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?
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