An End

Last night I dreamt our house was sinking. Every time I looked out the window I saw the earth around our house swallow up more and more of our home and everything in it.

Peter and I were scrambling trying to get our two kids and four animals out of the house before it was swallowed completely. It seemed impossible to get all of our family together and no one would leave without the others (which was kind of sweet but also infuriating and troubling).

I woke just before the house was swallowed completely.

Here is the completely unsurprising dream interpretation of a house is sinking into the earth:

To dream that you or something is sinking suggests that you are feeling overwhelmed. Someone or something is pulling your down. Alternatively, the dream means that some important and significant stage in your life may be coming to an end. 

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For those who have followed my journey, you know the story. For those who have not, my mother was a bright, funny, spirited, woman with so so many dreams. She achieved several of those dreams. And she did so while not getting support and help for her pretty significant mental illness.

However, she found a way to numb the pain and began self medicating with drugs and alcohol about 20 years ago. We have not seen each other in 8 years. She died at 65 of complications resulting from alcoholism.

These past 2 weeks I have felt flooded much of the time--so many thoughts and feelings that I can't tease them apart or think them through. Flitting in and out or sinking deep into my bones, these thoughts and feelings are pulling at me as if being tossed by a wave....wave after wave after wave...

And, the rest of life doesn't stop. There are still children and pets, with their own crises and needs and lives. And there is still a pandemic and we still are living in this altered state. There is much to wade through in the turbulent flood and I am chest high.

I am processing this significant stage of my life coming to an end and will be for as long as it takes. This week we are preparing for my mother's virtual memorial. Watching old videos and looking through her writings and pictures have been both painful and healing. I hope the memorial we are planning brings others who have loved her some catharsis. Creating it certainly has.

Scream

What is that screaming?

I am the scream.

When did this happen? How did I become this screaming person?

Swirl of grief and doubt and panic. Oh no. I've become undone. Is this how it goes? Is this what I didn't see? This is what's behind the curtain. This is what happened to those who came before. To the women in my family. To the women who felt so much. To the women who passed on the trauma, and smuggled the hope. I don't know but there is this huge wave nipping at my heels and I am screaming.

Let me step back from the scream and the wave for a moment.

I haven't written here for a while. There are 3 main reasons. I would like to share them with you:
1. Wondering why I share--is there utility in the sharing or is it narcissistic naval gazing?
2. Worry that my mother will read my posts.
3. Realization that some of the things I, as a younger person and mother of a younger children, said was only momentarily true.

But, I want to share. I need to share. Much has brought me around to this again and this fucking pandemic feels like the final straw and allows me to realize I actually don't care about 1 or 2 anymore, and I think 3 is really important. So let me speak to that.

I used to find comfort in all the ways I was not like my mother, as I think, she did with regard to her own mother, and likely so on and so forth. I drew lines in the sand. They helped me find my (tenuous) footing when I had no roadmap and no true north. I'm not sure what I'm shooting for, but it's not that. Good. Great plan. Let's start there.

But now that I've been parenting for almost 15 years I know I don't know much and that "not that" plan is not panning out because honestly, there is a lot that my mother did that was great or totally fine. It is like a great unraveling of self this whole parenting thing. Far from shriveled I am laid bare...and this rawness is real and, well, fucking raw.

As my daughter likes to say "cussing is for mamas." And so it goes.

I am more raw and real and difficult and hopeful and angry and joyful than I was before and there is still no roadmap. But now, at 44, I'm not looking for one like I used to. So to point 3 above. I wrote years ago, I don't scream. I don't scare my children.

All of this was in service to me sorting out how I was handling the stresses of little children and figuring out if I was causing them real harm. I so did not want to cause them harm but I was walking in the dark, bumping my way through parenting feeling for guardrails that would steady me. I did what I needed to do. I see that and I send my 30 something self love and gratitude.

Back to the scream.

Which is me.

In case you forgot.

So what do you do when you are the scream? When you are the crazy laughter? Do you panic and shut down and spiral into doubt and worry? I did. For quite a while. I felt the wave at my heels and I paddled out ahead as much as I could to try to get away. It would be my undoing I thought. But now, no. The wave and the scream have me.

But lately I am owning it. I am focused on the recovery. The swings and feeling it all. And feeling it hungrily and honestly. Sharing that with my kids (because we are certainly not going to feel much without them right here...and I mean RIGHT HERE for the foreseeable future)...and sharing the path to calm as well. Because not only do I scream, I stop screaming.

For a while I harbored this fear that if I started to scream I would never stop. But I do. And I'm sure you do too. If for no other reason than shear exhaustion. Just like a big wave, it goes just like it comes. Staying just out ahead of it just makes you exhausted from paddling. For years I worried that the wave would take me over and that would be the end, so I tried to stay just beyond the wave. But life IS the wave and all that exhausting paddling just keeps me from feeling it as fully. So I'm diving in.

And what I want to say to you is I recover...my kids recover...you will recover. So scream if you need to. Let your kids scream if they need to. Sometimes we all need to just feel it and go there and find our way out again and realize the wave wasn't the end of us.

The Illusion of Control

Today I feel at peace. Productive, but calm and trying to do one thing at a time and with full attention. It has made even mundane tasks feel somewhat rewarding, or, actually, surprisingly more than somewhat rewarding.

Yesterday I spent some time thinking about the illusion of control and how that works with my desire for control. To that end this morning I thought about my backpack in highschool. I carried this bag everywhere. Some of the things I carried to school, to a friends house, to the movies were bandaids, snacks, playing cards, matches, emergency candles, a change of underwear, pads, and a change of shoes. I was always somewhat living in a potential dangerous future scenario. Prepared for many possible contingencies. Prepared. Ready...Anticipating problems. Sometimes oddly pleased when problems emerged because I was prepared to handle them. 

I have, in small and large ways, throughout my life continued carrying this “bag” and I am ready to put it down. Not because I think it is problematic in and of itself being prepared, but because my fixation on having it and panic around potentially not being prepared for a new possible future scenario keeps my attention tuned to the future and not where I want it, on this moment right now.

I have today and I have spent far too many todays focusing on preparedness for tomorrow and as I reflect here some 25 years later I see that many of those tomorrows never even came. And, even if they did, I sold myself short by implying that I could not have handled it without any preparation. 

What it did provide me was the illusion of control. 

And it fed an underlying belief that I am actively working to dismantle: Things don’t work out, and I should be prepared for that. 

Sometimes though, things do work out. Sometimes I am surprised by and unprepared for something and figure it out. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and that is ok too. Actually, I survive and those around me do too.  Even, beautifully, sometimes people in my life surprise me and figure it out and my heart swells. 

Beauty and joy can and do happen. Kindness does happen. Mistakes also do happen and sadness also. These are all ok and I don’t need to prepare for any. I am already ready for them and I don’t need my backpack to get through it. 

Fear of Sadness

Fear of sadness.

This is what I have. A fear of sadness. This day I feel it. Both the sadness and the fear. I can’t tell which is more problematic….or if neither are…

My sadness comes on like a room that is flooding…pooling at the edges and crevices, distracting me from the other areas that remain unaffected. My fear kicks in and is irrational and smacks of trauma.

The sadness pools in the corners and threatens to drown me and the things I have worked so hard to create…the beauty, the peace, the love.

I fight the sadness: alternately ignoring the pooling and madly soaking up the pooled sadness to get rid of it asap. It will do irreparable damage. It will warp the good things. There is no space for this pooled sadness.

I fight the flood.

I focus on the bright spots. I remember the good things. I try my best to accept the warped wood from prior pooled episodes. It gives the room character, right?

But it distracts and makes the pooling more likely in the future…more crevices, more warping…pain leads to pain….sadness leads to sadness…I fight the flooding...

I love who I am, most of the time, and try to teach my children the importance of self love and self acceptance. Who am I though? And how has all the warping from my past impacted my current self? By loving the warped nature am I complicit in loving how it came to be? Can I love the damaged but hate the damage? Where is the line?

The cause for my original warping is largely out of my life, but the warped wood remains. I think I fight more damage by fighting the sadness when it pools. But I think I am wrong. I think I give more opportunity to the pooling sadness by reacting so strongly to it.

It may continue to warp me. It will be uncomfortable. It may alter things. But it is a part of me and a part of life. What if, instead, for once, I dove in to the pooled sadness? What then?

Demons

I have not written since I connected with my mother over a month ago. I think it took me a while to sit with the feelings and process them. That, and I've been busy with a new job and the stuff of life.

Around Christmas I heard that my mother was in the hospital in Boston with pneumonia. For the first time in a long time I knew I could reach her and it would be in a secure and supported environment. This is important for several reasons. First, readers of my blog may remember that when I've talked to her in non-supportive environments and ask super invasive questions as "What do you plan to do?" she has overdosed due to my lack of faith in her. Second, when I have to go through an enabling gatekeeper I have about half the time gotten an earful of shame and guilt "What a bad daughter you are. You should man up and take care of your mother." Like I haven't tried.

Fun stuff. I didn't want either scenario. So here was a chance to call and have the totally bored hospital phone staff transfer me to my mom. I called.

As the (as expected) totally bored sounding hospital phone worker found my mother's name, my heart was pounding and she just transferred me to her. Little did she know what a huge moment she was a part of. I haven't talked to my mother in years and I haven't started a conversation with her in even more time than that.

My mother answered. Just like that, we were talking. I was flooded with a million feelings and I could not quite breathe. Here was my mother, found sleeping in the woods with a dangerously low body temperature. Here was my mother, a woman I love and worry about deeply. Here was my mother, a person I have, for better or worse, great chemistry with...such chemistry has kept me coming back like a moth to the flame even when it has almost undone me.

I have missed her, I was sad, I was happy, I was angry and frustrated, I wanted to swoop in and save her, I wanted to hang up and make sure she didn't have my address. I wanted everything and I wanted nothing. So I just had a conversation where I was just present with her.

I did this about four more times over the course of the next two weeks. We had two conversations that were beautiful, honest, loving, and protracted. No matter what happens, I am grateful for those moments and that connection.

The last conversation I had with her was several weeks ago now. She was transferred to a mandatory inpatient substance abuse treatment center, and from there, on to a way station for a half way house. She called me from said way station. She was eager to leave...even with no better plan...and such has been her story for the last many years and how she ended up being a person drinking vodka in Harvard Square at Au Bon Pain and sleeping in the woods.

The phone connection was terrible. That last conversation I just kept saying "we don't have a good connection, mom, our connection is bad." We ended the call and I haven't heard from her since, though I tried. I have the partial makings of a care package I was fixing for her with no where to send it. (note: assembling a care package for a homeless loved one is a somber act).

But then I was driving home from work a few days later and realized the sad truth to what I kept repeating to her in that last call...our connection is bad...oh yes it is. There is chronic static on the line.

I talked with a couple friends in the last few weeks about this situation. I reflected on her life course and its impact on me and my life. And I realized something that is not earth shattering in its profundity, but was a moment of clarity nonetheless. She is always running from demons. She always has been.

Whether she was reaching for a goal (getting her PhD, writing self help books) with a manic like obsession, whether she was moving to a new state (old state was full of mean people), whether she was swapping out new friends for old, she was running.

Now, I am not sure if she is running-- but this time into alcohol-- or if her demons have caught up with her. All I do know is I wish this wasn't her reality. I love her and I wish for more for her. And, even though the connection was often not great, I was so happy to have a moment with her.

Loss

Today is my mother's birthday. She is 61. I don't know where she is.

I have spent many years processing various aspects of this painful part of my life. First, logistics. I can't be a part of (or a solution to) her chaotic daily life. Second, boundaries. I have to protect myself from the things in life that hurt me repeatedly, even if that thing is my mother.

Now, after all these years, I am feeling just a sad longing for what I lost...what could have been...but what, really, I know, never was going to be. In one of those moments, I wrote a letter to my mother. It is a letter I haven't sent and would not send even if I knew where to send it.

But I will share it with you all here because what I am slowly coming to terms with is that these things I long for are things I can give myself and things we can give each other. Wisdom, kindness, and strength are within us all.

Dear Mom,

In a parallel universe I am calling you all the time. I am asking you what to do when your 10 year old tells you he is too fragile to handle something socially challenging, but your gut tells you that the very thing he needs is not a pass from dealing with it but requiring him to deal with it anyway. I am asking you what to do when you feel you are striving for so many things in life but really everything you have ever wanted you have and have it in abundance but can't seem to slow down to fully enjoy it. I am asking you how to trust your gut. I am asking for advice on parenting when you realize, "wait, this isn't a forever thing...this having tiny dependents...it is a time-limited and increasingly seeming short period in my whole life." I am asking you how to shake off naysayers and let go of pernicious negative self-talk. I am asking you how to keep going even in the face of cruelty in this world. I am asking you how to hold on to hope when every bit of news seems to tear it down. I am asking you if I really can make a difference given all the sadness in this world. I am asking you how to fully embrace being authentically you while still being a good enough mother, a good enough partner, a good enough friend, a good enough worker, and a good enough citizen. I am asking you how to balance seeking out fulfillment of passionate priorities with reality and the hours and energy in any given day. I am asking you how to be kind to yourself when you feel you could have done more, done better, gone farther, been kinder, been wiser.

These are some of the things I would ask you if you were reachable and available to me as a mother. Some days I could really use a mother and I miss having one and I miss you.

I love you.

My mom is in jail. And that is the good news.

It has been one year since I posted here. That is a long time even by my sporadic blogging tendencies.  This morning, however, I found myself writing a letter to my mother in jail. The emotions around addressing my card to inmate #910018 left me swirling.

In the last few days, I not only found out my mother is an inmate, but I also turned 40. I not only remember my mother at 40, but I was a huge part of her daily life at that age, when I was 20. After my step father left I almost dropped out of college to be with her and my sister as my mother, as well as daily life of the house, was in such turmoil. My mother has never been able to steady herself, always relying on those around her. Sometimes this is more pronounced than others and sometimes that reliance is on a child, which is a lot for a child to take on, and they really have no choice. The guy who totally has had a choice and has been providing her steadiness for the last couple of years has been in touch with me in these last few months.

His communications with me have been presumptuous, ignorant, self-important, martyred, and aggressive. He claims to fully understand what is going on with her after hearing only her take on things claims to know me well as a results of that, and therefore know what I should do. Important note: if you tell me you really get what is going on with my mother, yet you don't seek verification on details from those she slanders, you do not get it. It is incredibly irritating and he has impeccable timing, always when I am in the midst of something else that requires a lot of emotional strength. But that is just my good luck, I suppose.

Here is the latest email I received, the title of which was "Happy Birthday!":
Hi,

Your mother wishes you both Happy Birthdays, I believe you are 40 today and your sister is 28 now.

I was able to successfully petition for your mother for treatment, in this state referred to as a sec. 35 civil committment, even though I was not a family member. The treatment is not ideal, but is better than having her on the streets. She is being held at the MCI Framingham, a medium security prison while awaiting transfer to the Women's Addiction Treatment Center in New Bedford. She was here before and she said she liked it but they tore that building down and now is locked in a jail cell. Hopefully she will be transferred soon. (This is a civil matter, she has not been charged with any crime.) 

Thank you.

So, I'm just going to go on the record here and say I think that this email title was a tad misleading. Or maybe not. Maybe this is a good birthday message, given the sad state of things.

There have been many moments when I had little idea where my mother was and feared she was in another desperate and scary situation. In those moments I wished for her to be locked up somehow, a treatment center, jail, anything, to keep her from being in potentially very dangerous situations and to protect her from her own choices that continue to lean towards self-harm. So on that count I am glad she is locked up.

But, then, there is the woman I also remember who is fierce and brilliant and funny and passionate and vibrant and she is also in jail. And my heart does break for her. I wish for a different life for her. I want a different ending to this story for her. It kills me that I cannot control it and have worked long and hard on this piece over the last 20 years. Instead of belaboring my lack of control here, I will instead share my wishes for her:

Mom, I wish for you health and mental clarity.
I wish for you safety and comfort.
I wish for you hope for the future.
I wish for you moments of joy, love, and connection with others.
I wish for you logistical, financial, and emotional stability.
I wish for bright tomorrows for you.