutually enriching way.

So steeped am I in healing from my own childhood that I sometimes forget what it is to be healthy.

Being healthy is not about never showing that you are tired or sad. Being healthy is not about denying those feelings and faking it. Being healthy is not about white knuckling it. Being healthy does not exclude sad feelings, tired or overwhelmed moments. And my children can see me in those moments.

It is okay. It is good even. Because then they see me recover. They see me need a moment of silence, and then seek them out to read a book. They see me need to have my body to myself and 10 minutes later be ready to wrestle and tickle them on the floor. They see me rise and fall in healthy rhythms throughout my days.

Talking about these rhythms and needs with my son have even helped him identify his own needs for space and quiet times in the midst of over stimulation. So fearful am I of my mother's very erratic and scary ups and downs that I have tried to negate all signs of somber and tired moods. But I am not my mother and my kids are not me. They continue to fearlessly run around not worried that I am going to explode. Because I don't. I do lots of things, but I do not turn on them. I am predictable, even in my sad moments. They do not look at me with cautious fear when I feel sad.

And even in the midst of my sad day I find unspeakable joy in this.

And good morning to you too!

There is nothing like waking up to an email from my mother. Well, I should say, a phone call or a knock on the door would surely trump an email in terms of day ruination, but an email, even a forwarded one can sure set my day to spinning.

Yesterday I received such an email. My mother's little brother (and my dear uncle) received an email from my mother chronicling her latest mishaps. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say that if this email was from a healthy family member, one not prone to hallucinations, manipulations and delusion, I would already be on an airplane to go to her.

But every email is that way these days. And it is getting easier to not react. It is easier to tell myself: the panic you feel-dismiss, the sadness you feel-let it go, the worry and fear you feel-breathe it out.

So, I dismiss, I let go, I breathe it out. And what am I left with? A lingering and profound sadness at the entire situation. A sadness larger than my mother probably imagines I feel. For while she survives one fire only to move on to the next, I see her whole life, a wasted life, my mother's wasted life, totally overrun with mental illness. Like kudzu, it can look beautiful at times, but keep it out of your yard or everything else will die.

I vacillate in my thinking about her and her mental illness. This vacillation can be best described by what I put to her about 4 years ago after a "stroke" (read overdose...dozens of empty pill bottles from different doctors and different pharmacies in different states, some with different patient names too). I said, "Mom, you either have some serious mental illness issues or you are a complete asshole." I mean, just looking at the behavior, I see only those two conclusions.

I was telling her this with a generous spirit, I really was. I wanted her to see how far our family had stretched into our discomfort to accommodate her terrible behavior and exactly why we could not do it any longer. I wanted her to see that I know she is not a bad person, that she is not an asshole, that she is in the grips of a really serious mental illness and there is no shame in that. And that I really wanted my mother back. The mother who was overrun with this kudzu.

To which, while literally hugging her DSM-IV at the Olive Garden in Southeastern Virginia and 600 miles from my husband and toddler, she shockingly claimed that she has multiple personality disorder instead and blamed all of her bad behavior on "Gregory." I kid you not.

Ok. This is how we are doing it. Sure thing Mom. Gregory is the bad guy, not you. But did she get help for her self-diagnosed and acknowledged MPD? Nope. She used it to buy her time and when things died down she said she was confused and wasn't that silly? And "Oh, dear, you are so funny and confused, of course I don't have BPD or MPD. I used to work in a clinic that specializes in BPD. Wouldn't I know if I were? But why aren't we close anymore?!?" So, what conclusion are we to draw? Yep, you guessed it. My mother, the asshole.

So, here we are many disasters later and I feel numb. A good friend of mine with a similarly troubled mother told me this, "you know, my mother could be walking the streets in a sheet, but I don't know about it. There are benefits to having no contact." Indeed there are. But I hear about her from time to time and am not sure what to do with the information when I receive it.

What do I currently do?

Well, in the past I cleaned. I mean, I have had one clean house at times. When my husband came home and found the house sparkling clean, he had but one question, "did you talk to your mother today?" Out of a desire to stop being so compulsive and move into more healthy (and more interesting) coping, I've started cooking.

Yesterday my in-laws just happened to be in town. I had already planned to make a big dinner. It was perfect. I spent 4 hours in the kitchen and made, essentially, a thanksgiving dinner, complete with blueberry-raspberry pie and brussels sprouts with caramelized pearl onions. So, I'm learning and adapting. I'm trying to cope in ways that do not restrict and control my world but open my world up and make my world a more beautiful and joyful (and delicious) place to be. I survived the drama of the past, but I want to more than survive. Can I thrive too?

Friend or Foe?

My mother's most recent "other", point person, enabler wonders why we are no longer facebook friends. She caught on to my recent silent friend deletion. In an attempt to rid my life of the drama, and after she left cursing, screaming ugly posts on my mother's facebook wall, I defriended her and now she wants to know why. Where to begin?

I share an awkward relationship with my mother's other enablers. I have been known to warn them at the beginning. I say something to the effect of: "I know my mother is reaching out to you lately. I'm not sure what she is saying, but I just want you to know that she is sick and really needs help." In response to this I have heard a mix of responses.

The most recent "other" responded by telling me that my mother is indeed sick and does need help--from me, her ungrateful daughter. To which I did not reply. It is a sickening feeling to know that out there in the world your name and reputation are being dragged through the mud by your mother and her "others". I've gotten more used to it by now, but it never feels good.

I feel sympathetic for these others, as I know the disturbingly bewitching ways of my mother. I understand what is like to have her say you are the only one who truly understands her and to have her shower you with praise. This is how she begins to pull others into her reality. A place I resided for much of the 80s and 90s.

For all the sympathy I feel however, do I want to be facebook friends? We were in contact while my mother was actively using her when I was more interested in my mother's whereabouts. But really, is this a connection that is anything but depressing and ugly for me?

My mother's enablers fall into three main categories. The first is the kind and naive friend. This person hears my mother's very convincing tales of woe and persecution and takes it upon themselves to offer her a "fresh start."

The second type is the person with an agenda of their own. These folks have issues themselves: an ex boyfriend who was controlling and abusive, a friend who was an alcoholic. These people fall for the lines but also weave them into their own distorted reality to create a compounded delusion. These alliances can be the ugliest and most long lasting.

The third category of my mother's enablers are her daughters. Her daughters are hewn into the shape of attack dog, fierce defender, loyal abider and dream continuer. We are extensions of her when it feels good to her and separate from her when it does not. We were raised to be this so it was the easiest and most natural of enabling situations for my mother. We have had to fight our way out of the tangled web and we continue to work on rewiring our minds and hearts. It is as if my pain, panic, worry and joy sensors were all connected to my mother's well being...thus making her well being paramount to my own wellness.

This connection has had to be severed.

Becoming a mother and realizing that I now have little people dependent on me made me wake up. Having my mother live perilously close to the edge or over the edge, as the case may be, also made me wake up.

My mother's other "others" out there in the world are like ghost relatives. They have been likewise used and abused, some more grotesquely than others. Some have seen that my mother is sick, some are still vying to be her "other" again soon.

I am trying to move on with my life. For myself and for my children and husband and, truthfully, there just is not room in that picture for hauntings by these others. So, yes, I am no longer her facebook friend and hopefully soon she will move on too.

Slow death

I've recently been receiving emails about a friend whose wife's mother just passed away after battling a terminal illness. My heart goes out to this friend and his wife and family. After I received this email I thought, I do not envy them this situation (I mean, who would?), but there was, if I am totally honest, a part of me, that envies the clarity with which one can speak of such an event.

It is tragic and it is life's unavoidable sadness when a loved one dies. We mourn, we pay respects, we weep, we come together, we galvanize around the love shaped hole that this person left in our lives. It is terrible and sad and life upending, but it doesn't feel perverse.

In my life I go forward with straightforward sincerity and honesty, as much as a cynical and slightly jaded person can, yet with my mother all feelings are perverse and convoluted. With love comes hate, with worry comes rage, with sadness comes apathy...I feel dirty when I think of her and there is no one else in my world who makes me feel that way, thank god.

I'm ashamed to say that in more than a little way I envy the straightforward despair and longing. Now, to be fair, I don't really know this woman's family and for all I know there is a convoluted jumble of feelings there too, but this is how I perceive these events and how I have experienced death with other family members. Family members who are somberly and beautifully just...missed and loved.

I am currently working on not becoming a bitter person. Usually I can see the relativity of situations when people discuss family, but sometimes, like now, when things are raw and my mom is found wandering the streets of another state in a sheet, I have a hard time feeling anything but bitter rage at this f'd up hand I've been dealt.

I will not intervene for she doesn't want actual help. And now I'm trying not to even think of her because it only makes me anxious and depressed imagining what she is doing today, right now, as I type this. The only thing that my thinking of her accomplishes, as far as I can see it, is it makes me less available for myself, my husband and my children. The very thing I swore I would not do.

But as I have aged I have seen that the promises of youth are steeped in idealism that often blur with time. So, my kids occasionally see me distracted or stressed. It is less than ideal, sure. But they also see me recover and do so more and more quickly. Such is life. But I will not have my kids hold me while I cry about my mother like my mother did to me. That buck stops here.

On the one hand I have no issue with that as I am not mentally ill like my mother and feel no impulse to rely on my children emotionally (and for that I am so so grateful). On the other hand it is difficult to be the emotional shock absorber as it needs to go somewhere other than deeper into me. I do not want it and will not take it anymore.

I have some ideas for how to channel it and remain hopeful that they will be healthy outlets. For now, I'll end.

To begin

I tried to start this blog a few months ago. I was beginning to see the deep need to share and open up about my situation with my mother. But then I stopped short of posting anything for fear that my mother would find it. I was paralyzed.

What I have realized is that if I predicate my actions and freedoms based around my mother I will go crazy, or stay crazy, as the case may be.

I believe with all my heart that my mother has a borderline personality disorder. It took me many years to figure out what to call it. It looks like different things at different points in her life, but all tallied, this is my best fit for what I see and experience.

The problem is (and to be honest, there are many problems) that my mother is a psychologist. A clinical psychologist, no less, who has worked at borderline clinics. But that is not all. She also writes books on parenting. Try bringing this one in for family therapy.

However, in her last iteration of instability, we did just that, or at least we tried, until our therapist told us she could not continue until my mother was off of substances.

In the past year she went from a well paid job, an apartment in the same town we live in and occasional dinners with my family, to being homeless for four months, crashing with friends, ruining marriages, and drinking and drugging so much she has to be regularly hospitalized.

Fantastic. So how do I respond to this? 15 years ago I would have been with her in the moment, enabling and defending her and upholding her deluded reality. 10 years ago I would have stepped in to help with the crisis (for my little sister's sake more than for my mother's at that point, as she was only 13). 5 years go I was starting to take a stand, but would still put a next day ticket on an almost maxxed out credit card to fly to be with my mother who "had a stroke" (with many empty pill bottles around). Now, I distance.

A wise woman once told me what happens to people who empathize with crazy people: they go crazy. And that was where I was, trying to connect my mother's "reality" to reality. I was trained well and it has taken years of consistent work to free myself and I'm not quite there, but I'm pretty damned far along.

I will not get into the back story right now. But I did want to finally commit to putting something out there in this shared space, bravely as a testimony to my experience.

A friend reminded me the other day that it will not always feel this raw. And I think that is true. Her roller coaster is never ending, yes, but I am finally getting off of her ride.