Time to Move Forward, Part 1: The Backstory

Like pretty much everyone else in the world, I did not have an easy childhood.  My Mom was abused by her narcissistic mother, and therefore did not know how to give love, because she was just a hurt
child herself.  I always took care of her as a child.  When I was six years old I remember comforting her when she was crying and trying to explain to her that what she was perceiving as pain was just a misunderstanding.

I often served as the voice of her conscience, and she fought me on it.  I didn't know how to get her to be a mother to me, or what I had to do to be perceived as a loving daughter in her eyes. But of course this is what she grew up with, and even worse, because even though my mother may not have been a good mother, she was a good person.  The same can't be said for her mother, unfortunately.

When I was eight years old, my amazing sister Caroline was born.  She and I were were mothered by my mother's aunts, and my sister's grandmother, who always treated me like I was her grandchild.  As my sister and I grew up, my own dynamic with my mother remained that of me mothering her, or receiving her anger, or trying to show her truth and help her with life lessons, instead of the other way around.

To take this into modern times, I am now unfortunately in society's eyes considered "middle-aged."  I don't like to call myself old, but I'm in my forties, on the other side of 45 now, so yes, that can be perceived as, "old."  Fine, we'll agree to disagree on that.  Anyway, everything mentioned above was tens of years ago.

Mom's final decline began about eight years ago.  She had what I always referred to as a psychotic break, after my sister had my oldest niece, Luna.  My mother spent her entire adult life self-medicating in various forms, going on and off of medications, and consuming large quantities of alcohol.  Sometimes she would cut herself off cold turkey but it didn't last long.  All told, Mom tried to commit suicide seven times, and that's just what I know about.

My mother never knew her father, and her paranoid schizophrenic uncle was really the only father she ever had.  At the end of his life, he turned on her, even taking her to court for something ridiculous.  As this was happening, she had to start taking care of her infirm mother.  From the ages of 24 to 60, my mother had cut off contact from her mother, and I believe that is why she lived as long as she did.  At the age of 60, the responsibility of care for her mother started, and so did the psychotic break.

For the next several years, our dynamic continued to be that of her coming to me telling me all her worst fears and nightmares and thoughts and assumptions, and me trying to talk her out of them.  By August of 2014, she had gotten very good at putting on a show that she was "okay," but at night she would drink and send me emails full of horrible stuff.  One day we were watching my by now two nieces, with my second niece Maya having arrived the year before, when my sister and brother-in-law were at work.

She seemed to really want to leave, so I told her that I could watch the girls by myself and she could go.  And she happily left, saying goodbye, like a kid getting out of school early.

That was the last time I saw her.

At the end of that month, in a drunken rage, she said in an email, "I hate you!"

I knew she didn't really hate me.  But I pulled back from the screen and closed my eyes and thought of when she told me the year before that when I was six years old, she considered ending her life and taking me with her so that I wouldn't grow up without a mother.  That was information I wish she had never divulged.

I didn't respond to her email, and I didn't respond to any of her other emails or any of her calls.  I just couldn't take it anymore.  Caroline understood and agreed with me that I needed to step back until Mom got the help she needed.  And I told myself that that is what I would do. But I think I also knew she wouldn't.

Six weeks later, my sister called me and said, "Mom's dead."  That was probably the hardest phone call she ever had to make.   Mom's seventh suicide attempt was the successful one.

For a time when I was a teenager, before I understood that she was a psychotic narcissist, I felt sorry for my grandmother because no one would talk to her, so I helped her where I could.  But of course she eventually tried a light dose of the crap she tormented my mother with, and I pulled away and avoided her.  My sister had not interacted with her before, and so when it came time to figure out how we were going to deal with our grandmother's care, Caroline said, "You watch the kids, and I'll deal with her. I don't want you to worry about it."  And that's what we did, until our grandmother in her dramatic absurdity picked a fight with my sister and refused to talk to her.  Then we had to switch to where my sister did everything behind the scenes, but I was the face and the voice presented to my grandmother.

Two more years passed, and I had put aside my anger with my mother, and felt connected enough to her soul in its present form to say that I was peaceful.  More on that in another post, because yes, I am an intuitive.  I was already close to my sister and we got even closer in our trying to understand and recover from everything that happened. My business was struggling and I knew I needed to give it up, and I realized, I never even wanted it, I just felt like I couldn't get a job.

I did get a job in a miraculous way at the end of 2016, but due to the five years of skating by and accumulation of debt on top of debt on top of debt, though the job brought relief, the struggle continued.  Then a series of things happened.  I can't list all of them, but below are some.

First my grandmother attempted to become more controlling and began calling me at all ours of the day and demanding I bring her things.  We knew she shouldn't be living on her own, she was too infirm and she had dementia.  We finally were able to get her into a facility where she would be cared for and I wouldn't have to do it anymore.

Then she died.  I did not attempt to make peace with her the way that I did with my mother, I just wanted that to be over.  It is very difficult not to think of her as my mother's killer, but then again, As Louise Hay once said, we are all victims of victims, so God only knows what happened to her to make her the hateful, hurtful person she died as.

Then one of my cats died suddenly.

Then the thing that's in the White House now got in the White House now.  Those two things actually happened on the same day.

Then I was in a car accident.

Then I fell and tore a ligament in my elbow.

Then I had to somehow get $5,000 for dental surgery.

And then, I realized I had post-traumatic stress disorder, and that was why it always felt like the worst was always going to happen.  That was why the constant anxiety and fear.  It wasn't anxiety and fear, it was trauma.

Not even a month ago, my stepfather died when we didn't expect it, and I realized what his presence had meant to me; I know he loved me and he knew I loved him, so I try not to allow guilt to take over there.

Okay, so now you're caught up.  On to Part 2.