In the last few months there have been many changes: I finished up *most* of my pre-dissertation work, including teaching, we bought a house across the country, packed up our life in Atlanta, and now are more or less settled here in Seattle.
As soon as the kids got back into school I got to work on my dissertation. Boom. Fast, no time to ponder or reflect. Just keep going, don't over think. But as weeks went on that voice got more frantic as if hiding some huge frightening skeleton in the closet. Instead of the calm reminder of "stay focused...don't spend time on reflecting on the big picture here...just get through this next hoop..." the voice became a little more upsetting "STAY FOCUSED!!!! Don't look around you! Whatever you do DEFINITELY do not look at the big picture. DEFINITELY don't do that. Don't! Go about your life as planned. Do it! NOW!"
Finally I allowed myself to take a break. Whether or not I look at the big picture, the nose to the grindstone approach was not working for me. I was not in it fully. I was churning through agenda items but I was hating every moment of the process and I'm sure that didn't help my writing.
Meanwhile, it is getting close to the holidays. The holidays can be hard for people who struggle with mental illness or love people who do. Like clockwork I start worrying.
I haven't seen my mother in 18 months. I haven't communicated with her in that time either. Per family therapy recommendations on boundaries I agreed to email with her only until she got help for her addictions (which my readership from 2011 knows about). Her reaction was to refuse to email me unless I was willing to talk to her on the phone too. Result: deadlock and no communication.
Perhaps we both have one thing in common: stubbornness.
I found out via a family member who is in touch with her that she is "ok." In other words, she is the same: wearing out enablers du jour and in and out of housing situations and hospitals. I felt immediate relief and sadness. Relief that things aren't worse and that she isn't dead (something I sadly and seriously felt was possible during the long silence). And sadness that things aren't better and that the idea of things getting better seems more and more ridiculous and out of reach.
And crash! Boom! Right while I contemplate the meaningfulness of my work and feeling so distant from anything real and important I am served up on a platter a meaningful and real problem. Right in front of me. Here it is. She is living, she is hurting. She is your mother and she is in need...still. You want real? Here is real. You are tired of disconnected theoretical writing and statistics? Boom. Here is flesh and blood need.
I did call the hospital I heard she was most recently at (she was no longer there), though I realized I hadn't really thought out what I would say if the receptionist said "ok, let me connect you." I may have hung up. I don't know. I long to help her without it sucking the life out of me. But I know well enough at this point that that is the cost.
I even had a crazy morning where I pictured her living with me (shh...don't tell my husband). She could convalesce and just be at peace. If only that were possible for her and for me.
Here is what I do know at this point: no matter how much time I spend coming to terms with the state of things, peace is not only a process, peace is the process. Being at peace when things are great is easy. Being at peace when things are rough, or when you don't know the outcome, that is the tricky part. Since waiting for things to be great is out of the question, clearly, it is time for the tricky part of the peace process.
Even if I am not being contacted or called or ensnared in the crises day to day anymore, I love a person who is hurting. I love a person who is unwell and that is a painful thing. Finding peace in my life that doesn't feel selfish and cruel in such moments is very difficult. Especially at the holidays.
Here is the thing, and this is how my feelings about having a mother who is severely mentally ill tie in with my work: I came at this work from a place of trying to make things better for other people in the world who are hurting. I have seen hurting. If I can minimize or eliminate some small bit of hurting somewhere in the world, I will sleep better for it.
Yet, I feel quite far from that now. So, I will allow myself a break. (And perhaps if I say it enough I will believe it!) And I will wish all of you out there who also love someone who is hurting or is someone who is hurting a peaceful holiday season, whatever you may be up against.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Mother's Day...Didn't we just do this last year?
So. It is almost Mother's day...again. I wish I could love Mother's day. But I don't.
All the advertisements and email blasts with cheery pictures of "happy moms!" just pisses me off. I feel like it is in this week leading up to Mother's day that I just want to turn off all media. The incessant barrage of messages about mothers day brunches, mothers day massages, mothers day flowers...they all just make me want to scream. Not everyone feels like this is a celebration day, okay? Can I just quietly get through it?
I'm sure we all have these things, these triggers. Mine is my mother. Yours may be something totally different. But the way our society is set up there are moments in a year, or moments in a life course that can make one's particular trigger be activated way more than usual. And for me, every year, the holidays and Mother's day are those days.
I have tried to reclaim Mother's day for myself. Hey, I am a mother too! This is my day also! Yay me! But it just doesn't work. I think it is a goofy day for a lot of reasons, aside from my trigger issues. I think a lot of these celebratory days that serve to reinforce norms about what makes a family are ridiculous, because it is like they are there to jab a sharp blade into the hearts of those who do not have that "right" kind of family. I wish it was loved ones day...or caregiver's day...or honored elder's day...I could go on, but I will spare you.
But the point is, I have often found that there are moments in life where my calendar seems to dictate some feeling that is not only impossible for me to feel, but the very insinuation that I should feel it pisses me off. As I've written this post, I've received two more email blasts about mother's day. Just so you know.
All the advertisements and email blasts with cheery pictures of "happy moms!" just pisses me off. I feel like it is in this week leading up to Mother's day that I just want to turn off all media. The incessant barrage of messages about mothers day brunches, mothers day massages, mothers day flowers...they all just make me want to scream. Not everyone feels like this is a celebration day, okay? Can I just quietly get through it?
I'm sure we all have these things, these triggers. Mine is my mother. Yours may be something totally different. But the way our society is set up there are moments in a year, or moments in a life course that can make one's particular trigger be activated way more than usual. And for me, every year, the holidays and Mother's day are those days.
I have tried to reclaim Mother's day for myself. Hey, I am a mother too! This is my day also! Yay me! But it just doesn't work. I think it is a goofy day for a lot of reasons, aside from my trigger issues. I think a lot of these celebratory days that serve to reinforce norms about what makes a family are ridiculous, because it is like they are there to jab a sharp blade into the hearts of those who do not have that "right" kind of family. I wish it was loved ones day...or caregiver's day...or honored elder's day...I could go on, but I will spare you.
But the point is, I have often found that there are moments in life where my calendar seems to dictate some feeling that is not only impossible for me to feel, but the very insinuation that I should feel it pisses me off. As I've written this post, I've received two more email blasts about mother's day. Just so you know.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Why I named this blog what I did
Today I am reminded of why I had to name my blog stuck in the middle with you. In case you aren't familiar, it is a great song (Stuck in the middle with you by the Stealers Wheel), and while it is truthfully a bit too upbeat considering my actual feelings about my situation with my mother, it captures the crazy pretty well and my proximity to it.
So what did a kid who grew up with more or less this song as her childhood mantra choose to do? I study social norms and social processes. I am becoming a sociologist to understand better why and how groups do the things they do. I keep trying to learn what can create positive change (and how to do more of that) and what can create negative change (and how to put an end to that). I have no doubts that this desire is rooted in my childhood dysfunction. So it goes. I have come to peace with it and one day I will be able to actually study mental illness and children and not have too many raw feelings about it. But not now.
Growing up, it was always fairly easy for me to see social norms that some others took for granted, because I was raised by my mother with a completely unique, changing, and seemingly arbitrary set of social rules that were largely dependent upon her phase of life and mood. Sometimes I complied with the social norms, sometimes not (and truth be told, I suppose this is still the case). I learned how to fake it in both realms (hers and everybody else's), but rarely felt truly comfortable anywhere.
My biggest issue with my mother is one she doesn't get, and that, in and of itself, is problematic. She is trying to connect with me again, and it is not going so well. I have lately tried to email her niceties and fact based details of my life, or reply to her random memory emails with pleasantries (which as readers of this blog might know, I do not do lightly), to which she never replies in kind, but only then digs in and says something to the effect of "I want more from you!"
No lady, you don't.
She wants less "fakey" stuff, she says, and more real stuff. Ok. You got me, I am kind of faking it. But reality? My real feelings? No. I've tried that before. It has ended in one of the following scenarios: me with hives for a week and knocked out on prednisone in my first semester back to graduate school after two years off or her taking an overdose and, thankfully, landing in the ER.
The frustrating thing is, she thinks I am being dishonest with myself, not my "true" self. But this "self" to which she refers is the one that was sharing her reality. I understand it is lonely in her world without her daughters in it. After all, for close to 30 years she had at least one of us in there with her, "us against the world!" But then my sister and I grew up and realized, like so many other people, wow, there is a world beyond my parents. But then came the further realization that wow, we had some really messed up ideas of the world...paranoid, narcissistic, egoistic, hostile, codependent, entitled ideas.
So she wants me to be less fake. She wants me to be more "real". To her in her world, this means being like her. "Come back in honey, its nice and warm inside...and while you are here, I'll hold you close and clip those meddlesome wings of yours." I cannot. I will not. To me being more real means speaking my truth, like I do here in this blog, which she could not handle.
I've been trying a middle way, wherein I try to keep her in my life in some way that doesn't hurt me or her, but she says it is not enough. She wants more. Always, more.
And I know what that means. She wants all of me. She wants my reality. Since she can't have it, I'm not sure what there is left for us to discuss. And so I sit with a message in my inbox and I'm not sure if or how I'll reply, but one thing I do know and that she is not getting the "more" she is after. Not now.
Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.
Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
-Stealers Wheel
So what did a kid who grew up with more or less this song as her childhood mantra choose to do? I study social norms and social processes. I am becoming a sociologist to understand better why and how groups do the things they do. I keep trying to learn what can create positive change (and how to do more of that) and what can create negative change (and how to put an end to that). I have no doubts that this desire is rooted in my childhood dysfunction. So it goes. I have come to peace with it and one day I will be able to actually study mental illness and children and not have too many raw feelings about it. But not now.
Growing up, it was always fairly easy for me to see social norms that some others took for granted, because I was raised by my mother with a completely unique, changing, and seemingly arbitrary set of social rules that were largely dependent upon her phase of life and mood. Sometimes I complied with the social norms, sometimes not (and truth be told, I suppose this is still the case). I learned how to fake it in both realms (hers and everybody else's), but rarely felt truly comfortable anywhere.
My biggest issue with my mother is one she doesn't get, and that, in and of itself, is problematic. She is trying to connect with me again, and it is not going so well. I have lately tried to email her niceties and fact based details of my life, or reply to her random memory emails with pleasantries (which as readers of this blog might know, I do not do lightly), to which she never replies in kind, but only then digs in and says something to the effect of "I want more from you!"
No lady, you don't.
She wants less "fakey" stuff, she says, and more real stuff. Ok. You got me, I am kind of faking it. But reality? My real feelings? No. I've tried that before. It has ended in one of the following scenarios: me with hives for a week and knocked out on prednisone in my first semester back to graduate school after two years off or her taking an overdose and, thankfully, landing in the ER.
The frustrating thing is, she thinks I am being dishonest with myself, not my "true" self. But this "self" to which she refers is the one that was sharing her reality. I understand it is lonely in her world without her daughters in it. After all, for close to 30 years she had at least one of us in there with her, "us against the world!" But then my sister and I grew up and realized, like so many other people, wow, there is a world beyond my parents. But then came the further realization that wow, we had some really messed up ideas of the world...paranoid, narcissistic, egoistic, hostile, codependent, entitled ideas.
So she wants me to be less fake. She wants me to be more "real". To her in her world, this means being like her. "Come back in honey, its nice and warm inside...and while you are here, I'll hold you close and clip those meddlesome wings of yours." I cannot. I will not. To me being more real means speaking my truth, like I do here in this blog, which she could not handle.
I've been trying a middle way, wherein I try to keep her in my life in some way that doesn't hurt me or her, but she says it is not enough. She wants more. Always, more.
And I know what that means. She wants all of me. She wants my reality. Since she can't have it, I'm not sure what there is left for us to discuss. And so I sit with a message in my inbox and I'm not sure if or how I'll reply, but one thing I do know and that she is not getting the "more" she is after. Not now.
Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.
Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
-Stealers Wheel
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Will it make her smile?
"Is there anything in it that will make her smile?"
That is what I said to my husband after he had boxed the bulk of what remained of my mother's stuff. And then I, my mind racing through the dirty, dusty, jumbled heap of things that I know is in those boxes, burst into tears.
My mother apparently has found an apartment. That is great. Apparently she starts a job soon. Also great. I really hope it is true, and if it is, that it sticks. But regardless, she wrote to us and asked us to send her her stuff. This was in the last few days of cramming for my preliminary exam and I was fairly useless around the house to begin with (which isn't to mention the emotional pit I land in whenever I deal with her belongings anyway), so my husband said he would take care of it. And he has. From corresponding with her to reboxing her stuff and going to ship it, he has taken care of it quietly.
But there was a component of it for which I was needed. I realized that when her stuff first came to us one and a half years ago, or so, I looked through to see what personal, private, or important family things were in those boxes. The main things I salvaged from those jumbled boxes were pictures. Pictures from my childhood, my sister's childhood, and pictures from my mother's childhood and earlier. My sister helped me with this process and put most of the pictures in albums.
The albums have resided on a shelf in my office ever since. I realized that one of the things she might want from her stuff is her pictures. But are they her pictures? It is hard to say at this point. I really don't want to deal with a call next year from Boston saying "Hey, you don't know me, but I feel strange throwing out family photos and I'm cleaning out all this stuff today." Which is basically the call I got one and a half years ago and which is why I have them now in my possession.
There are happy pictures in those albums. Pictures from other phases of life where her illness wasn't running so rampant. Pictures of happy kids and pets and grandparents and camping and silliness and Christmas...
In not sending these pictures I feel almost as if I am denying her the joy of those memories, but I am not sure I want to allow those memories to possibly be lost again to me either.
I realize as I write this that the "pictures" are analogous to really a lot more than just photographs, and that just goes to show that my feelings can still be pretty raw about all of this.
I came to my husband as he was boxing up the rest of the stuff and said, you know I'm not sure which of these pictures to give. I haven't checked with other family to see how they feel and I am not sure myself how I feel. I am just coming out of three days of prelim headache and haven't truthfully given it much thought until this morning.
He told me not to worry about the pictures. We can always send them later, he said. For now he has seven huge boxes to send as it is. He is right and he calmed me down. But then I asked, is there anything in there that will make her smile?
And I'm pretty sure there is not. And the thing that kills me is that I still want to make her smile. And I don't know what to do about that.
That is what I said to my husband after he had boxed the bulk of what remained of my mother's stuff. And then I, my mind racing through the dirty, dusty, jumbled heap of things that I know is in those boxes, burst into tears.
My mother apparently has found an apartment. That is great. Apparently she starts a job soon. Also great. I really hope it is true, and if it is, that it sticks. But regardless, she wrote to us and asked us to send her her stuff. This was in the last few days of cramming for my preliminary exam and I was fairly useless around the house to begin with (which isn't to mention the emotional pit I land in whenever I deal with her belongings anyway), so my husband said he would take care of it. And he has. From corresponding with her to reboxing her stuff and going to ship it, he has taken care of it quietly.
But there was a component of it for which I was needed. I realized that when her stuff first came to us one and a half years ago, or so, I looked through to see what personal, private, or important family things were in those boxes. The main things I salvaged from those jumbled boxes were pictures. Pictures from my childhood, my sister's childhood, and pictures from my mother's childhood and earlier. My sister helped me with this process and put most of the pictures in albums.
The albums have resided on a shelf in my office ever since. I realized that one of the things she might want from her stuff is her pictures. But are they her pictures? It is hard to say at this point. I really don't want to deal with a call next year from Boston saying "Hey, you don't know me, but I feel strange throwing out family photos and I'm cleaning out all this stuff today." Which is basically the call I got one and a half years ago and which is why I have them now in my possession.
There are happy pictures in those albums. Pictures from other phases of life where her illness wasn't running so rampant. Pictures of happy kids and pets and grandparents and camping and silliness and Christmas...
In not sending these pictures I feel almost as if I am denying her the joy of those memories, but I am not sure I want to allow those memories to possibly be lost again to me either.
I realize as I write this that the "pictures" are analogous to really a lot more than just photographs, and that just goes to show that my feelings can still be pretty raw about all of this.
I came to my husband as he was boxing up the rest of the stuff and said, you know I'm not sure which of these pictures to give. I haven't checked with other family to see how they feel and I am not sure myself how I feel. I am just coming out of three days of prelim headache and haven't truthfully given it much thought until this morning.
He told me not to worry about the pictures. We can always send them later, he said. For now he has seven huge boxes to send as it is. He is right and he calmed me down. But then I asked, is there anything in there that will make her smile?
And I'm pretty sure there is not. And the thing that kills me is that I still want to make her smile. And I don't know what to do about that.
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