RealMental

Last Friday, one of my son’s classmates lost his father.

The boy is a kindergartener, having only recently turned six years old. I read the letter the teacher sent home and I immediately began to sob. I do not know much about this boy, other than he frequents the principal’s office, and is well known for his antics.

That isn’t all he is, he is well known for his big and beautiful heart. He shares, he is loving.

As I am wont to do, knowing he was prone to trouble, I want to know more about him. To try and see inside his world, to determine if there is something more that should be addressed other than his negative behavior. It took me some time before he would really talk to me, this isn’t usually the case since I love kids and I always vie for their approval. Over the past few months, he’s warmed up to me.

Through the whole weekend, my thoughts kept turning to this boy and his loss. I am not sure that he will fully understand this situation for a few years. I worried if his Mom had other family, insurance, or anything to help ease her burden. These are times in which I wonder if I think too much about other people and if it really is none of my business. I subscribe to the quote, “it takes a village to raise a child”, and I fully believe in it’s power.

A few years ago, my daughter’s best friend lost her Mother when was only 9 or 10 years old. Her Mother was a friend of mine and we’d just spoken the day before about grabbing sushi at a new restaurant that had just opened in our area. She headed for the bathroom that Sunday morning and an aneurism burst in her head and she was gone. My daughter and her friend began to drift apart after this and we rarely ever see her. I miss her Mom every time I drive past their house.

All of this got me to thinking about my youthful dreams of wishing my Mom would die. I know how terrible this sounds, and I wince a little now when I think about it.

I would design horrible accidents in my head that she could be killed falling down the stairs, driving home drunk, whatever. When I got older and discussed this with my siblings, they too had wished for her to die. She was mean and she beat us. Who wouldn’t want the person who beat them dead? The woman she used to be, is not the woman she is now. She has become weak, fragile, and only has select memories. I am learning to make peace with this, she was always the pillar of strength and self control in my youth.

Putting these scenarios together side by side in my mind; my wishes for death, and the children that have actually had death at their door. I can say that I am glad that my deadly wishes never came true.

These quandries have always intrigued me, turning them all around in my head for years trying to unlock the secret of the why.

Why do the families that actually want children, are capable to raise them and give them a loving home cannot get pregnant? The parents that beat and destroy their children, live on so that the child is constantly reminded of their pain and suffering into adulthood, knowing that the truth will never be revealed.

Why do the good parents die, but the bad ones live? I’ve never solved this, but I have adopted a theory that our children choose us. Even if those children did not come from our own wombs, they choose us.

To make peace with the abuse that happens every day to children, even in my own neighborhood (and yours) I have to believe that on some level the children choose their lives before they are born. For me, it is how I make peace with the fact that I cannot save every child that I come into contact with. Throughout my main healing process, I was always told to watch children to “really” see them and how beautiful they are. This was designed to help me to understand that the abuse was not my fault. A six year old does not “want” to be touched by a grown man.

There were people along my path that reached me, inside where the pain lived when I was a child. I remember them, I remember their kindness and I believe on some level it gave me the hope I needed to rise up out of my experience, not to regret it, and heal. This is why I try to “see” children, to let them know that they are important and beautiful.

That there is more out there that will be revealed, they are not alone, they can survive and then pass it on to those that come after them.

I saw this rain-ruined crocus the other day, and thought to myself, better a broken flower than an empty patch of ground.

I don’t ask that anyone succeed in all they do– but I do ask that they try. This is the key to my relationships with people—I can’t be around quitters, or people too cowardly to try in the first place. Better to try and fail, than to never know if you could have succeeded.

My obsession with trying stems directly from my observations of my parents’ behavior. My mother gave up on her Ph.D., gave up on working, gave up on being independent, gave up on her health and attractiveness, gave up on being forgiving. My dad tried and failed to stop drinking for a long time; he tried and failed to get his temper under control—but eventually, when he bottomed out after being arrested, losing his driver’s license, and losing his job, he tried some more. Eventually, he succeeded. First, he stopped smoking and drinking. Then, he started going to A.A. Then, he got two jobs below his abilities, so he could pay our child support. Then he began trying harder to present a more pleasant face to the world, and to overcome his misanthropic tendencies. Meanwhile, my mother, a pretty, smart, ordained minister with a promising career as a lecturer on women’s issues in the church, allowed herself to become obese, increasingly crippled by the obesity (no outdoor family activities with her), and welfare-dependent– yet she continuously harped upon my father for putting her in this position, while somehow missing that they’d been divorced for ten years, and she could try to do whatever she wanted.

Obviously, my perspective is my own, flawed, and I am not as sympathetic to my mother as I would like to be. But the fact remains that older I get, the less sorry I felt for my mother, and the more I appreciate my father’s attempts to be a better person. That I got my bipolar in a double shot from both parents makes the contrast in possibilities, in attempts at success, even starker. But Dad finally pulled past his own pathologies, and worked long and hard to improve. I never really saw my mother trying, although she’d talk a good game, and did manage to do the minimum, working as a substitute teacher just enough (never full time, never every day) to earn what child support didn’t supply each month, when it became clear she wasn’t going to win the lottery (or an increase in child support) anytime soon. However, as soon as my grandparents died and her brief teaching pension vested, she stopped even that– and now lives a life of complete leisure in Southern California. I say that sarcastically, but still– she’s clearly got more disposable spending money than we do on a month to month basis.

I am always going to resent her—for not even trying. She did not try to shelter us from poverty. She did not try to get help for her own mental state in order to do best by us. She did not even try to think about her own mental state in order to recognize she needed help. She was too focused on being the victim. (I suppose that’s what makes her a narcissist.) She did have unloving and harsh parents, and she had to work at the family business—but she also had loving sisters and many friends in high school, and that family job paid for college. Yet the focus is always on the negative, unless she’s feeling ignored in a social situation, when she gets grandiose and bragging. My father’s mother was not the most loving or uncritical of women, either, and he had to become the “man of the house” at age 13 when his father died. So I don’t know where she got off whining about the tough childhood—certainly, she never had to endure the humiliation my brother and I did of being called to the front of the classroom to get our free lunch tickets as my brother and I did, or being mocked by other kids for wearing the same five outfits, week in and out, all school year long.

My dad doesn’t try to be a parent now. He just wants to spend time with me. He is constantly trying to make amends, even though I’ve long since forgiven him. I worry about his getting older, and his untreated depression, but he knows enough now that if he got really bad, I think he would do something about it.

My mom, however, still tries to parent me. She urges me to finish all the food on the plate, despite the fact that her obesity as a model of my biological fate makes me sick to my stomach. She tells me what to do. She interrupts constantly to relate her opinion. She never listens to any professional legal advice I have to give her, only when she asks. In short, she has no respect for me as an adult. No conception, I suppose, because her narcisissm dictates how she re-writes the stories I burst in upon.

I tried to forgive and to understand her perspective, but I can’t understand how she could be so smart and yet so damaged that she is unable to make up her mind to get better. So what do I do? I tried to keep my mouth shut and my temper in check. For a while, I was getting better at it. I didn’t erupt, insult or ignore as much as I once did. And I tried not to take it so personally; realizing that her failure to try has nothing to do with my worthiness, or lack thereof. I failed, and we’re not speaking anymore, but I think I tried.

Dear Mom,

I need to let you know that I am no longer mad.

It is possible that you didn’t know I was mad to begin with. Being a mother myself, I could speculate that you may have not known what “it” was, but I’m sure you’ve known that something wasn’t right with us.

When I called you last week sobbing, I wasn’t expecting you to be someone other than who you are. Your way of comforting me can sound a lot like criticism, but this time I heard with ears that are healing. I bristled a little just out of habit, then I realized that this is the way you try and comfort me.

This is how you comfort yourself, you take care of yourself the same way that you were cared for as a child. It is all you know. This makes me sad to know that you weren’t taken care of in the manner that each human deserves, with love and support.

If I was having a particularly hard week emotionally, I would beg my therapist to please tell me how to be around you without becoming sick. Each time I would ask him like it was the first time I’d ever thought to ask, and he somehow held the magic key.

His answer was always the same, “accept her for who she is and not who you want her to be”. This felt like a cop-out, a way to avoid handing me the magic answer that would allow me to be with you free of the knots that would form inside of me in your company.

The therapy work I’ve been committed to for the past two years is all about my relationship with you. The triggers began when I became a parent and took some time to bring itself to the surface enough so that I could begin the work of healing.

This is new territory for me, an area that I will need to tip toe into very gently and with a lot of love and support. Love and Support that I will give to myself. I won’t look to you, or others to love and support me in the way I need to give it to myself.

It’s my job now to take care of the injured one that lives in my belly. I thought being angry with you was the way to rid myself of the pain the abuse left me with. It was the only means I had of processing it all.

This is just a beginning for me, I hope it is a path that I can continue following. Not just for you, but for me. The release and calm I have is something I never got by holding on to the angry.

Just in case you knew I was mad, I need for you to know that I am not mad anymore.

I love you for who you are.

With much love,

Your Daughter

I am a control freak, a perfectionist.  I am sure that some of it is the “nurture” effect of being an ACOA, but that’s not all it.  I am, by nature, a Type A as well, and the need to achieve, to prove, to surmount, to perfect is at the firm core of my personality, like the cookie center of a Twix candy bar. 

The ACOA part of the control freak includes the irrational belief that if things go the way I plan, then everything will be Fine.  But I am not Ganesha, remover of obstacles, equipped with the many arms needed to remove roadblocks and keep all those balls in the air. 

The Type A control freak is a little milder than the adult child—the urge to control comes from self-confidence in my intelligence and skills, coupled with just wanting to win.  Of course, the Type A control freak can be just as dangerous—the insistence on doing it my way is not conducive to cooperative working and family relationships.

And buried beneath all of that it my inner child.  She is all to willing to shed the outer adult skin, ill-fitting, stifling, too hot and too cold all at once.  The inside me wants to cede control, yield responsibility.  I want someone to take care of me.  To take care of it.  To take care of everything, always.  Because I’m 33, and feel 80 sometimes, I’ve been working so hard.  I’m tired of being Right, being Responsible. 

Learning to share control is the hardest.  My Type A is convinced that My Way is Right.  Therefore, everyone else is wrong—why would I do it any way but mine?  My Adult Child is afraid—if I don’t do it, I am pathologically certain that no one else will.  I took up those burdens because no one else was, or could—whatever the reason, the fact remains that I am Eldest, Responsible.  Perhaps I was unconsciously self-appointed at first, but in being reliable, others allowed me to remain responsible, ceded their obligations to keep things going. 

In my friendships and loves, I’ve carried Control on my shoulders—until the sheer weight of it caused me to collapse.  Sprawled on the ground, gasping for emotional breathing room, grasping for a sense of self that had nothing to do with solving other people’s problems all the time, I would disappoint the expectations of miracle work I had encouraged others to believe.  When I let them down, they were, in some ways, right to be angry, disappointed, to never speak to me again.  Some of these friends I’m glad are gone from my life, since now I know they were emotional black holes, never reflecting any light or warmth.  But others I miss dearly, and I regret my failures, whether it sprung from something healthy or not.

I’m slowly, creepingly, glacially, trying to not say yes to everything.  I’m slowly trying to let others volunteer first, and to do it their way.  The world won’t end because I wouldn’t have done it that way.  Often enough, my pride is mere vanity.  I’m painfully learning discernment—what requires my real skills and abilities, and what can be done by others, without harm to anyone.  Most frighteningly, I am trying to listen to my inner child, and hear her when she says “I can’t do this alone,” and ask for help.  But yielding control is at least different from losing control, and since so much of my control comes from wanting to please those I love, yielding, ceding, sharing control, asking for help avoids failing those I love.

The self-control, to not take control, is exhausting, exhilarating, illuminating.  Eliminating the knee-jerk assumption of control?  It will be a long journey.  But after many years, I finally think I have an atlas, and a map light.

It’s been on me now for months now. It sits in the middle of my head, buzzing like some sort of damned demented tsetse fly.  I am defeated for no reason whatsoever. I can’t smile, at least not for myself, and my eyes are always heavy.
I know that part of the solution is to move around among the living but every time I try panic sets in and suddenly the lights are too bright, the rooms too small, my breathing too shallow and I can’t find my way back to safety. More often than not, I make the decision to avoid movement.

My loved ones want me to get better. They are sure that there is action I can take to get better. I know that they are right. It scares me that they can see it- I am a world class actress after all.  It must be really bad.

I’ve curled up into myself because I know how to take care of me, to keep from falling over that precipice that looms on all sides of my psyche, craving a misstep. It’s hard to explain how withdrawing helps- it just does.

I think that sometimes depression causes so much pain the sufferer’s only recourse is to anesthetise themselves. I used to do that by using drugs and alcohol. Now I do it by drawing myself up into a ball, so that my insides aren’t exposed.

I am starting therapy again and I know that it will help. There’s no magic pill for this, it is something I have to tread through. That may be the hardest part about living with depression and anxiety. When every fiber in your being is screaming at you to keep quiet, keep still, keep yourself safe- to take those steps towards recovery- I am jumping off of a god damned cliff.

Walking the hallowed halls of my son’s school, I am faced with awkward sensations and feelings. As a human, I tend to project my “issues” outward. Therefore, it is no surprise that a much younger version of me comes out and walks simultaneously with the grown up part of me, clomping through the halls together looking like only one person.

In the beginning of the school year, I was angry that I had to experience these sensations and feelings, thinking it was unfair that I could not just walk into the school and enjoy it.

Why do I always have to look for “the dirty“? Why am I always on alert, afraid to miss a “sign”?

An old belief, built within my psyche was that, as a child if I could’ve “seen it coming” I could’ve stopped it from happening. (Or so that belief would like for me to believe).

If we just stay on alert for the rest of our lives, it’ll never happen again. Not to me, not to you, not to anybody. As most survivors know, this sets up some very stringent mental puzzles and maneuvering that make you weary from lack of rest, and close relationships almost impossible to have.

One of my favorite things when walking the halls to my son’s classroom is scanning the pictures/poems/projects that the teachers hang outside of their classrooms on the cold cemented walls. The kids’ artwork, projects, lists of things they love to do, and what they would do if they were president.

Very rarely do I ever see other “grown ups” reading them with the fervor of being at the Guggenheim as I “think” I do. Then I wonder if that means there is something wrong with me, since I don’t see other parents doing it. The voice that tries to tell me once again, I am not measuring up.

Hey voice, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Sometimes, the kids in his class tell me things that make me want to grab them up and save them from their futures. I watch them with wonderment, and I know I am not looking at them through my adult eyes, but rather the younger version of me that didn’t have the freedom to be a child when I was a child (due to being “on guard”).

I love observing children, it’s like the feeling of awe you get when you see the ocean for the first time.

Some times, the kids in my son’s class tell me things. One child recently told me that he is trying to stay out of trouble because he loses private time with his mom when he gets into trouble. One told me that they couldn’t afford napkins, she is also the one that always grabs me desperate for a hug. These things make my heart break a little, knowing it isn’t up to me to rescue every one.

This is vastly different than what I would have written a few years ago, back then I thought I could rescue them all. Each time I go, it gets better. It is a slow process, right in line with the work I am doing in therapy for this stage.

And, I do know that each one that I hug, praise, smile with or laugh with has the same chance that I did. I still remember those people in my life from my youth that made a point to stand out and listen to me. While they couldn’t save me, they certainly left their mark of kindness on my heart.

Who’s to say that wasn’t rescue enough for me? I am one of the lucky ones, I will keep surviving. Anything less would make it seem that the bad people have won. I can’t live with that.

I’ve been biting my nails again, and my OCD symptoms are bulging out. My old standby is worrying about things catching on fire, although worry is probably an understatement. This fire fear began in early childhood, perhaps the result of the “great soot disaster.”

We were in the process of moving from one apartment to another, making short trips to drop off boxes. One night after a drop off, my Dad put a box on the stove. Not realizing it, he turned the dial on the stove just enough.

Not enough to start an actual fire, just enough to create a situation in which all of our stuff we’d already moved became soaked with black soot. Only a few things were salvageable.

We cleaned for days and weeks after, blowing black soot from our noses. Over the years, I would spot a piece of furniture or other item that held on to our family tragedy with remnants of black soot that would never completely dissolve.

The reason all this fun stuff is coming up, can be blamed on the fact that I am finally DEALING WITH SOME STUFF. As with everything, it’s process. Over the past year or two, I’ve been working on another layer of junk. The changes are just showing themselves.

I got it down intellectually, made progress with behavior modification, putting my money where my mouth is and walking my talk. The next step from there is bringing it down to the emotional level; that dark, ugly, and paralyzing level.

The very unpopular level most people try to avoid. We go to great lengths to avoid the emotional using alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, people, and sex, to hide behind so we don’t have to feel the onset of putrid feelings that threaten to swallow us whole.

Something I had to keep in mind is that this is another part of the process and it will pass once I’ve allowed it to have its air time.

The final step on the process will be to put it back inside where it lives, just a little bit better than how I found it.