@Former-Member, @Appleblossom, @Faith-and-Hope, @utopia, @Bimby2
Hello friends, its been a while. I hope each of you have found some calm and clarity over the past month.
Life for me has been a LOT of feelings, feelings I have tried to avoid all my life, I have had insights and understandings about my childhood and the conditions which shaped me, made me crazy, made me compassionate. Shaped me into the person I am today he good bits and the horror bits of living with mental illness.
After finally settling my aged Mum into full time care... Just the week that our conversation turned to her feeling settled and happy to be in the aged care home, she was out with friends and fell and broke her arm. A very nasty spiral fracture. Off to hospital, then to a rehab hospital. She took a massive dive emotionally, cognitively.
At the same time as Mum was settling in to the aged care home, I was seeing a psychologist, all this close work with Mum and my brother was triggering me daily I was an anxious mess, but just having to soldier on and be the big person to see Mum into care, to sell her home, to settle her in... But all this proximity was causing me heaps of grief and pain... And I needed some help so went to see a Psychologist -and that has resulted in unpacking, unearthing, bringing to light some home truths about my relationship with my Mum...
I am in a bind. I want to talk to her about it but, she is old, frail and forgetful. Some days she is switched on and totally 'there' yet I feel so bad to even raise any of this. I did say something a few days ago... and she was just engaging with that when another visitor arrived and it shut down the conversation. I was glad and also felt like we just missed a massive opportunity to clear the air....
Earlier in the year I was driving her to an appointment to see a specialist and we were chatting in the car on the way there.. She doesn't really "get " that I live with mental illness, she just thinks I am clever and that because I am clever (her word for being intelligent) I musn't be sick. Anyways, in the car that day I said I was struggling, and she said "Oh what is the trouble?" I kind of batted it away and said - "Oh, just stuff from when I was abused" and she said "I was a terrible mother" I immediately said "You did the best you could at the time". I have always avoided having that conversation with her. Because I didn't remember enough of my childhood really to be able to assess whether that was true or not.
In my recent sessions with my psychologist - I did what I had always done at a certain point in the process and ran away "I'm all good now thanks" but I wasn't all good at all and I kept unravelling so, unlike any other time in my therapy life I WENT BACK to see the same person. The Psychologist was honest with me and named that behaviour as "Avoidance Behaviour" and mentioned also "Attachment Disorder"... (I wrote about that a few weeks ago here )
So, I went back again last week too. This psychologist is a great fit for me, she is upfront and honest and "real". I am also reading in fits and starts the Book @Appleblossom mentioned ages ago "The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body the transformation of trauma" by Bessel Van Der Kolk. I am learning a lot from
this book about the conditions I have one of which is complex PTSD. I can only read a little bit of the book at a time because it rocks me around hugely. What I HAVE learned from it and come to see and opened to the light is the utter ambivalence my Mother had towards me (and my brother) when we were very young. She and Dad couldn't conceive naturally and this was way before IVF - so they adopted us, many years apart and from totally different families of origin.
But Mum was an ambivalent mother - she took care of some of the basics - food and clothing and education but she really was not present emotionally at all, she was also a very strict Mother about behaviour and both physical and emotional punishment was a regular feature from a very early age. My Dad lived with undiagnosed, untreated PTSD from his experiences as a soldier in WWII he too was absent emotionally - so security, love and connection and engagement were not present in my childhood.
This was thrown into stark relief one day a month ago - I was with her at her new home and Mum and I were talking to the LifeStyle Manager - this woman was asking Mum about her life history... They discussed her childhood, her early working life, meeting her husband, my (adopted) Father. Mum talked about the actual day she met Dad and went into a lot of detail, then talked about their early married life and her working life and as she petered out on that subject the Lifestyle Manager (who is a social worker with a specialisation in Narrative) said as a prompt - "And then you had kids...?"
And Mum said "I never had children".
Wow.
The lifestyle manager looked at me quickly and then back to Mum. I said - "Oh Mum, you might not ever have given birth to children but you did adopt two of us, Name & Name".
She looked up and recovered from the "Never Had Children" reverie she had lapsed into and went on to talk about how the adoptions took place. BUT - this was a HUGE window into my Mother and it somehow turned a key in the door that has been kept locked for my whole life.
My Mum was ambivalent towards me, I was never really "her" daughter.
I gave myself permission then to explore just what that looked and felt like to my 4 year old, my 8 year old, my 12 year old, my 15 year old... to me now in my 50's. And her ambivalence towards me certainly did leave me wonting. Wanting to be loved and cherished and seen - but I never was in that family. That her absence also meant that she was not watchful and the abuse could occur.
So I am peeling off layers and exploring them and feeling sick to my stomach and that I just want to shut that door again and lock it and never open it again, but I am on the cusp of this really important stuff - actually being in the time and place that shaped me. it is hugely uncomfortable but I will stay here for a while longer and see what comes of it. My OCD thinking has clicked in because of it and I am finding it very hard to jump track from the repetitive thinking about all of this. The damage done to me as a child I had always thought was just the actual sexual-abuse and other traumatic experiences that occurred - but there is so much MORE to it than that. So much more.
I hope going through this will be worth it in the end... I can;t discuss it with my partner at all - just have to have this weight of it all inside until I speak to the Psychologist again, or pressure valve it here, I even called LifeLine the other day just to talk some of it out, that was helpful too.
I just wish I was well and could lead the rest of my life with happiness and strength and leave all the past behind, but that is not what happens is it? We just have to go through it because it is always there unless we do.
