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.

Is your mom dead?

Last winter I wrote this post but never shared it. As I reflect on the start of this school year today and moving forward, I realized one of the things that haunts me is actually the title of this post. Following is my post from February 2014.

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I had the opportunity to eat dinner with just my 4 year old daughter last night. She and I sat there, eating, drawing, and talking. I have a horrendous head cold and my spouse is out of town for the week, but it was a nice moment in an otherwise exhausting week. She turned to me at one point and hugged me and said "I'm glad you are in my family. Otherwise you would be someone else's mommy." Disregarding the 4 year old logic of the statement, it was super sweet. And right as I was about to respond, she followed up with "Is your mom dead?"

Um...okay...."No, she is not dead." I told her.

"Why don't we see her?"

And here goes the occasional Q&A segment with my kids about my mother. And here is where I long for a better answer. Because I usually say "that's a good question" and hope that they get distracted by a french fry or a butterfly or some other spontaneous statement and not follow up with me about my mother. But as they get older they do follow up and I still don't know what to say and their questioning ability improves.

I've said "we don't see her because she is far away" to which they have said "but we see your dad and our other grand parents and they are far away." And of course, I mean more emotionally far away and am being deliberately obtuse. But the kids are onto me and ask too many follow up questions for this to work anymore.

I've said "we don't see her right now because she is not able to see us right now" which has worked pretty well and is basically true. But it is true because I will not allow her to see us right now. And my 8 year old is all over this one. "But WHY is she not able?" Ugh. Back to square one.

I sometimes just say "its complicated and I'll explain more as you get older. She loves you and I love her and I wish her well everyday and maybe someday when things are better we'll see her again." This is probably the closest I can get to my truth and something they can handle.

However, what I am thinking is "we don't see her because I am scared to see her. We don't see her because she is capable of sucking all the life out of me and she has been known to do that, whether it is intentional or not. We don't see her because she is a physical, logistical, emotional tornado that takes down all in her path. We don't see her because I want to protect you from not just her demons but from the mom you would have left after I see her." But how do I say that?

An old therapist once told me that I shouldn't beat myself up for showing my kids my sad or angry feelings.  Part of healthy life, she said, was knowing a full range of emotions and seeing recovery from sad feelings modeled for them. I try to remember that when I cry in front of my kids or lose my temper and then start the mom-guilt spiral. And sometimes I wonder if seeing the ravaged me after seeing my mother is part of that, but I don't know.

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But here is the thing: right now seeing her is not only something I'm not sure I want or think is good for me and my kids, it is simply not an option for me. She is MIA and has been for many months. I would love to be able to move through life without this popping up here and there as a to-do item like calling the dentist: check mom's whereabouts. Worse is the fact that right now there is no checking given her MIA status. Proceeding with life in a normal fashion can be a struggle at times, so taking the time to acknowledge the sadness from time to time helps me clear the air. Thanks as always for reading.

Serenity is where again?

I almost titled this post "control" but after a quick search of old posts realized I have a similar post On Control from three years ago, so I changed the title.  However, the truth of the matter is, no matter what I name it, I am still dealing with the same stuff and that, in and of itself, is frustrating.

I see a great therapist who often reminds me that we are human beings not human doings.  While goofy, there is a good point there.  I am, in my mind and my body, in perpetual motion.  Sometimes that perpetual motion feels healthy and like growth and progress and love, sometimes it feels just like motion…exhausting motion.  If I am still, if I am "being," I am more vulnerable.  The more I dig in and plow ahead the less vulnerable I am.

This is my thinking.  It is the thinking that leads me to feel overwhelmed and like I take on too much, but also the thinking that has helped me make things better in life.

Meanwhile, I have a hard time ceding control of things, partly because it is hard to just "cede control" to nothingness.  I find it virtually impossible to really let go of things.  And here is why:  Things don't just work out.

This is my motto.  If in doubt, you can bet things won't work out.  So, leave nothing to chance.  Manage it all.  I don't walk through life with the underlying script of "oh it will all work out in the end."

Que sera sera?  I think not.

I am trying to actively undo this.  And really as time goes by and we work hard to create a life that feels less precarious, I don't feel that my script of "things will only work out if you make them work out and then only maybe" is actually accurate and even, at this point, it is a bit overly dramatic.  However, it is through adopting this script that I have managed to create a life that feels more stable. Undoing a script that has helped me to create a life that feels less precarious feels dangerous.

While I don't think I can move directly to "everything will work out" but I can perhaps move to something less foreboding than "things will not work out." This is what I hope for.

I am in the middle of a particularly busy patch right now and while the temptation is to "wait until this is over to practice mindfulness or peacefulness," I can't help but think this is just stalling.  And, really, isn't this largely just how life is now?

So I am going to try to start my summer with some letting go and should I need a reminder, I'm sure I can count on my daughter to belt out a rendition of "let it go" for me as she does just about daily anyway.

I love a person who is hurting

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.

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.

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

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.

Facing the holidays with a homeless mother

Two days before the devastating elementary school shooting in Connecticut last week I received two emails from my mother wherein she essentially told me and two other relatives that we are not doing enough for her and she can only recover with more from us and then proceeded to outline the numerous ways we should help.  The "numerous" ways all involve giving money.

I get it.  People in her position don't have a lot of money, if any.  I do get it.  I'm sure it would help today to have money, and if I could make a big enough contribution, it may even help for a week or a month or two.

I have not replied.

And I vacillate between saying to myself "my non-reply IS my reply" to "I don't know what to say yet".  And when my heart and mind wander back onto this subject I feel a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.  This sickening feeling is largely connected to the calendar.

She informed us that the halfway house, which from what I could determine was a relatively good place for her, was kicking her out on Thursday (tomorrow) and she will again be homeless.  So as I get closer to Thursday, it is on my mind.  I can pretty much guarantee that come Christmas day it will be on my mind as well, just as it was on her birthday, and on Thanksgiving.  I feel like these days are held hostage, which I resent, and I am having a hard time working my way around it.

No matter how long I live with a mother who in no way resembles a "normal" mother, the normative scripts around how I should be responding to my mother remain there for me.  I continue to dismiss them, counter them, argue with them, but this is a process that takes energy and a lot of it.

After the shooting last week I was left thinking about the time several years ago when I saw her driving while under the influence and didn't call the police.  I regret that so much.  It was early in this process of distancing and boundary work and we were leaving family therapy.  We knew in therapy that she was under the influence of something and then when I saw her swerve I thought, my god, she could kill someone.  But this struggle internally with calling the police on my own mother with whom I was actively trying to mend fences was too much for me to bear and by the time I thought this all through, I didn't know where she was and she could have been home and off the road.  While it felt like too much to bear to call the police, I realized later that what really would have been too much to bear is if she ran into innocent people on her way home and I had not called the police.

It was like she had a weapon and when it got impounded and sold at auction, I was very relieved.

And what I have been thinking about since the shooting is this:  I have struggled with protecting my mother from herself, protecting my family from her, protecting myself from her, and protecting the rest of the world from her.  These things do not always line up neatly and I think more conversation about these issues could help it to be more transparent.

I am so heartened by the folks I know who live with mental illness and work with it.  To be open, to be frank and honest and brave about dealing with a mental illness, while having a mental illness no less, is nothing short of inspiring.  

However, I am so sad for my mother, that her illness is too much for her to handle, or that the line between her and her illness is sufficiently blurred at this point that there is no handling to be done.  I am profoundly sad that it has cost her relationships with people who do love her very much.  But to my mother, loving her means feeding into her illness, and to me loving her means not engaging with her illness.  This is one of those emails.  I think it is from her illness.  But she will undoubtedly be hurt in the process no matter how or if I respond.

I have been so happy that I have some readership here from folks who have similar experiences and for whom I can remind you that you are not alone in dealing with your friend or family member who might be struggling too.  I will leave you with something I remembered the other day:  in therapy a couple of years ago, my therapist talked about how she would give me a diagnosis of anxiety or depression or some such thing so that insurance would cover my sessions.  She told me there wasn't an insurable option for "help processing while a family member slowly unravels".  This to me crystalized how I, too, felt about my mother's illness.  I didn't validate it as something real to me either.  It was always in reference to how it was affecting my mother, not me.  It was hers. Even though it clearly directly affected me, I didn't feel like I had a right to talk about it openly.  It was her illness, not mine after all.  It was shortly after that discussion that I started this blog.  I think it is unhealthy to keep these things inside and I think we all need each other's support.

I wish I had called the police back then on my mother, for the community-at-large's sake, for my sake, and for her sake.  Hiding from it or pretending it was not happening would not keep it from happening, and drawing attention to it and seeking intervention actually might have helped her at a point in the road early on when she could have potentially righted this ship.