She's my Mom, but not.

 

Izumi Curtis From Fullmetal Alchemist.

In much the same way my Mom is a lot like Izumi Curtis- that take no shit, will kick your ass if you cross her, but would also sacrifice whole parts of her self to bring her child back from death, she is not Izumi, and she's less and less the mother I grew up with. To say it's been upsetting is an understatement and while I know some parties would basically tell me it is what it is and there's nothing I can do about it- my Dad included- it doesn't meant that isn't heart breaking. That is doesn't leave me wracking my brain with questions of "how do I help", "how do I fix this", and or, "is there anything can be done to make this easier on, at least my Dad"?  

Some time ago, I'm not even sure when, covid really kind of blurred time for me a bit, not just in me having it earlier this year, but the whole pandemic- my Mom's episodes got drastically worse. I've been down to visit them and each time she is worse than she was before. But, in one of her episodes in the last several years, she had a stroke. While the doctors can find no evidence of it- not that that means anything, because my Grandpa had one and had the paramedics not seen him have while taking him to the ER, they wouldn't have known he was having one or had one. There is other evidence denoting a stroke in that one side of her face sags a little and her behavior changed. Strokes run in her family. Her mother had one but her maternal grandmother, my Great Grandma Early, had nine. I don't know about anyone else in the family, I wasn't as into genealogy when my mother's grandparents were still alive and I didn't know them very well. I only saw them twice before they died. (I did like them though and Great Grandpa and I shared a birthday)

My Mom isn't really a selfish person, not in the way most people would think. She could be ever once in a great while, but at the same time, she wasn't completely. She is now. It's like something broke in her brain and there is no filter, no buffer, and if she knew how she was behaving and some of the things she's said, I know she would be ashamed of herself. 

It's not all bad and she's not turned into some monster. You see it more in conversation and some of her actions. Today, she was pissed that her soap opera was being interrupted because Queen Elizabeth the II died and the media outlets are covering it. Yes, it is huge news, its going to get covered, but my Mom said "She wasn't my queen, I don't care, I want to watch my show". Which before, she'd still be annoyed by the media circus, but there would be some note of sadness for the family at least and a note of respect for the dead (unless they were a monster, which Queen Elizabeth II wasn't). 

You can see it in the arguments between her and my Dad over when she goes to bed. She says she's an adult, which is true, but if Dad doesn't get her to go to bed and have at least 6-8 hours of sleep, the likelihood of her triggering an episode goes up substantially. Which means he has to stay home to take care of her and miss work, which puts them in financial stress. Honestly, it is a mess of a cycle and she's not able to see the correlation anymore. Yes, she still has episodes even if she gets sleep, but they aren't as frequent and sometimes, not as bad.  Before she could be reasoned with. But without that filter, she can't seem to make the connections. And her OCD is compounded! If she decides she is going to do something, there isn't anyone or anything that is going to stop her. That said usually Dad can talk her into not doing whatever it is she wants to do, but if she'd in the lead up to an episode, he can't. He tries.

Her memory isn't as good as it used to be, which is also a worry.  

It's always in the littlest ways that it sneaks up. I'm now afraid to talk about much with her and guard my conversations. I don't talk about a lot of what we've been up to, mostly if we've gone shopping for something, because she say 'yeah, we need to get this and that and..." and there is a laundry list of stuff that they may or may not need and she starts to obsess over it where she wouldn't have before. I don't talk about some of the vents we go to or help organize because I don't want her to let it slip to Grandma, my Dad's Mom who is 94, that I am Pagan and not Christian. We've already had an instance this year of her freaking out over Selene and I being married and let's just say it was upsetting.

And today she was after me to mail a dragon necklace she sent me home with, back to her. She doesn't have much, but she does have some nice things she wants to pass on to me when she dies (my whole family talks about stuff they are passing on, it's morbid AF, but I am so used it, it hardly phases me much any more, and I always tell them I would much rather have them over stuff) and she'd chosen that to be jewelry. Anyway, we do a sort of swap share thing where we will swap necklaces or earrings for a time, usually a couple of years, and then trade again next time we meet up. We're probably not going to meet up for several more months. I don't mind doing it.  

Also today, she was fussing at me to embroider 'something' for her. Usually she calls it her 'dragon shirt like Shi-chan's (my cousin)', because she likes it so much. She was even talking about paying me. No, she'd not going to pay me, I won't let her. I've just been super busy, which she would know if I told her half the stuff I am doing. I told her I would get to it soon. Sooner than she thinks. 

But every once in a while she has some really good days where she's almost who I grew up with. And then the next time I talk with her, reality slaps me in the face. 

I am mourning the person she was, it seems like all the time, off and on. I am frustrated that neither of my parents will let me help them. I've offered to sell my house and move back home and baby sit my Mom while she has episodes so Dad can work. I've tried offering to help with disability paperwork, but they have applied and apparently don't qualify. They also can't afford to get the medical documentation- the further medical documentation they need to get it. They have gone as far as their limited income and my grandma's help can take them, and we're just in limbo watching her get worse. She actually confessed that she is afraid she's going to have a bad episode and not wake up. That's scarry for me and I can't imagine what it would be like for her, scared I don't think covers it. I'm not going to get into my frustration and anger with her doctors. 

Her neurologist and primary care physician at least have some decency. The neurologist dropped her, not because he didn't want to help, but because he doesn't know anything more, exhausted his resources, tried everything he could think of, and didn't want to keep charging them money he knew they really couldn't afford. He talked with mom's pcp at length over everything and wished them the best. Which is more than any other doctor I've seen do in a long time. Mom's pcp is doing what she can as well, but no one knows what is causing these episodes or even what they are. They have never seen anything like it. They even thought, once, it might have be psychological, because brains are weird and complicated. But they aren't sure because the working theory for that isn't exactly panning out. 

Whatever this is, all I do know for sure, is that my Mom isn't getting the adequate health care she needs and I'm truly scared she's going to die because of it. And I am scared my Dad will just fall apart. And in the meantime, this is what we are given. There is no lesson to be learned from this and I don't think everything happens for a reason. I don't think Mom's childhood is causing it, or that she did something bad in a past life that she's paying for karmically. Shit just happens and usually to good people, who don't deserve it. It fucking pisses me off. It's the biggest injustice of the universe and today, I think the universe can go fuck itself. 

1st dumb thing my therapist has said and what's been going on lately

Apparently I am really drawn to my moon sign's element of fire lately. I keep gravitating to art and such with fire. It's weird, I usually go for water, the element of my sun sign. But, I'm not going to argue. Maybe it's part of the who Rune draw I did at Ostara. I drew Kenaz. A description of it is in the picture below. 

I would go into more explanation of this and why it actually means a great deal to me for this year, but I am bit exhausted. I've actually been internally at war with my depression monster and its getting worse. To be honest, I hate myself because I am so depressed most of the time that I can't stand to breathe. I'm either angry, apathetic, manic, or so depressed I just want to scream, cry, or break things. I don't tell anyone how bad it really is because no one can actually handle it or they just don't care. I pretty much try to stuff it all down so I can be as calm as possible, but it's so exhausting. There have been some new problems that have arisen for me personally that have made me feel even more defective and worthless. I actually was so upset and angry the other day I beat the shit out of my legs and then grew more furious because I didn't even get the satisfaction of having bruises. I couldn't even leave proof of my own anger somewhere. And then that made me angry because I swore to myself that I wouldn't get this bad again.

So I took most of these feelings and thoughts to my therapist the other day. She asked me about a coupe of things and then said the 1st dumb thing I have ever heard her say. She basically said that I made myself fat to become undesirable to push people away so they couldn't hurt me. What?! No, I got fucking fat because my damned hormones were out of wack and sometimes I eat my feelings. I never wanted to be undesirable. I never wanted this. Sure, I want people to leave me alone so I can write, but I want friends and family around. I want to go out and have fun. 

And with everything going on my Mom told me yesterday that she has a black spot in her mouth and she said without saying that she's afraid that it's cancer. It's possible. She's been a smoker since before I was born and at one time she smoked a pack and and half a day. 

3:30 out of touch, awake, and pissed

It is 3:30 in the morning and I'm tired, sure, but also very much awake. I tried to go to bed with Amanda, but I'm in enough pain that lying in bed is too much. Worse, I no matter how hard I tried to ignore it and lie still, I had a headache that wouldn't quit. Of course now that I am up, the headache had subsided and while I still hurt, it isn't as bad. It is so frustrating. Chronic pain sucks ass. I hate it. How the hell am I supposed to love my body when said body won't work with me and when I try to push through stuff, it only hurts more? 

Whatever. Since I am awake, I decided to catch up on some blog reading or in my case, my general lurking. I read peoples blogs but don't always comment. Now that I have done that, I'm going to read a web comic Amanda read and loved so I can fangirl with her about it. 

I've felt very out of touch for a long time. Out of touch from the spiritual aspect of my life. Out of touch with friends. Out of touch with family, and so on. A very large part of it is that I had surgery. But it is also that my depression monster is working overtime. And then there's the writing. Lastly, by the end of all of it, I've just been so apathetic that I'm like, fuck it all. I don't want to see anyone, deal with anyone, and those that I do want to see and have dealings with, I barely see anyway. Hello hermit life, it's been  a long time. 

I have spoken with my Mom recently. Apparently someone gave my aunt a lift chair, apparently they donated it to hospice. Well, that lift chair, when my Mom went to vacuum it, had quite a few surprises in the form of fleas, cockroaches, and spiders. Who the fuck donates a bug ridden chair to people on hospice?! I mean really, how disgusting and mean do you have to be to do something like that? Needless to say, my Dad put it in the back of his truck to take it to the dump.

You'll pay for it, tired, homework, and something strange is going on...

Picture seems appropriate...

Today, I had planned to move into the office/library to work on homework. The plan failed when I woke up in pain, worn out, and so incredibly stiff, all before I'd even had a chance to do anything. So I am couch bound today and am even considering a nap.

I think part of the reason I hurt so much today is because I decided, since it was a relatively nice day yesterday, to take a walk. I'd wanted to take the Redbox movies Amanda rented to the 711, get a little treat, and have Amanda pick me up there. While I didn't make it to the 711, I made it half way- which is the bus stop, that's 0.4 of a mile. Now for most people, that's not a big deal and in fact is pretty much nothing. However, for me, with my back and the fibro, it can be a lot. Generally speaking I can do more, but that's in the grocery store with a cart in front of me for support. And I am paying for it today. On top of that I am having a pretty big fibro flare. I will be honest, it is so bad today I don't want to wear my clothes and my hair hurts. I kind of want to cry, but I won't because that won't fix anything. 

Moving on. I have decided that for today, I am only going to worry about doing my introductory post of my homework. I will read the text book and make my notes, after dinner. A&B are coming and bringing spaghetti. Which reminds me that I need to schedule time with Birdy again. Our last friend date had to be cancelled and so did our D&D night with them.   

Strange and interesting fact, I think my upstairs neighbor's sink was clogged because suddenly I heard weird things happening in my sink and got a horrible smell in my apartment. I went over to check it out and there were soap suds that I didn't create, in my sink. This does not make me happy. The last time my pipes were connected to a neighbors, my basement was flooded with disgusting crap from their clogged drain. We are talking food bits, egg shells, grease, and just yuck! It took forever to clean it up and worse, it almost got as far as my bed- my bedroom was in my parent's basement. I definitely don't want a repeat of that.

Other than that, I talked to my Mom today. She dislocated her shoulder again. Sigh. 

The Hang Up

My car was recently paid off. Yay!!!! Right? For that part maybe or maybe my car has a soul and knew so it decided to break down. Turns out it took over one thousand dollars just to get it running and I still have a leak in the radiator, need to replace my shocks, and several other things that will probably cost me another thousand.

Well I’m currently unemployed so I didn’t have the money to fix it on my own and Skoora’s car is out for the count so that left us with no car. On top of that the breaks in my father’s truck are going out. So Dad had to call Grandma for a loan to help us out. My mother jumped all over that and has been using that against me, holding it over my head, to get me to do whatever it is that she wants. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problems doing the dishes, the laundry, taking out the trash, those sorts of things to help out in return for them helping me out. And I have been doing that, without complaint.

Also, I didn’t complain last night when she said that she wanted to hang out with me. She had the TV going, was talking to me, and I let her use my computer to look at gemstones on her jewelry site and LOLCats, even though all I wanted to do was work on my National Novel Writer’s Month project. I lost four hours of writing time and in four hours I can average between 3000 and 4000 words, even with little interruptions. But Mom wanted to hang out so, I was game.

However, what I do have a problem with is my mom saying that she wants to hang out with me only instead of actually hanging out with me; she chewed me out for three hours. She chewed me out about where to apply for jobs and why I haven’t applied at certain places. Then she chewed me out about the chores and laundry never mind that her laundry is basically caught up (unless she’s got more hidden away that I don’t know about) and the dishes had just been done the day before. So to get her off my case, I went to sleep.

What really depresses me is A) that I had to go to sleep to get a break and B) that she doesn’t understand the importance and significance of National Novel Writer’s Month or why I am participating. Worse, she can’t even respect me enough to let me write while I am at her house. She’s always got to have me doing something. If it isn’t some house work, its letting the dog out every five minutes, making dinner, or getting her soda, or running an errand. Like I aforementioned, these are things I don’t mind doing.

What brings me to why I’m even blogging in the first place about it is that my mother just hung up on me not too long ago. Apparently she’d pissed because I didn’t stick around to sweep and mop her floors today. I’m sorry, today is Amanda’s day off, I haven’t really spent any time at home, and I need a freaking break as well as some UNINTERUPTED writing time. Well that just wasn’t acceptable to her. So we fought about it and I told her that I would do it on Monday while Amanda was at work. So she changed her story and said she never asked me to sweep and mop her floors, that she only asked me to ‘help’ her sweep and mop because she can’t move the furniture.

Haha, yeah right. If I waited on her to do that, I’d be waiting all freaking week, be over there every day of the week, and it would never get done because there would always be some reason why she couldn’t get out of bed. So I told her, no, I would do it on my own on Monday. She of course had to tell me that it wouldn’t be done right if she didn’t do it. And we argued some more and in the end she assumed that I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to ‘help’ her and hung up on me.

Guess what, because she hung up on me, I’m definitely not going to do it. And because I was so furious with her, I called m Grandmother and told her that I wouldn’t be coming for a visit tomorrow because I didn’t want to see my mom. Grandma understands, thankfully and said there would be other days to visit.

Point of fact: My mother doesn’t want a daughter, she wants a maid. Also, she’s a Chiwawa with Lock Jaw. She never shuts up and she never lets go of anything once she sinks her teeth into it.

So this week, I’ll be going over to do my laundry, I’ll do the chores I normally do to help out and if she mentioned the floors to me again, I’m telling her to get Dad to help her, she lost my help when she hung up on me.

All in all, this is pretty pathetic and she pissed me off so bad I was crying and now have a headache, not to mention that I can’t seem to settle down enough to actually write anything more than a blog post.