Somewhere in the insanity...

Floodgates have opened. Emotions are flowing. i've been feeling and talking and crying and regrouping and shaking and writing and processing and distracting and doing everything i can to get through. i'm so raw right now, carrying on with normal daily like right now is a huge challenge. i'm pretty fed up with my home. My messes stare me in the face: material, emotional, familial. i am a fucking mess.

But my safe haven in this storm has been my job. It's pretty awesome to have a job that i love so much. i can go there and have fun, feel at ease, connect with my fabulous coworkers, shift my focus to better things, turn myself around. Really, my work does something that nothing else can. Once i get in the water, the outside world melts away, i come face to face with my kids, we splash and play and laugh and take some risks and grow. i throw myself in and submerge myself in the puzzle that each little person is. It helps me forget myself, my worries, my insecurities, my pain, my deficits. i feel productive valuable, happy. Working here has been so important to me well-being, i am so so grateful. It's been a wonderful reprieve from the insanity i'm currently immersed in.
i'm so sure i haven't unraveled thanks to work. i'm pretty sure my boss has picked up on this, and she's picked this moment to ask more of me. i'm getting parent & baby classes added to my schedule, and i'm now also training to teach the upper levels. To think, i joined on as a simple lifeguard... It feels incredible to be trusted and valued so much. In many ways it still doesn't feel real. But here i am.

On another note, the other night i was at a women's AA meeting. It was a particularly powerful gathering for us. i shared about my struggles at home, my displacement, exposure to active addiction, my anger and fear. Afterwards, a woman who i've looked up to for a long time came up to me and said, "You are a strong woman of dignity and grace." i was taken aback, but i smiled, thanked her, and tried to let that in. i didn't look behind me to make sure it was indeed me she was talking to (as if she would randomly pause our conversation to jump to another person while maintaining eye contact with me). i didn't challenge her, though it was tempting. i know my perception of myself is warped. So i tried to accept it, and i still am. But if someone i so admire can see this (and she definitely does not say things she does not mean), i can go ahead and give myself the chance that she gives me. This external affirmation is working itself inward. i know that even though i feel so bogged down, i'm still showing up. i go to work and teach my kids, i go to meetings and try to be a friend among friends, i can be grateful for the little gifts and daily miracles instead of letting the pain blind me. i can be mindful that this pain will transform me to a stronger, smarter, more compassionate, more balanced, better person. i can have full faith in my journey.

Following Freud's Suggestions...

What are the connections between disliking or being angry at my mother, and hating myself? What happened that i'm not forgiving myself or her for?
i can stare at these questions for a significant length of time and come up blank. i think because my mind and body have worked hard to create walls and block it all out - keep myself numb.... It's probably the same part of me that bucks against me every time i take a step towards health. i can't quite tell if it's getting easier or harder as i go on.
i've done a lot of work on my relationship with my mother. Since entering therapy 10 years ago, i think i've dissected every moment in my memory about her. But apparently i need to do it again.

Teen mom, i was born the summer before her senior year. She was tutored from home for part of the year and she graduated on time. She went on to college without skipping a beat. Bachelor's in math, then Master's. Grama and Grampa helped out a lot. My dad kinda floated in and out inconsistently. From what i remember, up to age 5 was pretty normal. A lot of love, a bunch of tantrums, being a goofy kid, getting into sports, exploring outside. i have some memories of parties (and we're Irish, there were a lot of them), the adults around me getting drunk - loud, slurry, sloppy. It was scary at the time. It was difficult to make sense of as a kid. i remember at a young age trying to help mom walk when she would stumble too much. But for the most part, i remember her hugging me and cuddling me, picking me up from school and bringing me to dance swim soccer music, she worked hard on her homework. We would go to the park or out to eat or to the aquarium or shopping or get ice cream or take a trip to the bookstore. i loved her so much and she was my hero, and remained so until the 6th grade.
Then the hormones flared up, the veil dropped, and everything in my life changed. It seemed to have happened suddenly with no particular catalyst. To the best of my memory, it went: starting middle school, adjusting pretty well. i had swimming and lacrosse and singing and sleepaway camp. Mom broke up with Jay who i loved and had become close to me than my dad at that point, i didn't feel much about it and i knew i should be sad, but i couldn't really access it. . Mom applied for her own house and things started moving on that. She promised me she'd stay single for at least a year to focus on herself and me. But she met someone else within a month and attached herself to him and he even had the same name. i didn't like him at all.
The moment i got hit with self loathing was in 7th grade, walking down the hallway in the middle of a school day, and i turned a corner and had the thought that i was not meant to be here, on earth, i came from a teen pregnancy, nobody wants to have a baby at 16, i was a mistake, my existence is a fluke, and i don't deserve to live. i sat with that for a while before i told anyone. Things at home were very complicated. For starters i felt like i didn't have a home. i didn't like being at mom's because i didn't like J and how weird he was, overbearing and knit picking and cranky. Grama let me stay over a lot, thankfully,  but always said i belonged with my mother. i sometimes went to my dad's.
Mom started to fade away. Grampa took me to school all the time. He picked me up the most too. Dad took me to sports practices. Mom was having back problems. She tried a few things but the doctors gave her pills and told her she needed surgery. It happened that Spring and she was never the same since. i was changing too, and mom must have picked up on it because she put me in therapy. i had told only a couple friends about my existential crisis, and i felt really certain that my life was worthless. So i went to therapy and spoke the bare minimum. i was going to hold onto my self loathing and suicidal ideas as mine and not let anyone take it from me. i started to drink - the first time at home, alone, 2 am, kitchen floor, quiet house, glass of vodka. i downed it, and i loved that it took me out of myself, it burned my insides and transported my mind elsewhere. i could feel fuzzy and numb and unburdened. i started smoking too. i knew it was bad for me, i breathed in the toxins and hoped it would rot me. And then i stopped eating. And then i started cutting. i so desperately didn't want to be myself, didn't want to be here, i fully immersed myself in self destruction and i didn't want anyone else to know. i couldn't tell my mom because i saw her at that point as fragile - with her back problems, physically deteriorating, work being affected by that, financial stress, and clearly needing a man to feel whole - i felt like i had to protect her from myself, that dealing with me would be harmful to her. i couldn't tell either of my grandparents even though we were close and i trusted them, because it would just break their hearts. i couldn't tell Dad because fuck him, his anger issues, his absence, his unpredictability. i didn't like my therapist. But i was scared, there was a small piece in my core (that has turned out to be really damn strong) that wanted life and health and happiness. i ended up reaching out to a teacher and told her i was depressed and having a really hard time at home. She listened, and empathized, and that felt good. i reached out more, and perhaps overreached. i really like the feeling of being cared for, and i was closed off from that at "home." Well of course mom was notified, and she responded pretty well, she assured me she loves me and never even regrets having me and always wants to be there for me. But i was already on a roll, the self destruction snowballed and became huge. And even though mom probably meant what she said, she never really seemed present. She was always either doing work, cleaning, watching a show that she didn't want me to talk during, or zonked out on her meds. She didn't really pay attention to me anymore. So i carried on.
Then mom got pregnant. For a while i couldn't decide if i was excited or angry. But my little Moo turned out to be one of the best things ever. i feel a bit parentified with her, and i see mom being different with her than i remember her being with me. i have certain expectations of mom as Moo's mother, and i get really upset when she falls short. i think i also still feel and hold onto the hurts she caused as my parent and want to prevent Moo from going through that. i pretty much know that i've stepped into the caregiver sister role all on my own, but mom didn't really do much to stop me.  i did so much to help Moo, so much fuming at mom, so much running away from my damn self, i could never just sit still, take a breath and calm down, and grow in the ways i needed to. i tried that, thinking moving in with Dad would be a step in achieving that. But i was still so wild, so connected to the destructive ways, i felt i couldn't let go. Dad did introduce me to AA, which i am so grateful for and feel that it has helped me in ways i don't think therapy can. But i needed that 2 years of secluded intense residential therapy. It was there that Dad and i had a falling out, i grew more upset with my mother and her own struggles, and i started to look inward for stability, nurturing, strength, and motivation. After 2 years, mom signed me out AMA, Dad was pretty pissed, but i went home to mom and Grama. It was chaos. i stayed connected to my own strength, i found some people in my school that i could rely on, and struggled through the rest of high school just barely keeping my head above water. i found my mom to be an empty well most of the time. Occasionally she would produce a good few drops for me, surprise me, trick me, for it was never consistent or reliable or sustaining. Despite that, i really stabilized. In my therapy and recovery work i've learned that i can't go to the hardware store for milk, can't draw from an empty well. i orchestrated my own support system. Mom plays a very small part in it. And sometimes she actually acts as a harmful person to my well-being. There were times that my strides in recovery were a thread to her comfort in her particular way of life, and she'd try to undo my work - trying to get me to drink, or to cosign her shit, or ask me to do a think that would enable her unhealthy decisions, and i would have to distance myself from her. It has made me really sad, ti know that something has hijacked my mother - formerly Mommy - and made her resentful of my health and an obstacle in my happiness.

i think i'm afraid to feel angry about it, because i know she doesn't necessarily want to be like this. Even though i did do the work of recovery and have significantly diminished my own self loathing, there's still a piece of me that's mad at Mommy and mad at myself for feeling that way. In a pivotal time in my life, there was a huge, sore absence, and so many years later i'm still confused about it. i'm still not completely my own person, there's a lot i need to learn, and i resent my mom for not teaching me. i'm upset with her, and when i know it's not her fault, with the circumstances. i hate myself for hating her, and until i really heal that, i don't think i can be whole.