I think part of the problem I have with becoming The Whole Me is that to become someone I should be rather than the person I was conditioned to be means rocking some worlds. I'm too damn diplomatic for my own good. I don't like to hurt anyone else's feelings because I don't like my feelings hurt. Bad philosophy? Probably. I need to learn the balance between standing up for me and if what I am saying is actually harmful to another. I'm working on that.
I have been estranged from my family of origin for years, I'm still estranged from my stepmother because she is emotionally ill and refuses to seek help for her illness. Finally I realised that it wasn't being kind to endure her abuse and my kids were getting to the age where they were starting to understand and be scared by her words and actions. I understood that if I wanted to raise healthy kids it wasn't wise to have her around them. And that while I had made a lot of changes in my life and philosophy to get away from most of the ick in my childhood that the only way I could fully look at me and make some lasting changes is by not having The Anti-Mom constantly telling me what and who I was.
I tried explaining this to her, I asked her for respect, space and understanding. She didn't see things the same way I did. I asked her that I had some beliefs I would be thankful if she would, even if she didn't believe them to at least allow that I did believe them. She didn't like that either. At the same time that I was struggling with trying to be my own entity without hurting her feelings, I was made aware by medical personnel and one of her friends, that her behaviour wasn't "normal". That perhaps she had something a little more serious than sheer stubbornness. And that something looked like schizophrenia with possibly a large dose of narcissism thrown in. She needed help and covering up for her and "dealing with it just because she's Mom" wasn't going to be in her benefit. Up to this point, it obviously hadn't been in my interest!
The problem with a mentally ill parent is that children can't initiate treatment, it has to be something the parent chooses. Obviously, she thinks she is perfectly normal and everyone else is screwed up. What options did I have? The only obvious one was giving myself more space than I had previously given myself. I am fully convinced that there are no coincidences in life.
The Anti-Mom has a habit of making her life progressively worse and then "running" when she can't take it anymore. On average, she moves house every year to two years. Sometimes she moves within the same city or state, sometimes to a different state; she tends to go to cities/states she has lived before. She moves because she has altercations with those around her. Mostly she moves because someone else "is after her". Once it was the neighbour's wife, another time the landlady, the most recent time that prompted her moving back home with my husband and I was because her neighbour was "mentally unbalanced" and she was so afraid for her life she stayed up all night and slept during the day with tin cans under her pillow so she could throw them at the neighbour if she decided to break through her door. Months after I had driven four hours to collect her and her belongings she informed me that it wasn't necessary at all. She simply would have asked the landlady to stay at another of her rentals. A very different story than the one she told us that led to the four-hour drive to collect her. She was afraid for her life, she was concerned to leave her apartment, she wasn't sleeping but a few hours each day in fear.
She decided it was time to move again. And I decided that this was as good an opportunity as not to make the changes I wanted to without her in such close proximity. After being her caretaker for so long...it started when I was around 14 until the time she left...my older brother has now become her spokesman. His experience with her is very different from mine. She raised him from the time he was two and by the time our father died he was sixteen and very independent. His life was mostly charmed as our father was a devoted and protective parent. When he died, I was nine and my brother sixteen. The rest of my childhood was hell, now I know that The Anti-Mom's mental illness was possibly a large factor in all of that but it doesn't change the fact that I lived through harmful experiences because of her choices.
My brother thinks I'm over-reacting and unfair to "Mom" because he was not a part of my life after my father's death. "Mom" kicked him out of the house less than a year after our father's death because she wanted to move in with her boyfriend and he didn't want the hassle of a teenage boy as well as a bratty kid. I saw my brother a handful of times throughout the year, usually at holiday gatherings hosted by The Anti-Mom's family.
Sometimes I write to my brother, usually when he tries to tell me to "lighten up and not be so hard on 'Mom'". He tries to tell me that "Mom" had a rough childhood and that we need to understand she's been "kicked all her life". He thinks I haven't told her that I love her.
Sometimes when I write to my brother, it helps me to understand where I've been and that I'm actually making progress. Most of the time I just think I suck and am spinning in the same circles. Sometimes I feel that way when I write him because he still sees me as the person I was supposed to be because "Mom" had roles for us all...Brother is the Useless Troublemaker, I am the Spoiled Baby Princess and she is the Misunderstood Martyr Queen. Are we these people? I hope not...maybe we are. That's all part of what I'm trying to understand on my journey to becoming whole.
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