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.
so so proud of you for doing this. it will help the healing- i know- i promise
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thank you for opening a window to your journey. you are beautiful, and you will heal.
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