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.


 

Ideals

I really should be reading for my preliminary exams, which are only six weeks away and for which I have a huge virtual stack of readings to get through, but I need to take a few minutes to write about the state of things with my mother.

My last post was positive and it felt great to write.  But then I heard from my mother.  The real, flesh and blood mother who is related to the mother who did great things from time to time, but who now feels like more of a threat to my health than anything else.

I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago and I was recounting my correspondence with my mother and how my mother is doing and I stopped and said "There is that violin on my shoulder again...playing away!"  I don't want to be a martyr here, but sometimes even in stating facts I feel the violin starting up...woe is me...

This is not my usual modus operandi, at least, I don't think it is, yet I continually struggle with how to reconcile this part of my life in any other way.  When I wasn't communicating with her I was beginning to be able to really honor her and focus on those positive memories.  I was finding a way that felt good and true and positive and right.

And then she emailed.

And the content of the correspondence was not cataclysmic, just more of the same reality distortion and blaming and roping me in that I am pretty much used to, but it broke the spell of my happy place and now I can't find it anywhere.

Gee, thanks for writing.

She wants help, she wants to talk on the phone, she wants connection, she wants...wants...wants...

Some of this I get.  Some of this I understand and I understand her set of needs are no where near "normal" or expected for a 57 year old mother.  But what does normal mean anyway?  By what standards am I judging her?  Does it mean married? Homeowner?  Near retirement?  Hosting Thanksgiving dinner?  I myself actively try to undo these and other normative beliefs I find bouncing around in my head or in our family conversation at home, and yet I seem to compare her to these idealized images of "mother", and of course, she does not fare well in the comparison.  And that only gives the little violinist on my shoulder more to go on anyway.

So I try to free her and myself from these comparisons.  And I am left with this woman who is my mother, who is attempting to connect with me and is being overrun by her mental illness.  Sometimes I feel like I am emailing with her, sometimes I feel like I am emailing with her disease directly and most of the time it is somewhere in the middle and in every instant I am unsure whether her response will be sweet or full of vitriol.

I am sad for her and there is a large part of me that would love to offer her emotional, familial support while she works her way back from homelessness, but there is the other part of me that says she is an endless pit who will take everything I have.  She never stops wanting...once you give a little, there is always more to take and besides, I have kids to think about.

The hardest part, I believe, is that her illness causes her to not be able to see her illness.  So, not only can we not talk about it to any successful end, but when I don't see things the way she sees them she can't understand me.  And as time goes on and I am further and further away from seeing things through the lens of her distorted reality, she says she doesn't know me and I have to say that I think she is right.

And other than a blood bond and shared history, I'm not sure what there is left for us.   She says having a connection with me will help her during this difficult time.  Perhaps, but is this just about what is good for her?  No.  I don't think so.

My normative beliefs about the ideal daughter tell me that she certainly would be there for her, but fair is fair and we've stated she is no ideal mother and, well, I am no ideal daughter.   I am trying to be okay with that and figure out what I want to do here with this real request from a real flesh and blood person.

Thanks Mom

So it has been a while since I've written.  Not a ton has changed, but time has gone by and that has made somethings feel different regarding my mother.

Since I last wrote I decided to write my mother a letter via snail mail.  I am never sure if I will hear from her again and I become convinced that every call about my mother is the call informing me that she has died.  Given this, I decided to, while I had her address, tell her everything I would want to tell her should this be my last communication.

What did I tell her?  I told her I loved her and that I am not sure she can see the ways her illness is hurting her and that I hope for wellness for her, but cannot guarantee anything on my end...I get too hurt.

I heard back from her via snail mail, with a letter addressed to my husband's office as I was not comfortable giving her my home address (realizing that then I would feel panicked, even 12 states away, that she might show up at my safe place, my home).  She disregarded all of the more meaningful parts of my letter and responded about how life was now for her, and waxed poetically about me and my family and how lovely we are.

After the anger passed at having been substantially ignored, I decided to write to her and I even did so via email this time.  Instead of continuing to try to change her, try to help her, try to show her the cracks in her reality, I just responded politely.  I sent her the kind of email I might send a distant relative after a long hiatus..."my daughter is 3 now, she is spirited and funny..." and so on.  I even attached pictures of the kids and one of all of us.  I sent it off.

Two weeks passed and then I received a two line email indicating that she liked the pictures and was busy with interviews so she did not have much time.  She would be in touch later.

That was 2 months ago.

At first I checked my email more frequently wondering if now was the later she meant.  I dreaded/hoped to hear from her.  I hoped a miracle had happened, I dreaded what I thought was really happening and any continued involvement on my end.  And after a while I got busy with the stuff of life and time passed.  When I open my email I am not wondering if I will hear from her anymore.

So, why the title of this post?  Why am I thankful?  I have tried to write this post off and on for the 2 years I have been writing this blog.  Here is the thing: even in the midst of this present day heartache, she did a few things right.  She did somethings amazingly right.  She was sometimes brave and bold and big-hearted.  She was sometimes the mom I want to be.

It is this part that I have a hard time reconciling.

And if you have read my blog, I'm sure you know why.

Today I recalled such a thing she did beautifully right.  When I was 8 or so, my mother took our book of fairy tales and switched all the gendered characters.  Instead of Beauty and the Beast, it read Handsome and the Beast.  The idea of that story being about a handsome, sweet prince helping a grotesque and difficult woman is substantially different from the classic.  She gave me the gift of these new stories and the gift of seeing the crack in these norms that serve to shape us all.

So, today I sent her an email thanking her for this.  I have no idea if it is a working address anymore or if it will illicit a response even if it is.  But I've spent so much time dwelling in either escaping the negative or fortifying my boundaries from problems that it feels refreshing to spend a moment basking in a good memory.

Sometimes it is comforting to not over think a thing.  So I will not go on, but I will just say that was a good thing she did.  Thank you Mom, for that and for so many other things that I rarely have the opportunity to think about.

Pathology

I woke with a panic last night again.  I’m guessing this is related to the ongoing presence of my mother in my life for this last week and a half.  From talking to a counselor at an addiction treatment facility (again, not her primary problem!) to considering what her now being in a half way house in Boston means to me, it has been on my mind a lot lately.  The counselor told me my mother wants to reconcile and make amends with her daughters.  Whatever that means. 

Last night, my mind was swirling.  Thoughts formed and built on each other without words and so I had difficulty putting them into sentences this morning.  I want to try to put some of them down right now, so as to purge, so as to see if I can connect my dots again, so as to keep a record and to see if there is some clarity and insight I may gain from these swirling thoughts.

Are these thoughts that hit you like a lightning flash moments of clarity or moments of emotional detritus buildup wreaking havoc?  It either feels like something I should take careful notice of or dismiss outright.  I'll try to sum up my thoughts here:

When I delve into sociological thought I feel like a spectator of life, sitting on the bleachers, notebook in hand, criticizing what I see.  On the more positive side, I feel like my aim is to hold up a mirror to a dysfunctional world and point out its problems and then to, ultimately, help the world heal and get better.

This pretty much exactly mirrors my thoughts about my mother: hold up a mirror to help her see her dysfunction and then help her.  How much of my path is derived from this origin?  I know a lot of it is, but how much? And does it matter?  Is it a way that I am not truly being myself but rather still that child of a borderline mother who is trying to make the world a safer place to be?  So scared about how messed up things are that I seek to set about fixing them for fear that sitting back and allowing them to persist would allow it to swallow me up?  As if I had any control of it to begin with.  

Like my propensity to clean my house after an interaction with my mother, I seek control, for when others have had it things haven’t always gone so well. 

And how much of this echoes my mother’s own journey?  And how much does that send a shiver down my spine? 

My mother went into psychology, instead of her true passion of journalism she has said, to become an expert, a person in control, a person with the power to help her avail her feelings of helplessness with herself having a mentally ill mother. 

And here I am.  Try as I might, I am a person who is affected by my world and my path defined largely by where I have been thus far. Despite my childhood fascination with superheroes, I haven't come into my superpower quite yet and find, somewhat disappointingly, that I am just a regular person.

As through my work I always hope to find those instances where people’s futures are not defined by their past, I hope to find the same for myself. Yet, ironically, sometimes I feel I have not only removed myself from this family legacy I have actually continued it on with unfettered gusto.  And while I seek peace with my origins and experience (the good and the bad) and the fact that they are indeed a part of me, I worry about the trajectory of this path.  

Part of me wants to say, so what, yes I was fueled by demons to pursue this career...am fueled by demons...but this doesn't mean that dueling with them will destroy me.  But the other part of me screams that any interaction with the demons, whether running from them or attacking them are part of the problem and a life removed from them as much as possible is what will bring me peace.

So I struggle. I struggle with this off and on as I contemplate my decisions in life and I struggle mightily in the middle of the night when the ball feels in my court in actual dealings with my ill mother.