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.

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.