there and back again

i was free, i thought. i had banished so many demons to the past. i had felt like i conquered the world. i was on the right path. i was careful in the goals i was setting.

i fell back into old patterns. i overwhelmed myself back into sleeping all day. she sent an email invite to see her photos online, and i barely dealt with it at all... let alone dealt with it well. her face started to haunt my dreams again. i started to call my father all the time.

i ate like crap, and gained weight.

and inch by inch, nail scratch by scratch, i continue to pull myself out and away from the abyss. i've fought too hard to allow this. i've done too much work to let myself say "fuck it" and fall back.

i'm not where i was. but i'm holding on. i'm holding on so hard.

tethered.

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.

mirror mirror

my second niece has arrived in the world. it's a funny thing, this growing up. watching my brother welcome his second child. seeing so much of him in his daughter. wondering what it was like when i was the toddler meeting the newborn sibling for the first time, instead of my oldest niece staring at her new sister in the swing... this cyclical pattern of lives over generations. 

i watched the child cradled in her maternal grandmother's arms and instantly thought about my own mother. she is missing all of this. these beautiful sweet girls do not know the touch of their father's mother. i am watching them grow, cherishing them as if they were my own, and secretly weeping that my mother is not here.

she will not be here for these moments in my life.

i have not heard a peep out of her in months. since december. is she alive? is she under a roof? is she fed? will i ever have the strength to truly seek the answers?

i stood on my patio for a while tonight, and looked into the sunset. i can't help but wonder if there is someone out there for me - someone who wants to build a life and a family together. i look at my nieces and long for little dirty blonde children with green eyes... i want to name them something beautiful and powerful, and teach them what it is to have a life filled with love. i want to give them the kind of mother i never had. 

i'm ready for my own life to start. i let my hair go wild after a shower tonight, and caught myself in a mirror. for just a moment - a split second - i looked so much like my mother, it hurt. it felt like she was right there staring back at me. 

even in my most hopeful moments, her shadow is right there. her reflection is looking back at me, and taunts me with the reminder that she is not here. she is not here, and i am motherless all over again.

my friend's mother died

when these things happen, it's always sad. i never know quite what to say, and i'm never near where my friends are because i live so far from everyone... but this one hurts me. after her mother passed, she put up a message on Facebook that said, "hug your mothers for me, even if they're a pain in your ass."

i get what she meant. but i am not able to do that.

a coworker this week asked me about my mom. she was curious. she was appalled (or shocked?) that i couldn't remember the last time i had spoken with her. i think it was at her father's funeral, but i can't remember anymore. this coworker asked so innocently, "will you talk to her ever again? what about if she was sick or in the hospital?"

my mother's aging is something that i've thought about at times, but it leaves mixed feelings. i don't know what i would do if she were suddenly in a hospital and dead three days later, like my friend's mother. i don't know how i would react. i don't know how the ball of guilt and shame would weigh me down -- surely, it would. but i can't deal with it now.

maybe if and when the time comes, i'll know how i want to react. i'd feel so much better if i had a plan for the inevitable. but how can you plan that?

i can't hug my mother. i've already grieved for her for many, many years. the woman alive now is someone i don't know - my mother, the mother i knew and loved, is long gone. the woman alive now is a shell of the woman i loved as a child, and i don't know if i'll mourn her in quite the same way.

well, these are sad thoughts for a sunday night. for now, i will comfort my friend as best i can - without ever saying, "i know how you feel." i don't. i don't think i ever will.

fading rage

the anger with her has dissipated. after so many years of raw, unmitigated rage, i am left with a peaceful hollow feeling. it has been a weird journey, and i know it's not over. but the girl i was - the one who wrote those blog entries in 2009 - is not who i am now. the woman i am now is much stronger, more resourceful, more compassionate...

i have been meditating on who i am a lot lately. i lost myself for a long time. i now recognize myself in the mirror. i may lose it in moments here and there, but overall, i am finally, finally comfortable in my own skin. i may not like everything i see, but that's just the physical stuff. the mental stuff - the emotional stuff - that, i OWN. i am proud of it. i am celebrating it. 

i am who i am because of my parents. because of the family members and friends that have held my hands over the past ten years. because of my own relentless determination that i would not, could not, ever give up. i had a very deep conversation with my therapist this week, and she started to cry when i said something. we were talking about how i had overcome some really dark emotions at work, and i said, "i might not get it right, but i'll try and try over and over again until the cows come home." 

she said she got emotional about it because it "sums you up so perfectly."

i will falter. i will struggle. but unlike the girl who tried desperately to keep herself together in the aftermath of her mother's abandonment, i am already together. i am able to cope, and recognize, and understand, and adjust. those abilities weren't there ten years ago. 

so here i am. still under the weight of being motherless, but learning to rely on my own inner mother. i have been thinking of her a lot lately, and her own path compared to mine. by now, she was a mother. at my age, she was married with a new child, and seemingly had all the things that should've felt like fulfillment. her illness stole that. i am proud of who she was, and is. it doesn't mean i'm ready for her to be back in my life - i'm not - but i am proud to be her daughter. that isn't something i would've said ten years ago.

i'm saying it now. i am the daughter of a mentally ill woman, and i am going to be ok.

(now, if only i could make as much progress on the physical stuff.)

the deafening, deafening silence

i am having trouble remembering how long its been since i've seen her in person. or heard her voice. it occurred to me that i have to stop and think about how old she is now, and even harder to remember details about her. i have not heard from her in months, and the sound is stifling.

and always, the thought lingers, "when will the other shoe drop?"

this quiet cannot, and will not, go on forever.

happy little normal life.

i didn't realize how long it's been. i'm going to chalk it up to the fact that i am truly able to handle things in my life so much easier now.

i actually travelled all the way to confront the man i was starting to fall in love with, and had my heart smashed like a piñata. but the toolbox i've developed over the past year - the self-love i've been trying to practice - has helped me so much. i am so much quicker to bounce back.

my job is going fine. my daily life is going fine. i've started running, which i've discovered is as therapeutic as an hour in my therapist's office... i'd like to believe that this is my true self. it feels as if the last ten years of healing were just me surviving. that it was just a decade of going through the motions and putting all my energy into working and hating myself.

lately, it's been different. i think that the guy helped with pushing me into thinking about certain stuff. he made me see myself differently. worthy of love. of sex. of someone wanting me for me, even if he didn't want me permanently in his life because his own was too complicated to add another issue. but i told him things in our brief moment together. that i wanted to run again. that i wanted to start my life, but for real. that i felt left out of so many things. and having that moment with him, although brief and passionate and real for me, just left me convinced that what i want is a partner for my life, and a family of my own. i'm so over the waiting game, and telling myself that i can't have these things.

i'm ready for a new story to tell myself.

i feel so powerful. so beautiful. so ready to take on my life. its a paradigm shift that has been slowly building over the past two years, and i love it. i love feeling like i can take any knock. i love that i can think about my mom lately, and feel less like weeping. there's an emotion there that i can't name yet, but it reminds me of acceptance or resignation.

i had a dream about her the other week that was so real i woke up in tears. but it did not destroy me. it did not level me emotionally. i acknowledge the feeling, and moved on with my day. a few years ago, that dream would have curled me into a ball for days. not now.

i am so much stronger than i used to be. and i am on the right path. i know i am.

thank you for still reading, out there. you are more important to me than you will ever know. and i am always here for you.