It's difficult to not be affected by the spring time lovelies that are blooming at such a quick speed all around me. Everywhere I look, bursts of color pepper yards, parks, and walkways. This is becoming my ultimate favorite time of the year, which is a big statement for a hardcore fall/winter loving girl.
And yet, despite the inspiring colors outside, despite the gratitude I feel for the health and love of my family, despite the overall great and happy place I've worked hard to arrive at, an old and familiar sad feeling has crept in. It wasn't unexpected. I did something that resulted in me getting involved in a chain of events that ultimately led to me feeling like this. It only takes one phone call, as I've come to learn.
This is the deal. I haven't talked to my mom since Thanksgiving. She has a lot of issues with me and a lot of unresolved issues from her past that she has never worked out. Immediately after our breakup I went through a rough period. I felt abandoned, unloved, and sad. How does a person deal with their mother cutting them off like that? She refused my phone calls, refused to talk to me.. just cut me off.
It took me a while to come to the realization that this was all of her shit and I was just getting the nasty end of it. A little background: she does have addiction issues along with issues of denial. But she's my mom. As damaged and broken as our relationship was, I still loved her and wanted little pieces of her. Any child of an addict will tell you that their greatest hope is that their parent would reach out for help. I, along with my siblings, have been waiting for years. It hasn't happened. So here I am, a mama myself, in my 30's, still holding on to that one last thread of hope that one day she will reach out. During that time after Thanksgiving, I worked so hard to let go of her and allow the problems and the hurt to lift up off of my hands. I really did let go of her and worked on resolving my own internal issues and healing a lot of the wounds my heart endured over the last twenty or so years.
Not easy. Totally not easy, but I made a lot of progress. It's now months later and I feel that I'm in a much more positive space than I've ever been. During the months we were apart, I would hear stories second hand through my siblings about her steady decline. Last week, it got bad. So bad that I decided I should call her. I couldn't allow things to unfold as they were without speaking to her. So I did call her and she spoke to me as if nothing had happened, as if we talked just yesterday. This was hurtful because there was no acknowledgment on her part of what had happened between us, and weird..weird as hell.. because I was seeing/hearing first hand that she was really mentally affected by all of the abuse she had done to herself and her body. Her brain just doesn't function normally and it's so sad to see her like this.
When a person is mentally as fucked up as she is, they tend to suck you into their little world and all of it's dramas. I've been there many times and fallen back into that place with her, but this time I refused. I did take my daughter over for a visit with her because she knows nothing of the issues with her Nana and she really wanted to see her. That one phone call and that one visit was enough for me. There were moments that I felt myself falling backwards and trying to please her, but really, there is no pleasing her. She's at a place in her life where all she wants to do is destruct herself, her life, and take pleasure in feeling like the victim of some grand conspiracy against her. As fucked up as it sounds, that is her life right now. I walked away knowing that I was so done with her. Something happened in those months, something miraculous that made it easy for me to walk away and feel ok to be walking away.
She's my mom and I'll always love her. But I can't help her and I can't save her. I really get that now. I'll always have that little bit of hope that she will get help and get better. My responsibilities lie with myself and my little family and I only want to be surrounded by people who make me feel good. People like me who are living, learning, and growing. People who make mistakes and do what they can to amend them and learn from them. People who are in search of the beauty in the most unlikely of places. People who see light in any kind of darkness - or at least they're trying to find it. This is why despite all that's good in my life right now, I feel a little sadness. My mother is missing out on so much, her life is just slipping on by, and she can never get that time back.
If there's one thing I've learned over the past months while working through my feelings over relationship with my mom, it's this: Good and bad things will come up, will happen to the best of us. Sometimes these things will be hard to deal with, sometimes not so hard. But deal with them because the issues are guaranteed to play a recurring role in your life if you leave them alone. And while you're dealing, don't forget to live. Stand outside your door and breathe in the fresh air and know that every cell in your body craves beauty and goodness. Look around you... recognize and familiarize yourself with your surroundings. Try hard, because sometimes it is painfully hard, to be present in each moment. And open your eyes because sometimes you will see amazing and beautiful things.
