she must have a spiritual connection with me... a cosmic string tethered between my heart and hers. i received a letter from her today. after worrying that something was wrong, this shows up in the mail:
"dear xxxxxx:
i developed this address for you as above online. besides that, nosy databases state that you are friends with "XXXXXXX", a neighbor. Well, good for you!
yes, i know several years ago you stated that you didn't want future contact with your mom: me. i just find that hard to accept because i loved you so.
one last try to put things right between us. i'd like to see you and talk things over. i'm free in august and could travel down by bus. i'd like to ask whether you'd consider letting me stay over for one night at least. i'm a rather poor person without assets. still, i've prospered enough to pay for a round trip bus fare. no, i do not have plans to move south. i could never afford to without help on a regular basis.
as for the rest, i'm really quite healthy these days, xxxxxxx. healthy and normal. i've been working for the past five years. i have a credible life. please share it with me. i am now 63. perhaps you might recall that i was your wet nurse. and that i loved you very much.
i broke ties with the past and began a new life under a new name. it's been rather good for me. i am very alone and sad about it. i care about you. i am also curious about what you have done in the past eight years. so, please write back and give me permission to visit you in august. it might be august 7th until the 9th.
all my best,
xxxxxxxxxxx."
letters from her like this make me uneasy. there's a reason i didn't open them when they would arrive. nothing good comes of me reading them. at best, they make me more angry. at worst, they make me feel like shit.
either way, i file them away for another time... maybe for another life. my mother, as i knew and loved her, is dead and gone. this woman - she is not my mother. she is a stranger, trapped in a psychotic world of hallucinated realities, and while her words might seem otherwise, i know it is all a front. she is not medicated. she is not well. and i am not ready to let her into my life.
maybe that makes me an asshole. or selfish. i like to think of it as the purest form of self-preservation.
Hi...
ReplyDeleteI arrived to your blog yesterday and read it over the day all from the beginning to now, wondering how many persons had done the same, hoping that for each screaming-painful note with that void and silence below, many many persons had written you in private. I copied all the links of the entries that have shaken me the most, amazed by how similarly we could be affected by similar experiences. I tend to not believe to my therapist when she claims so to me... I was so touched by your story and the way you tell it, and I feel so close I could go on for hours writing you.... I hesitated on writing you in private or here, I finally decided to write publicly, thinking of how many times I have been lurking other websites, without taking action and tell my story. This time was different, for some reasons, I guess the time and space was the right one and I feel like leaving you a message, hoping it will be welcome.
I am italian, but i left italy long time ago. My mother started hearing voices and having paranoid thoughts when i was 4, at least this is the story I found out at one point in her medical records. 'Cause, and this is one of the most difficult parts for me, nobody, not even my father, never ever stopped one second to explain me what was going on. I just had to know it, to realize an figure it out by my self. Only recently I started to think maybe I did not want to listen, but I don't know which is the truth.
I do not recall exactly how I realized my mum was not as the others. Thank god she had never been violent or explicitly abusive, though she allowed and nurtured the feeling I had, I was the only one could rescue her. My father has also contribute a lot in nurturing this belief. Only girl in between two brothers, I was the one who was asked to convince mum to take meds. I can't recall anything more frightening of being told 'tell her to wash herself" or "convince her to take the shot". No son or daughter should be asked such a thing. To take care of an insane mother. It is just not possible to grow up with them and cure them. At least before we have taken care of all the void, ourselves. I am working so hard to really free myself and can't believe my brothers and my dad are "already" so over everything we have endured.
The shame and guilty feeling are still with me even now it will be soon four years since her death. The burden of her presence was so unbearable, I am not shamed to say here I had been often "fantasizing" about the time she would not be in this world anymore. All the pain of all my childhood and adolescence is still intact even after her death, that was as painful and tragic as her life. The guilty feeling. The certainly that even if I could go back I would anyway chose to not take care of her. Self-preservation, I totally agree with you, most people can't understand, but I do. The coincidence of becoming a mother myself while she was dying.... the terror I have for my own child that today is three and does not want me to speak of my mother,he must sense what a pain is for me.He spent nine months in my belly while I was crying her death. The guilty feeling around what should have been a relief, yet it is not. I don't need anymore to run from her, still I am so much in pain.
I am just giving the raw lines, to not take advantage of your space. And I am sorry if some of what I have written may be painful to read, I am afraid it will.
I had a blog for about 10 years and lost the chance to be in it what I felt I was, even before her death -a motherless daughter-. After her death I was really only feeling like writing about her and I tried, I am still periodically trying but I am not able. I guess it is because I still do not know who I am. I am not free yet.
I admire your strength and I wish you peace and closure. I will follow your writing with so much tenderness, as a sister could do.
sorry for these too many words that flew out of my keyboard
A big hug
hugs right back to you. i am so grateful and thankful you wrote. it makes me truly know that i am not alone, and i never will be.
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