Fear and loathing in Las Madre

I visited one of my oldest friends and her husband the weekend before Christmas...  it was such a good weekend; over far too quickly, naturally, and during the course of the weekend, we discussed some family issues of mine.

Pertaining to my mother.  Who I love.  But who I simply don't like sometimes.

And to all my loved ones near and far I say now, stop reading because this is supposed to be a place I can divest myself of every manner of thought and emotion, good or bad, and there may be content here that will not sit well.  If you keep reading and there is an issue with anything I say, then I only ask that it isn't buried and not talked about as has been the way all too often.

To everyone else, this will ramble and may never be cohesive.  The end.

So to begin...  my grandparents, as I've blogged about, were my world...  world... when I was young.  Summers spent with them are pretty much the sole source of the majority of my happy childhood memories.

My gramma died of kidney failure in 1992.  I was crushed.  I stayed by her bed for the last three days of her life, giving her ice chips, wiping her brow, cleaning her whenever she soiled...  I had a friend who said "Why did you do that?  Why didn't you let the nurses care for her?"

Um.  What?  Why would I let a total stranger do that...?  I did it because...  well...  because.  Because what else WOULD I do. 

It's what you do when you love another soul; I held her hand when she left this world, whispering words of love and devotion in her ear as I lay my head next to hers on her pillow...

And then I went into a clinical depression.

I was there when my best friend, Mama Lois, died of breast cancer at the age of 34 a few months later, too.  Held her hand and her brother's hand hands as the last breath left her, and hugged him while sobbed.  Broke my heart in a million pieces and pushed me deeper into the black hole.

But it's what you do.

And I digress... 

My granddad died twenty plus years after my gramma.  He remarried about a year after she died, a very nice lady he and my gramma had known, but he pined for my gramma and missed and mourned her until the day he died.  They'd been married for over four decades.

My dad was - and this will sound all melodramatic but, in reality, it's just the facts...  Jack - an absent father at best.

Consciously, it didn't bother me - he always sent THE greatest birthday gifts and he worked for the ATF and as a secret service agent under President Ford...  what wasn't to love and wallow around in as a teen with not one shred of "cool" going for her when she moved to live with her dad in 1980 - but unconsciously I know I've based a lifetime of "please-love-me" choices on that fact and they've all been poor ones.

So.  To see devoted love like my grandparents was a lesson.  Did it set the bar too high?  Perhaps.  But to have them shower that same love on me my whole life? 

Another lesson in how it's done. 

To have one man in my life who was ALWAYS my supporter and loved me wholly until the day he died? 

Again.  A lesson.

And both reasons I absolutely believe in the power of forgiveness and all it encompasses. 

It's beyond hard to forgive someone when they hurt you.  Somehow I was blessed enough in my early 20's to learn I didn't want to go through my life discarding friends or family, cutting them from my life forever, unless they were truly and irrevocably unredeemable. 

So far, my daughter's dad - despite plenty of people who have done plenty of TRULY awful things to me and mine, and even despite the fact that my own father was not someone I EVER recall seeing before the age of 15 when my mother shipped me off to live with him, is the only one I've never been able to truly forgive.  And frankly, if he fell down on his knees and begged our daughter's forgiveness for being such a money-grubbing, tight ass, emotionless, unthinking, uncaring asshole to her her whole life (and then backed it up), I'd probably forgive him, too.

Because to me it's about awareness.  Self-awareness of yourself, and your affect on the world around you...  and if you are aware you have behaved badly and you are genuinely remorseful...

Well then, we have something to build on.

If you are unaware, or aware and stubborn or insincere about your mea culpa, piss off.

About a year after my younger brother was killed in a wreck a month after graduation and a month before his 18th birthday, my dad and I met for lunch and talked.  He was remorseful.  And, more than that, apologetic that he hadn't tried harder as I was growing up, acknowleging that as the adult it was his "job".

LOTTA bridge repair happened there, I assure you.

Navy apologized while saying he was sorry for him and how he couldn't say he was a good person or tried.  Insincere.  Self-centered.  Self-involved.  Nice words, but piss off.

So.

Now the question is...  am I capable of letting go of a fluctuating dislike with my own mother and forgive her?

There are a lot of reasons I don't like her as a person sometimes.  Most notably that she's controlling and derisive of her children, all of us well into our adulthoods, when things don't go precisely how she thinks they should or she wants them to.  To the point that she will get pissed and then gives us the stiff-spine, silent treatment.  When we were children, we pandered and ingratiated ourselves to try to curry a return of favor.  As teens we rebelled.  As adults, we see it for what it is and for what it's done to us in terms of our need to please others to our own detriment - at least I and one of my siblings has...  the other I'm not sure about.  Anyway, combine all that in her with what we now think could be manic depression or bi-polarism? 

You've got one helluva scary childhood.  Of course WE didn't know it wasn't normal.  Scary was normal.  I even found out as an adult that my step-dad was shocked and uncomfortable with her treatment of me when they were married (I was between the ages of roughly 7 and 15), hinting it was inappropriate and even abusive.

Anyway, the story we talked about when I visited my Richmond friends pertains to Mother and goes something like this...  9 years ago my mother accused my grandfather of molesting her when she was young.  At the time of the accusation, he was 81, she was 59.

He was her step father.  She never liked him.  A fact that I didn't know until I was in my 20's with my first child.  But she wouldn't tell me why.  And it wasn't until over a decade later that I finally "figured it out".

And here's the caveat.

She is the sole person responsible for fostering the genuinely close, loving, devoted bonds I had with my grandparents.  Both of them.  Including during the 13 years after my grandmother's death and prior to her accusation of my granddad.

Now here's the thing.  I know about all the science and research, but when it happens to you, you still can't wrap your head around it...

Why wasn't I molested?

Why would she let me be with him/them?

Why wouldn't she have protected me by keeping me away?

And after each of those questions is the echo "...  if it's true?"

There's another layer to this story that adds to why she says she chose to finally "let the cat out of the bag"...

There was another Loved One in our world who made the same allegation after mother did.  But when it was made, mother flatly said to me, "Oooh, you know Loved One, if you cut your finger, they cut off their arm."

Sound like someone telling a true story?  Didn't to me.  Took me aback.

But there it was - and shortly after that, my mother used Loved One's accusation as a spring-board of sorts to write a letter to my grandfather, and letters to his wife and HER children, saying that while she had kept her own molestation private all those years, Loved One's accusation was intolerable and therefore she had to bring it all out in the open and my granddad's wife and her family best be aware so he didn't molest any children in THAT family.

Now here's the thing.

I want to believe my mother.  But I wanted to believe my grandfather, too.

So.

Over the last 9 years it has been the pink elephant in the room in my family.

Especially when she got angry at me for not "taking her side" as others in my family had.

And I respected that they did and I didn't blame them - I knew why they did and I could never question their stance.  But they - at least as far as I know - never got angry with me for not joining in.

And the thing that pissed me off most and still sits like a giant marble stone on my chest?

She did what she's done my whole fucking life.  She was pissed at me but wouldn't say a word.  Wouldn't talk to me about it.  Wouldn't discuss it.  Wouldn't say "I'm mad and I'm hurt." and let me then respond," I know you are and I'm so very sorry.

And why, you might ask, would I NOT "take my mother's side"?

That's not simple to answer...

It's because she fostered such a close relationship for my granddad and me.  It's because she never kept me from them.  It's because she sent me to them for weeks at a time in summers, unattended.  It's because after she found out he intended to cut her from his will, she started sending him Christmas cards.  It's because when Loved One made the same accusation, she discounted it.  It's because...  I didn't want to take either side.  Believe either person or disbelieve either person.

So what I'm left with is sometimes not liking my own mother.  For putting me in this position, although that I can forgive/forget - it's really just a blip...  more than that, for being angry with me that I didn't take a side after 40 years of my life with one reality.  For being angry with me that I wouldn't turn my back on him.

That, Friends, is unattractive in anyone - but when it's your own mother...

Anyway...  this has all been a process...  as I said in another blog entry fromt his week...  I've had a crushing weight on me and I was going to fine-tune my counseling...  I thought fine-tuning with the shrink was in order but, frankly, 3 blogs in as many days has helped me mentally more than I ever would have imagined it might...  and in my universe, voyages of self-discovery are primo.

Working my way back up...

Don't say "There's still time..."
Or "Maybe next time..."
Because there's also the concept of "It's too late."

Fuckin'fuck.  I'm doomed.

I believe it's out there.  I trust it's out there.  But I am convinced I am the only person in the world who it isn't true for.

I've opened the soft mooshy part with the last two - HYOOOOGE step on my part - to varying degrees...  one I was just beginning to let it show, the other, I was full on invested and even bought a deeply emotional V-day card which I haven't done in easily 20 years...

Torpedo'd.  The bothuvems.

I feel young.  Ish.  I know I'm 47, not 87. 

Head:

"There's still time to find it..."

"Maybe next time will be it..."

Heart:

"Fuckin'fuck.  I'm doomed.  It's too late."

Welcome to my universe.

Righting My Universe

So.  What do you do when your universe is so overwhelming you feel like you have been pinned by something so huge you can't even get an arm under you, much less breath?

Exactly what my mama told me when I was young; grab your bootstraps, Bessie, and keep walking.

Just like I always have.

Until now.  Now I'm having a hard time climbing back up for the first time in a decade and a half.

A handful of life changes over the last 6 months - death, job, relationship, etc...  none big unto themselves but combined, too much.

Seeing a shrink is something I did when I was clinically depressed and a raging fucktard of a bitch for all those years; his diagnosis when we finished?  "You're...", "Normal?", I said.

"No.  What passes for normal these days (and that was 15ish years ago so now "normal's" even less normal) scares the hell out of me.  I prefer the term 'healthy'."

Healthy.  I liked that.  And I've worn it as a badge since; very proud of overcoming who I was.  Until now.  Now I'm not feeling so healthy. 

And I'm thinking a fine tuning at the shrink might be just the thing.

So I called.  He answered.  His voice slapped me back 15 years and I instantly felt something "good" inside.  I smiled and we talked and he remembered me and details about me.  Damn.  I am really feeling some hope just welling up in me like some emotional Pavlovian response.  Is he taking new patients??

"I only work with nursing home patients now, I don't do any out-patient."  It's been 15 years, after all, and he wasn't a spring chicken when I was seeing him.

I burst into tears.  Yep.  Fine tuning, indeed.

So in no particular order, here are the things I'm struggling with in the last 6ish months that have come to a screaming crescendo recently...

My granddad, the only constant male in my whole life, died.  He and my grandmother were like parents to me and when she died in '92, it nearly killed me, driving me into depression that peaked with a suicidal pinnacle roughly 7 years later.  7 years is a long time to be depressed, especially when it steadily worsens that whole time.  Doc Kyle was amazing and I trust him, literally, with my life.  Now he's gone.

My love life in its entirety is a hot mess.  All marriages for the wrong reasons, though two amazing kids to show for it, and two serious relationships fallen to dust because I was committed and they weren't.  And they were damaged.  Which evidently I'm drawn to.  But now, all gone.

And then there's Sparky.  More than 6 months ago but right now in the midst of what I have going down I miss his guidance and support.  Never made it to serious with him but enjoyed a couple of years of a friendship that was more genuine and supportive than any I'd had with a male, so that when it moved to intimate it was as natural and warm and good feeling as anything I'd ever had and I trusted him like no one I ever had...  until it was incinerated.  Suckass part?  He incinerated it and the hurt he felt was so much that he couldn't let me apologize or try to make amends, yet I still miss him - that person he was before the lava flow.

Then my job life...  now also a hot mess because I have a great position with wonderful people and a boss who is extraordinarily flexible in anything I ask of him...  and I hate it.  Hate what I do, hate that I'm bored, hate that the office politics I deal with are such that I feel like I don't belong and never have - a first in my work universe.  Hate.  My boss knows I'm looking and he's been wonderful about it, references, etc., but I am freaking out because I'm not finding anything and I don't feel like it's right to ask him to wait in definitely.  And it'll soon be gone.

Let's see...  what else...  then there's my boot camp business...  I work a full time job and from last summer through the end of the year, I held 1 hour each A.M. and P.M. classes 3 days per week.  This didn't include time spent researching and then working up workouts for fun and maximum results.  It was killing me.  So in January, I scaled back to single evening class, 3 days a week.  It helped immensely but now I've reached burnout after two years of steady boot camp/p.t. learning/certifiying/instructing and I don't want to do it for a while.  I need time to catch my breath personally and professionally, and I need time to crank out some REAL marketing.  And I can't.  I don't have time.  I almost want it gone.

My family...  mother, brother, sister-in-law & nieces in Maryland, father in Lynchburg...  none doing much to stay a part of my life even when I try staying in theirs because they're wrapped in their own - yep, even leaving me to founder when my granddad died...  all effectively gone.

Then, my daughter is losing the relationship she's in which affords her a decent guy - prone to bouts of selfishness and raging assholeyness, but a decent guy overall - who she treats like a lackey and who has had it almost up to *here* with her narcissistic, self-centered, self-involved view and explosive temper being aimed at him and their boys (which personally I feel he should've thought about BEFORE knocking her up...  but there ya go.).  That I don't blame him, is the bad part.

My son.  My son is my bright spot.  He works hard, he thinks of those around him.  He's an all-around good kid and a burgeoning great man.  Shining star.

Then my ex, Navy.  Sending me texts saying I should shut my storm windows because it'll be cold, or asking if I want to see his new big delivery truck, or if I might one day some time want to have lunch, or the best one...  that he was sorry what he'd put me through and then spending the rest of the message saying he was sorry for us and sorry for him and how he didn't feel like he could say he was a good person.  Translation:  I read your blog and in black and white I realize I might've been a blazing asshole but feel sorry for me and tell me it's ok.  I heard Sparky's voice telling me not to respond, but I did, and I was polite - I had love for him still - and I told him it was ok, it was over and I was fine...  s'all good.

Then one Sunday I text him in church (he's A/V for the church so he's listening to the same sermon on broken relationships I am) to tell him as I'm listening and realizing things...  that he wasn't the only one to ruin us...  that I realized I was so busy playing the victim that I never acknowleged that I helped swamp the boat and I was sorry.  I felt like it was the right thing to do.

I know if Sparky were here, he'd just tell me "Yeauh, well, what did you expect to happen?  If you give us (men) a bone, we'll jump.  Don't give us the bone."

I realize I gave the bone, so when Navy texts saying how he'll always love me and how a church member singing the Whitney Houston/Dolly Parton song of the same name got him misty eyed and how he'd thought of me/us all that morning, and how when the music leader's husband straightened her mic he almost "broke down".  Ok, THAT was a little overboard but since I didn't feel that old heart tug or sick feeling when I read it, I thought it was nice.  That we'd reached detente.

SideBar:  Have I ever mentioned how FUCKING gullible I am.

Less than two weeks later, more Naval douchebaggery.

A picture of his baby-mama's hand (the baby-mama who kept his daughter from him for 21 years and then left all her OTHER children for him), wearing his dead mother's engagement ring (the dead mother I adored and baby-mama never knew), crossed with his in a soft focus FB "announcement" to the world of their impending nuptials.

You fucking fuck.  I blasted him via text and told him never reach out again.  Yes, I was furious that he didn't even have the balls - as usual - to give me a heads up.  Furious that after 5 years of 100% support, I wasn't enough, but this woman with no regard for her own children was his soul mate.  Furious that I tried to make him feel better about his shitty treatment.  Furious that he'd reached out and I'd fallen for it. 

But mostly, I was furious with myself and with where I was in my own life.  That was the true sticker.

Which brings us back to me not being able to climb out from under this crusher this time.

After Navy and my brief toe-dip with Sparky, I finally started dating again; a nice, stable, quiet guy.  This is good.  We see each other a few times a month, live in our own spaces, and that suits because after the marriage debacles and then 5 years with Navy, I NEVER wanted to get married again.  But then, time healed some wounds and I realized that even if I never marry again, I'd be ok to be in a relationship with someone who I can move towards common goals with (something I've never had as a prerequisite before in life - I know, I know...  but I was damaged and in need of "love", what can I say?  I do feel like that it's a consideration for me now is a positive sign I'm still evolving...); someone I can plan with and be with and share with and learn with.  Someone I love looking at sleeping, who fixes me breakfast, who I can stay in and cuddle with when the skies are gray, who will put an arm on the back of my chair when we're spectating, who'll let me put an arm through his while walking & will clamp down with his arm because he wants to keep my hand just where it is, someone I have no hesitation saying I'm sorry to and who I know has no hesitation saying it, genuinely, to me and who will have my back with the same level of committment that I bring to them...

And almost two years later, we part company because he can't and won't commit to anyone again he says.  His marriage and horrid divorce ruined him and he realized he didn't want "anyone telling [him] what to do.".  WTF?!  Yeauh, THAT wasn't me anyway so I truly got the shit knocked out of me when he said that.

He most assuredly did not have my back.

And that is the true nail in the coffin of my little black place right now.  It's been months of emotional pounding but I was taking it and bobbing along the ocean of life, recovering after each swell.

But this last swell...  the one that's swamped me?  It's that I'm 47 years old, I have family I love but have no close relationships with, the last of my familial and male stability died with my granddad, I have a string of romantic failures behind me, I'm in a job change in a time in life no one should be, I'm alone again (which is not the problematic part) after thinking I finally got it right (which IS the problematic part since clearly I've gotten it wrong YET again), and I'm feeling like I have no time left to turn any of these setbacks around.

And now, my psyche has reached the point that it has my heart terrified that at this age, not only am I not going to find a suitable job, but that I may not be able to handle my daughter's next huge crisis, that I may never get the closeness of family that I try to give, and that  if I open my soft 8th grade innards one more time and I either don't find anyone willing to give that back to the same level I am, or if I do it and they give enough to hook me and then torch me again...  that I just might die.

So.  I'm feeling around for my bootstraps right now and struggling to come to terms with the things I know I have to... 

I can't make things right with the people I want to make them right with if they don't want to allow me that and I have to accept it.  I can't make things right for my daughter because she has to do it, and I have to accept it.  I can't make my family any closer just because I repeatedly reach out or just because I wish we were, and I have to accept it.  I have another failed relationship behind me and I have to accept it.  I have a job change happening whether I want it or not and I have to accept it.  And I may very well never find that one soul who will bring the level of committment I want to give, who will give me what I give them to the same degree I give it, or who will show me their soft, inner, squishy part so that I feel like I can let down the shield one more time.  And I have to accept it.

So.

In my universe, though letting this all out here has helped a bit, a fine tune is clearly in order.  And I'm dialing now.