never assume things.

after a week of hyperventilating and crying, i finally talked to my aunt and uncle. i feel like an idiot for overreacting the way i did.

the reason they are not coming is not that they can't deal with my mother. rather, my mother made some incredibly upsetting comments about their children in a letter they received. the letter turned into a renewal of their restraining order. the court sent someone to their house to interview their children and determine any level of abuse. and they are afraid of involving their kids in a possibly upsetting situation with my mother. they also don't want to tempt fate by potentially causing a scene during the wedding.

and i understand. at every level. i had to go through child service interviews because of my mother. i'm mortified that my cousins had to go through the same... how can i ever apologize for her behavior? for the necessity of that invasion into their lives by the court system? i feel like... a heel. a burden. an annoyance.

but now, for the first time, i am starting to lose my hope that my mother is ever going to be hospitalized. every day that goes by makes me feel like she is lost for ever. that she will never be medicated. that she will never be in my life as a mother ought to be. (but didn't i really know that deep down all along?)

having a mentally ill parent is endless grieving. grieving for yourself, and grieving for the incomplete loss of a parent.

and now i have to worry about my brother, and the potential disasters that could happen at this wedding. he will spend his entire wedding worrying about his mother. she could just sit and not cause any problems. but it's not likely. she could start a situation with me - yell at me, curse me out, etc. she could start a situation with someone else. the police could come. my future sister-in-law could be made to feel upset, or uncomfortable. there are so many possible negatives, and the only positive is that my brother would have his "mom" there.

everything is so complicated. and all i want is to find a really wonderful therapist to talk all of this out with in person. cry with. someone to answer my thoughts back with some insight. because while i have come to rely on this blog to air out my thoughts, and it brings me some peace, it is not helping me deal with the situation or the emotional scars that run so deeply.

i am emotionally raw, and my seams are showing.

wedding drama.

my brother is closer to my mother than i will ever be. some people have "his" and "her" towels, but we got "his" and "her" parents. frankly i think i did better in the deal, but i can't blame him for his feelings for his mother. it's a natural thing for him. i find it difficult to even say that i love my mother... most of the time i don't feel anything towards her at all.

but i digress.

my brother is getting married in july. he wants his mother at the wedding. no one else does, including his bride, but she is such a wonderful woman that she is putting up with it anyway. because it's what my brother wants. he wants his mother at his wedding. it's a normal desire.

the problem is that the rest of her family wants nothing to do with her. her sister has a restraining order against her. her brother has a restraining order against her. but when they got engaged, my brother and his fiance talked to everyone to assure them it would be a good time.

i got a text tonight from my brother that the uncle has now pulled his family out of the wedding. they are not going to be there. i'm trying to process this thought, but it can't seem to quite sink in just yet.

if her own daughter, if i can deal with her being at this wedding, why is it so difficult for every one else? how could her brother's hurt be any more than her own daughter? if i can put aside my anger, and resentment, and ANGER, to be at my brother's wedding with her presence, why can't any one else? the wedding isn't about my mother. it isn't about my uncle. it's about my brother, his bride, and the life they are creating. for whatever misguided reason, my brother wants his mother in his life. and no one else's opinion really matters. that's his comfort level, his wants, and his needs.

i am so angry with my uncle, whom i have always loved and adored, that i'm finding it difficult to breathe, let alone sleep. all i want to do is yell and scream at them. how am i supposed to react? i am incredibly close to my uncle and his wife. they have been my lifeline at times when i felt alone with the weight of my mother's illness.

but now, i don't even want to talk to them. let alone see them. i am so outraged at the selfishness, the cruelty, and the meanness...

i don't know what else to do other than keep my mouth shut. but my uncle must realize that the bond i share with my brother is sacred? if not because of the fact that we are siblings, then certainly because we have shared the burden of our mother for 25 years together. we have held each other when we were upset. we have carried each other. we have been each other's strength. and i don't care how righteous my uncle thinks he is being -- my brother will always, ALWAYS, come first in my heart.

oy.

my mother's mother

i was cleaning out my hard drive, and found a whole treasure trove of photos that my mom must have sent me at some point when she was still on meds. and i found one of her mother that made me cry. i look like my grandmother. i never realized this before.

i wish she were still here to get her daughter into a hospital like she did in the '60s. i wish she were here to make it better.

turkey

i'm in the new apartment. it feels empty, but it's full of stuff. boxes of stuff. and every box seems to contain an old piece of my soul. some memento that meant something at some point. but now? my life feels empty. i work, work, work. and then work some more. and let the laundry pile up, the dishes fill the sink, the cat litter stay. and then work again to keep myself from thinking. thinking about her. about myself. about all the things i want in my life but seem so far out of reach.

my self worth is amazing. i know that i am a strong woman. a beautiful strong woman. i know that i am smart, and determined, and loved by a band of family and friends. but there's a little voice in my head that drowns that knowledge out. and lately it's been screaming. "you're fat. you're ugly. you'll never meet a man. you'll never have kids. your brother will have everything you've ever wanted for yourself, so just keep pushing your career. who cares about a balance of life? sure, you want to go to the gym, but you'll look so fat in those tight pants. just watch more tv and eat some sugary crap."

and i let it win, 95% of the time. i made a turkey tonight, just for myself. told myself that i could clean the house while it was cooking, and unpack some more. but i just sat and watched movies. and taped more movies with DVR. didn't do a damn thing. and tomorrow, i'm back to work in dirty jeans and the same shroud of self-hate.

i want to be out of this cycle, but i'm drowning in it.

that turkey made me think of my mother's mother. she would have been proud, if she were alive. it was beautiful, and delicious.

family gatherings

every few months or so, my mother's family plans a get together. they don't do it out of pure love. to go into the dynamics of my mother's family could take a book in and of itself. so let's simplify.

mom's sister: almost as nutty as my mother. the hippy little sister who followed my mother into the LSD and ashrams of the 1970s with the adoration of a younger sibling who felt an affinity with my mother's odd choices. you could blame the times, if you want. partially i blame their hot-headed father and cigarette-totin'-sunday-dinner-throwin' mother. my mom and her sister wore saris to their brother's bar mitzvah, if that helps put this picture together for you. whereas my mother married her high school friend that understood her, her sister married an attractive greek boy, and promptly moved into suburban never-never-land to get the nice house in the respectable neighborhood. her kids are almost the same age as me and my brother. they were raised selfish, materialistic, uncommitted to school, and mostly interested in their clothes, friends, and popularity. the last time we got along was when we were 5. needless to say, they are practically strangers to me. my aunt is now a yogi, living with another yogi, and preaches well being and happiness, but just comes across as a ditzy new ager who has very little anchor in reality. she, too, is incredibly selfish. there's really no other way to label it.

mom's brother: the little brother left behind his two big sisters. always cleaning up the mess. the sibling who actually did something with himself. he's described it to me as being the "outsider." unlike my mom and her sister, he actually finished college and went into a definite field. he married an angel, and created the perfect little family. they do all the right things. say the right things. have the right friends and family friends and vacations and make everything ok. they have taken care of me when i have nothing to give but depression and i love them so very very much. every time my mother has gone off the deep end, my uncle has been there with an understanding and compassion that makes me feel unworthy of it.

mom's brother's wife's family: a hoot. i love these people. i wish they were my own family sometimes.

so, back to the story. mom's brother, who seems to feel that he and his wife must "hold" the family together now that grandpa is gone, has these get togethers twice a year. and this weekend was the latest. so it was me, my uncle and his family, his wife's family, my mom's sister, her yogi-spiritual-in-name-husband and her two kids. out of the entire room, i really just wanted to spend time with my uncle and his little family. they're the only ones i feel close to anymore. we've been on vacations together. i adore my little cousins, who are now in high school and starting to enjoy all those fun times with friends and crushes and first drinks...

but there was my mother's sister. reminding me so much of my mother it almost hurt. same mannerisms, same awkward comments. same face. and all i could think was, "what a waste." my mother's illness is such a waste. i always feel like my mother's daughter. like that is the label i will always have when i'm near people who know her. i know that my uncle doesn't think of me like that, but it's what it feels like.

most of the night was spent in idle chit chat. and then my aunt, with the lack of censorship she has always been blessed with, came out with "why don't you go on jenny craig like me? try to lose some weight? what do your doctors say?"

i wanted to punch her in the face, stand up, and leave.

yes, i'm fat. yes, i stress eat. yes, i eat my feelings away when i feel so depressed that i don't leave my house for two days. but don't fucking make me feel like shit, when every other thought i have on a regular basis is, "i hate myself. i hate myself. i hate myself." i don't need it. i don't fucking need it, especially when you are sitting right there, looking and sounding like my mother in a setting where she should have been. don't fucking say that.

i have no idea what happened the rest of the night. my uncle asked me if i was ok as i left, and i started to cry, and mumbled something about a "waste". somehow i made it home.

but i chain smoked the whole way. and i really don't feel like seeing my aunt for another 6 months.

nami walk

i'm also thinking of doing the nami-nyc walk in her honor. something to DO other than sit and wait for her. at least i could raise funds for others, right?

on the move again.

one step further away from my mother. i'm moving for the eighth time in five years. it's the job, but i can't pretend it isn't me too. destined to be a nomad, i suppose. the last person to put down roots in my family was my aunt in the 1970's. the rest of us still rent. i realized with a slight sort of glee that my mother no longer has my phone number for work. she can't call me and harass me at my job anymore. but i know at some point that someone else will tell her where i've transferred, and the explanations to coworkers will have to begin again. i dread it. but i also want it, if only to know she's alive.

the job

i love my job. everything about it. i'm probably one of the few people in the world who can say that outloud and mean it. my one sadness is explaining my mother's phone calls to my coworkers. they're so wonderfully protective of me. they know her voice, and almost always "screen" calls for me. i wish i could have my own extension, and she could leave all the crazy voicemails she wants. but we only have one group line. having to explain your mother's illness over and over and over again is just hard.

i just found out i've been promoted to assistant manager. this is huge. this is bigger than huge. this is everything i've worked for in the last three years. and all i can think about is, "lord, i hope they don't tell her what store i transferred to."

this is my chance for another clean break. maybe she won't find out. maybe i won't have to retell the same old sob story to a new crew.

unlikely.

recent news.

mom's been a busy little bee. the state police had come looking for info on her a few months ago because she sent a threatening letter to a public official. we didn't know where she was at the time, although my brother seemed to know she had changed her name and moved somewhere north. turns out it's actually true. she legally changed her name to some blatantly vanilla americana name, and moved into a nursing home in the worst slum in an upstate city. the cops know where she is, and who she is, and she has already made quite the name for herself at the local authorities.

so my question remains: why don't they just drag her to the hospital already?

the more time passes, the more sure i become that i will never get my mother back. she will never check herself in, and the cops will never force her because she's not really that much of a threat. just a crazy woman who harasses the local post office for "tampering" with her mail. perhaps this is how it will be from now on - her being somewhere far away, living alone in assisted living on disability, and me never feeling comfortable enough to see her again.

what a waste.

song dedication?

somehow i rediscovered sarah mclachlan's "drifting" tonight. and it's eerily perfect language for what i think my heart is saying every now and then.

"you've been gone so long

all that you know has been shuffled aside

as you bask in the glow

of the beautiful strangers that whisper your name

do they fill up the emptiness

larger than life is your fiction

in a universe made up of one

you have been drifting for so long

i know you don't want to come down

somewhere below you there's people who love you

and they're ready for you to come home,

please come home"

mystery package and the aqarium

my best friend took me to the aquarium with her daughter today. i think my mentioning of the fact that i have spent the last two month's worth of weekends in a depressed funk had something to do with it. and i had a good time. but even now, it's 5 am and i couldn't possibly tell you why i'm still awake.

my building's front door had a a fed ex door tag waiting for me the other day. they left it with my super. i didn't order anything. i'm not expecting anything. i'm extremely confused over what it might be. and hoping it's not from my mother. she shouldn't have my address, and if she does, it might freak me out a bit. i don't want her showing up here someday.

future

going to visit the brother was needed. it felt so good to be somewhere else. in the middle of someone else's family. we talked about what would happen in the future. he is the only family member still talking to her now. apparently she applied for disability and got it. i wonder what kind of disability she claimed to have. so maybe my wish will not come true. maybe she will not check herself into a hospital out of desperation. maybe this situation will never resolve itself.

i feel knocked down.

visiting the lil bro

i'm heading down to visit my brother in the morning. i need it. i've felt like a depressed fuck for the past few weeks. rarely getting out of bed on my days off. not calling friends. eating everything in the fridge. this is never a good sign. i wound up hysterical on the phone with the brother two weeks ago, blabbering on about how much i hate myself and the newly decided fate that i would be alone my entire life.

i know what's really talking.

but when i go down to see him, i'm hoping we can talk about mom a bit. he's getting married next summer, and i'm not sure how it's going to be to have her at the wedding. yes, it's far in the future. yes, it doesn't really matter right this second. but i'm anxious about it already.

the other women.

it occurred to me today, in the midst of feeling like half a grown up and thinking about a conversation i had with my aunt last weekend, that my grandmother and aunt have been my mother for 16 years now. and i've very, very lucky. they are such beautiful amazing women.

no wonder my mother was always jealous of them. she used to call and harass them about trying to take her daughter away from her.

i still can't understand how she couldn't figure out it was always her behavior that caused the rift. it will always be her.

fucking facebook.

she sent me a friend request on facebook today with the following message:

"Honey, such a serious photo! I hope we can remain friends as we were until around 2006. Won't you please add me to your list of friends?"

i want to punch her in the head. she also sent me another damn email from her new email address which i had not blocked yet, and addressed it to "nancy." my name is not nancy. so i wrote her back, cursing quite a bit, and calling her a fucking psychotic bitch. made me feel better.

then i blocked her new email address.

history lesson.

old emails are funny. found this one tonight from mom 4 years ago:

"Hi

I've been watching the anarchy at the Convention Center down there.

I tried calling some regional politicos with very little result.

The government is airlifting supplies to these people.

The result well might be civil war.

Can you get in touch with [deleted]--she's got legal connections--

is there any correct approach to government officials to get

some action or people to jump before something more horrendous and indelible takes place?

What do you both think might be done tonight or tomorrow?

I will be waiting your reply (and avoiding MSNBC).

Ma"

my single-sentence response:

"calm the fuck down."

i laughed a little when i read it tonight.

wednesday.

no news on the mother. i never know why i care so much. either she calls and i get upset/feel guilt, or she doesn't call and i worry/feel guilty. i've made it for three years telling everyone i didn't care where she was. but the truth is that if there's some kind of contact - either a phone call at work, or an email with some paranoid hallucination bullshit - at least i know she's alive. 

quiet day.

didn't hear from her at all today. a coworker mentioned she had called the store and left a paranoid message last weekend but she (the coworker) didn't want to upset me. predictably, i then felt like crap for the rest of my shift.

trying to figure out how to find people going through the same thing. web searches don't seem to come up with anything useful other than a forum on shizophrenia.com. i thought about sharing this blog with my facebook friends, but then realized i would be censoring myself all the time as a result. and i don't want to censor myself anymore than necessary. 

this is supposed to be my own private outlet. 

where i can say things like: 

[sometimes i wonder if my mother's death would be an easier kind of grief, if only because there would be some kind of closure possible.]

where i can write things like: 

[in a morning light,

small creases

looking back in a rearview mirror

on the way to her family

feeling the guilty weight of my mother not being there

and the unbearable relief of my mother not being there. 

self-portraits caught in moments of not knowing

where i'm going next,

but revelling in the suddenly grown-up feeling

i have swirling around my ankles

like a skirt my mother

might have worn.

i feel my twentyfifth year

flowing as a cadence

a sweet song beginning

and ending

with faith

determination

and a grace 

being taught

in the boughs of brooklyn.]

this is my own little anonymous space. and that's how i need it to be right now.

her latest email.

I had been blocking her email address. But she came up with a new one:

"Your letter [in which all I said was "go to a hospital and get help"] is incontrovertible evidence that you are a paid shill, probably a German transplant put in place of the dear daughter I lost sometime ago.  You are patronizing a woman with the equivalent of a Ph.D. who has "lost a leg" so to speak=you. When I find out the owner of you, the parrot, I will redress my grievances. I spent 21 years raising a female benedict arnold. You are cut off unless I am on my deathbed, when you can beg my forgiveness.  You are a traitor, and I no longer love you. For you are not a daughter. You are incapable of it.

Regards"

And then, when I sent a response that said the exact same "go to a hospital and get help" with a "fuck you" thrown in, she replied:

"Someone really worked your head over. I suggest you get a mind shampoo. You are heading for hell in a haybasket. It's over for you now."

and then one minute later:

"In fact, I think you murdered the good one, ate her, and took her place. How do you like those apples?"

Again, I responded "go to a hospital and get help." She won't go. The "fuck you" was probably unwarranted but it really made me feel better at the time.

who i am now.

my mother's illness is a part of me. i have my good weeks of coping, and my bad weeks. the good weeks usually consist of visits with friends, cleaning the house, and keeping in touch with family. the bad weeks usually consist of staying in bed for my entire weekend, hating myself and my lonely little life, and crying in public when i start to listen to certain songs on my ipod.

this was a bad week. perhaps thats where the blog idea came from.

but how to tell the story?

the truth is that it's hard for me to tell the entire story in just one entry. but i'll try to at least get you to the here-and-now.

i spent the first ten years of my life in suburbia with mom, dad, and brother. we had a two-bedroom garden apartment in a typical post-ww2 suburban haven on long island. my grandparents lived 30 minutes away. my best friend lived in the apartment 5 doors away. my brother and i played "school" in the courtyard, and i'm sure there were some lemonade stands that happened at one point or another. but there are other memories too. less happy ones. my parents fighting in the living room, with my brother and i listening from our room. my parents fighting in the car. my father storming out to cool off, only to return a few hours later. i think this was about the point in time that i learned the phrase "oh, take your g-damn medication already."

when i was about ten, she sat me down in the kitchen, and told me she was leaving. i wasn't sad. i don't remember crying. but i remember thinking, without fail, that i didn't want to live with her. 

fast forward to middle school. she had stopped taking medication completely. the family court had become familiar and constant, with my mother's accusations of child abuse against my father. all baseless. the local police became acquainted with her antics. she smashed a window at my father's new apartment when he told her she didn't have visitation that day. i refused to see her for a few months. 

and then, one beautiful day in high school, about five years after she had initially left and stopped taking meds, my father told me she had been in the hospital for the past week. everything changed. that hospital, and the cops that dragged her there, became everything that i had ever wished for. somehow they had gotten her back on meds. and my father started to divulge her history to me. i was about 15. it was time. i hadn't had a mother for most of my preadolescence. 

and while my father was my rock, he was still unsure of how to handle the "first period" speech. most of the things i was supposed to learn from my mother, i learned in health class. i learned from my best friends. from their mothers. from my grandmother. and even now, i am still learning from them. but never my mother. never her.

after her hospital stay, lithium brought a quiet change to our relationship. she became a different person. kind. attentive. went back to school and studied with gusto. found a stable apartment. i almost began to get to know her. high school came and went. she sent me off to the prom with all the other mothers. and i got used to it.

college started. but somewhere in the middle of it, she started to fall apart again. i started seeing a therapist. she would call 3 or 5 times in the middle of the night, and i felt helpless. i didn't want to shut the phone off, just in case... just in case... but at the same time, i had no boundaries for her. my therapist then taught me steadily that she was going to continue leaving me in a crumpled ball unless i shut the phone off. and so i began laying down the boundaries of our relationship. she didn't really obey them. but i ignored her antics unless she did. it almost worked.

i graduated from college about five years ago, and moved 4 hours away. she was my first visitor, and i felt awkward the entire visit. i didn't really want her there. but at the same time, i was homesick for family. i felt guilty.

a year and a half after that, all hell broke loose. she stopped taking meds. she quit her teaching job. she started spending vast quantities of money. she started the paranoia speeches again. she started the phone calls again. it was thanksgiving.  by january, i had police officers at my apartment at 3 am because she called them in a panic that something had "happened" to me. 

my carefully laid-out life fell apart. all the feelings of resentment, of guilt, of anger, of helplessness, came back in a flash. my brother, whom i had effectively raised since the age of eight, was failing out of school. i had no choice but to quit grad school and move home. my father said i was the only one who could help get her back to the hospital. so my brother and i cornered her one rainy january day. she responded by almost hitting me with her car, and hitting my brother's car. i fell to the ground sobbing "mommy", like that lost little ten year old losing her mother all over again. 

since that day three years ago, i have felt like a motherless daughter. i had told her before that if she were not on her meds, that she would lose me as a daughter. that she would not be welcome at my passover table. that she would never know her grandchildren. but her illness won her loyalty, and i must keep my word.

how many others are there out there like me? or not like me? how many others have cut their mothers out of their lives in order to move forward? or have they sacrificed their happiness to try and keep their mothers sane? 

how many of you are out there? how are you dealing with it? how is your family dealing? 

my goal on this blog is to tell my mother's story as it goes on. to meet others like me. and learn from them.