earlier this evening, after speaking to my mom for about a half an hour, i hit the “end” button on my cell with a heavy heart. this has become a common occurrence when speaking to her as of late.
>it seems that earlier this week, when she was visiting my brother in Peoria for his basketball game, she had awoken up the morning after the game with a burst blood vessel in her eye. This was due, i find out from her, to her diabetes and this was not the first time this has occurred. When she arrived home back to grand rapids, she had emergency laser surgery done on her eye to repair the damage.
it was then she dropped the ball to me that she had wanted to up our plans and move in with us this year.
paul and i had talked about this previously prior to the bombshell this evening, and while i accept my mother is getting old and sick with her diabetes, i don’t know if i can accept the responsibility of her issues. i know, that the guilt deep down inside of me is pushing to do this out of fear and out of the fact that it feels like (to me) i neglected my father during his last few years on this earth. i know i know, everyone says it is not my fault and things work out the way they are, but i feel that the longer i fight to save my mother from herself and from killing herself (she was on suicide watch mid-last year), i find myself sitting in my car alone going, “I’m too fucking young to handle this”.
please don’t get me wrong, i love my mother. and i will admit that my fathers death was a blessing in disguise as we have been working on being close as a mother/daughter for the first time in years, i feel like i can’t breathe and i feel like I’m being suffocated every time something close to commitment of anything comes on. it doesn’t matter if it’s taking care of her, or paul or the goddamn dogs, i just want to break free and be alone.
on Friday afternoon, i drove to my shrink’s office with a heavy heart. after my conversation with Dr. B the previous week, i have been more silent than usual. not silent in writing but silent in communicating verbally to those around me. she and i had talked about this all the previous week about how when I’m asked what is ‘wrong’ i say nothing. the perfect example is when i walked into her office that afternoon and she and i sat there doing the “stare” for a good five minutes before i opened my mouth.
in all honesty, when I’m talking to her or to paul, or hell to anyone that cares, when asked what is wrong i always say ‘nothing’ because it is true — there is nothing wrong. my mind is often blank (so i think) and i just stare off into outer space. this has become more apparent as of late and those around me say they want to know what’s up and why I’m not communicating with them.
i don’t have an answer and i don’t have one major issue that if i talk about it, it suddenly becomes this catharsis of “wow, don’t i feel just fucking better”. it just simply, to me, isn’t that easy to discuss.
i had said to paul in many ways i was angry at my shrink for talking about things in the past — because it brought them up to light and it was issues i didn’t want to revel. things that are in the past and better left unsaid. however, my own behavior in the last year or two has shown that keeping it down deep inside is not the best solution, no matter how much i try and say it is. i often tout that I’ve worked past all those previous issues when I know i haven’t. it’s like, as paul pointed out, there are two me’s. the one that is angry and the one that is calm.
this got further discussed between Dr. B and I as I had told her that the words “hurt” “kill” and “stab” often pepper my vocabulary more often than I like. When I don’t like something or feel intimated, i often say “I’ll hurt you” and most particularly to paul “I’ll stab you”. I’ve often had thoughts of hurting people when I was angry and in the past I used to hurt myself. I remember when I was a child I used to sit there with needle and thread and only going through the first few layers of my skin, sew my hands together. I used to pull out big chunks of my hair (often from behind my ears where it wasn’t noticeable) by twisting and pulling. Dr. B. said I sound like a bully and she was right. But why was I acting like a bully?
In my younger years, I was often intimidated by those physically and mentally stronger than me (so i thought). I wanted to be liked so bad that hell, when I lost my virginity, it was due to peer pressure and not due to the fact that i had actually wanted to fuck that guy. Of course, years of beating myself up over it coupled with what I truly wanted were used to punish myself for what i had done.
Dr. B. says that having a vivid imagination or fantasy life is sometimes very healthy. If you do not act out in that fantasy life (you know, like i wouldn’t really stab paul even though I keep using it as a line of defense) it can help deal with anger. Many people say there is a fine line between fantasy and reality — and while often I feel that I often cross that path, acting it out inside my head is often a good release for whatever I’m feeling.
i never understood people who are ashamed or afraid to admit hey are seeing a shrink or are on drugs of any sort to make their lives easier. I have not qualms about facing reality and knowing that i have “issues”.
definitely something to think about.
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lisa