second or third chances.

by some miracle, my shoulder is healing. it's not perfect, or 100%, but better enough to go back to work and stop sitting on my couch like a sorry sack. at my monthly support meeting, i broke down into tears confessing that i've felt more alone in this than anything else. i spent most of march hurt, ignored by friends, and cared for only by a handful of very sweet physical therapists and doctors.

while i was away, something happened at work. pretty major. and as a result, i've been transferred to another branch. i don't want to get into all of it, suffice it to say that telling your friends things about work can come to bite you in the ass. but i'm laughing all the way to the bank, because my new boss is AMAZING.

somehow, by a weird twist of fate, i'm being given another chance to have a normal work life. after all these years of crazy and unfriendly bosses that just added to my stress level, i've been given a gift of a boss.

so, within one month, i have emotionally hit rock bottom, but thrown a lifeline. i'm scared to think that this could be the start of something really big for me. maybe this really will be my year. i'm scared to hope for anything good, and even when the cops showed up at my house last week after receiving yet another letter from my mother, i'm still trying to grasp at the good stuff.

maybe i'm maturing? eh. i'm at least climbing out of the hole.

new challenge, new truths.

i'm injured. and not the kind where you can rest it with an ice pack for a few days, and bounce back. the kind where i've had an MRI and waiting to find out if i need surgery or not. in the 2 weeks that i've been dealing with this, i've had to go to doctor's visits, prescription runs, and take care of myself while hopped up on serious painkillers and muscle relaxants.

and while i'm 28, and should be able to handle all these things, i find myself absolutely yearning for someone else to take care of me. the kind of hysteria that when i left the MRI, the first thing i absolutely had to do was call my father and cry.

i hate how i have to always be strong for myself. i know that there are kids in the world that have parents that they can fall back on, and who would have been in the waiting room for them. or that there are adults like me who have a significant other to fill that void. but it hit me rather painfully that i don't have either of those things.

is it selfish to say that i'm sick of being this strong adult? all i wanted to was to climb onto my couch and have someone else make me dinner, and clean up, and wait in the waiting room at the doctor's office so everything seems less scary.

i'm scared, and i have no hands to hold, and i hate it. i almost resent it.

would i know her anymore?

this month has been incredibly positive. i am feeling great, except for a rotator cuff injury (oy!) but mentally, i'm stronger than i've been in a while.

maybe that was why i read her blog tonight. i still believe she has no idea that i know the address of it. some of the things she writes are so... out there. deep into her alternate realities and paranoid speeches. things about me, my brother, my family... things that i really don't want to read.

but in between all the paranoia and the craziness, she writes about her everyday life. taking buses to university libraries. visiting church groups. playing chess with strangers in the park.

and it makes me wonder if i know her at all. if i ever really knew her. who is "she"? it's been so long since i've had a relationship with her that i've begun to think of her as a stranger in my life. a personality rather than a person. i still have no answer to the question, do i love her? i can't say for sure that i do - because the mother i love is someone who no longer exists. how can you love a stranger that has no part in your life, other than causing pain and grief?

it goes both ways. i am sure that i am hardly the daughter she remembers. but given her writing, she still believes her daughter was murdered and covered up by her family. sigh.

families with mental illness are messy, complicated, and damaging. how do we ever recover? can we ever recover? and will i ever, ever, have some kind of closure or acceptance?

getting better, but...

it occurs to me often that i might be bipolar too.

after reading so many years' entries of the same cycles - grief-stricken despair, self-isolation and depression to optimism and joy - that maybe i am exactly like my mother after all. there is rationality in everything i do, but when i go through periods like i have in the past few months, when all i want to do is stay in bed and hide, i wonder if there isn't something bigger going on.

because these past few weeks have been so darn... wonderful.

or is it just that my self-esteem causes me to knock myself down and make up excuses any time i begin to feel like a real person again? and that my periods of depression and sadness are justified by coming to terms with being motherless and powerless to help her?

there is a happiness in my life right now that i don't want to lose, and knowing myself as well as i do, i will either talk myself out of this or figure out a way to fuck it up. better yet, my mother will fuck it up with a well-timed letter, police visit, or other annoyance to bring me down again.

it's never-ending.

i love spring.

so... continuing the progress from last month. i've decided that the month of march is ME month! i don't know why march, but i'll chalk it up to the fact that its because there are no holidays besides st patty's day.

the question: can i, in only one month, reclaim some of the things that define me OTHER THAN my mother and my job?

that's the question i want to work on.

my mother sent me a letter today. it was her usual "where is your brother? i'm going to file a missing person's report. i heard that you were living elsewhere and what you were conversing with [insert fictious person here]." my progress continues - i ripped it up, i'm recording it here, and i'm moving on. i don't have the time or the energy to get upset by it anymore. the simple fact remains that she will never change, and i can't help her. i can't continue to live my life on "pause" and forget all the things that make me special in order to hide myself away in a job that takes away all dealings with my mother. i want to reclaim myself.

first step - rejoin an orchestra. i used to be a fantastic violin player. and i think with a little brush up and some practie, i could start there.

i love spring - everything feels like rebirth and renewal.

feeling so damn good!

ok. i've been whining for months now. and i don't know how it happened, but i had a little epiphany over the weekend, which i'll share with you now:

i am getting upset by my new boss because she is changing things and doesn't like how my previous boss ran things. she chooses to communicate by blunt honesty and negative body language. what got me so upset was how she chose to communicate those feelings to me.

everything in my life has been built by myself to be in control - this is how i survived my mother. i know this now. i needed everything to be in control, planned, not too risky... have the exit plan before you go. this new boss is in control now, and the change from the previous boss, who i had finally learned to read, threw me for a loop.

so what if she wants to change everything? who cares if she thinks i've been doing a lousy job? what's important is what i know: i know i do my job well. i know that i am competent and capable. she's only been working with me for one week - so how in the world can i expect her to know that yet? why in the world am i letting this get me into a depressive funk? it's not worth it. it's just a stupid job! !!

which leads me to the next subject. my brother spent 40 minutes yelling at me on the phone last week to tell me i need to get a life. and he said it just like that. he said i'd go crazy if i kept stressing about work and had nothing else to do, even to the point of obssessing about work on my weekends (which i totally do.) why am i wired to be married to my job?

the more i think on this question, the more it goes back to survival. i survived my mother's latest break by jumping whole-heartedly into my job. working there keeps me from worrying about her. all those customers and coworkers keep my brain utterly free of thinking about my mother. my work friends became my pseudo friends, and before i knew it, the past 5 years have been nothing but work, work, work, succeed, get a promotion, work. as i've said often, this is no way to live a life.

so i'm taking my brother's advice. i'm getting a life. i'm moving on from this crap that is just in my head, and getting out of my own head. i'm going to find an orchestra to join. i'm going to take a continuing ed class. i'm going back to weight watchers and finally lose the weight that i have put on while feeling guilty/unhappy/stressed/emotional. i'm going to lose the weight, but gain myself.

i'm feeling so damn good and optimistic.

i'm not even going to think about the last will and testament that my mother forwarded to my address. i'm not going to read into it all. i cannot lose myself again. i'm more important right now.

this sucks.

my new boss is awful. not crazy like the last one, but completely unfriendly and awful. why can't i ever win?

nothing ever quite works out for me, and i'm tired of it. i know that no one has it perfect but really? not one thing can go right for me?

i'm a sad little face tonight.