PTSD and going forward

My therapist says I have PTSD. I checked out the description on wikipedia:

Posttraumatic stress disorder (also known as post-traumatic stress disorder orPTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma.^[1][2][3] This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity,^[1] overwhelming the individual's ability to cope. As an effect of psychological trauma, PTSD is less frequent and more enduring than the more commonly seen acute stress response.

Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the original trauma(s) through flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased arousal – such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, andhypervigilance.

And I agree. This label has both freaked me out and brought me comfort. "Oh...that's what it is. Of course..." Or, "Oh that's what it is! Crap!" Either way, it is accurate.

I have not been able to stay asleep lately and I am, as ever, hyper vigilant. If I spy a tan sedan, my heart races....and not in a good way. I have spent so many years now feeling like I am holding back the wall of crazy to create a clear space for my children to have a crazy free childhood. Now I see that I have paid little attention to what holding that back in such a way is doing to me. I am starting to crack. But I am getting help.

I am talking with my therapist regularly and I am now talking with my family doctor. She has suggested EMDR, a therapy that I admittedly do not understand very well, but apparently helps to connect the left and right sides of the brain and can help take the visceral emotional response out of the equation...or at least let me see it through more rational adult eyes. My doctor is also giving me something to help me get to and stay asleep for more than 30 minutes.

I am happy with my plan. As happy as a situationally depressed, anxious and traumatized person can be. We'll see how it works out for me. More on that later.

Last night my mother emailed me again. Well, me, my sister and my uncle. I wept after reading it. She may not be using, but she is still a mess. She is delusional at best. And now she doesn't even know how to keep up the facade well enough to fool people for long. Who knows how long this newest person will last. My rational brain said, I really should just block her emails. I have made my position clear and she is choosing to not hear it. I do not need to hear from her in delusionville. It is not good for me. My emotional brain said, she wants pictures of us. Her kids...her grandkids...oh my god, if I was deprived of the joy of my children I would be lost. How can I do this to her? How can I deprive her of us? And then I try to fall asleep and wake up panicked...again...and realize, I cannot do this.

I just can't hear from her right now. Not "harmless" yet delusion filled emails. The perverted message is getting through my defenses and knocking me down. And I cannot afford to go through my life as me, as a mother, knocked out.

What am I forgetting?

You know that really awful feeling that you are forgetting something? Do you know how that feeling gets worse when you have kids? Forgetting stakes get higher and more panic worthy. My panicky, waking moments in the middle of the night are exhausting. "Oh no! I forgot something...what was it?!?!"

Well, I've been having them about my mother now that I know where she is.

When I didn't know, it is not that I thought she was in a different place or that she was in a better place. In fact, she is in a better place than I was imagining. However, even if I imagined a bad scenario...with a dangerous man and no one knows she is there and he knows it...I told myself, I'm just imagining this. No one really knows. She could also be in another state. She could be using some nice person and wrecking their life or marriage or both. Who knows?

Somehow not actually being able to visualize where she is and what her day might be like helped me to keep her out of focus. It helped me to not focus on her. It helped me to hold to my boundaries. We have an agreement based on healthy behavior. I hold up my end and maybe she will someday hold up her end. And if not, at least one of us is being healthy.

However, now I picture her. In our county's crisis center. Where she has been for "a while." Wanting desperately to reconnect with her daughters whose number she lost. I found this out not because I was searching or because she contacted me, but because a woman who befriended her there bought her story, took up her cause and looked me up.

This enabler du jour tells me that she was raised with alcoholic parents and is getting involved because she thinks my mom has hit rock bottom and now she really needs my support. She only wishes her parents had done that for her. Okay. Let me discuss.

She seemed sincere. She seemed like a decent person who has been through some stuff and is trying to help. I think I fall into that category myself sometimes and sometimes I overstep in efforts to help as well, largely because of being so hurt myself in the past. I don't begrudge her for getting in touch, exactly. I get it.

But that is just it. She doesn't get it. My mother is not an alcoholic, perse. She has a personality disorder at the least. She is using alcohol and drugs today to self medicate, yes. But I would never characterize her as an alcoholic. That would be the first step in a much longer and more painful path to wellness for her and for us.

Even while self medicating like this her disorder runs amok, and perhaps even moreso. She lies, she manipulates, she distorts, she sneaks, she takes. This woman is seeing an alcoholic trying to get better. I hear her trying to get back in. Again. I am not my mother's answer. I never have been and never will be.

She tried to make me her answer for years. And as a kid you do not know better. You think you are. I was the only 8 year old I knew who had panicky wake ups during sleep overs away worrying about her mother. I was made to understand from a very early age that my own survival was dependent upon her delusional upkeep. That is no longer the case. I refuse that job.

But the panic still comes...when my guard is down...and I resent it.

And now, she is on my mind. On the way home from the farmer's market yesterday I realized I was right down the street from the center. It is like my GPS which has been flitting here and there unable to grasp the location has finally zeroed in on the location to direct these feelings and the feelings are coming on hard.

I don't know how to process this. I don't know a script in our culture for handling this in a healthy way. I was shopping and saw flowers and thought, I should buy flowers. But for whom? Just buy them...somehow someone here needs cheering up. Shoot. We all do. I know this sucks for my mom too. But I cannot save her. I have been down that road before. I will not risk my family's well being again.

And the fact that I have to tell myself these things again and again concerns me. Why can't I get it? Why can't my boundary wall go ahead and become non-porous already? When will I stop feeling about this? When will it stop taking up room in my heart and mind that I would like to put toward other things?

Somedays I feel I have a better grasp on the answers to these questions. Somedays not so much. Today is a not so much day. And that is okay. It is what it is. I am doing what I need to do. I feel like crap about it. But I feel good about the fact that in a few minutes I am going to buy my kids their easter basket goodies. Here's for focusing on things you can have an impact on.