Release

I wrote the following on January 27th of 2012:

I am angry at my mom. This is going to be just my dad isn’t it? I’m going to feel all this anger, and then have to work through it and make some realizations and then forgive and let it go. I don’t want it to take as long as it did for my dad though. I want it to be short.

 

So why am I angry?

1. I’m tired of her telling me how I should feel and what I should do.
2. I’m angry that she can’t control her emotions and oscillates back and forth between extremes. All weekend won’t call or talk to anyone because she is so overwhelmed about things that aren’t true to begin with. Then when she figures out they aren’t true, is elated and wants everyone to pay attention to her and to brag about her life.
3. She shuts out her sources of help and support around her.
4. She thinks that she knows the best way all the time.
5. I have learned her behaviors and I hate them.
6. She is an emotional wreck – and I am enmeshed with that.
7. She is emotionally immature and needs to grow up.
8. I’m tired of the drama and exaggeration and the self-hatred
9. I don’t want to feel obligated to rescue or help or fix her

I guess what I really am is frustrated. Frustrated because I don’t know how to feel without her. I don’t know what I want, what I should do, where I want to be, what I want to do, if I’m happy or sad or angry or frustrated. I don’t know what to do or where to go or how to feel without my family. 

 

I don’t want to be the fixer. I don’t want it. It’s been my role for so long I don’t know what to do or how to feel or can even envision my life without it. I sit here and think to myself – ok – so where do you want to go? I don’t know. What do you want to do with your life? I don’t know. I get overwhelmed and start crying. Just like before, when I tried to imagine my life without Steve, or without masturbation, or without all those things. It’s like beginning that process all over again. The anxiety, the feeling of being overwhelmed, of not knowing. I feel like that all over again.

 

The good part is I’ve been here before. I know I won’t die, I know I can make it through. I know there are other ways to deal with things than to act out. That is good. It’s also good that I have a bigger support network now. I know how to make it through things. I know who I can talk to about things and how to do it. I also know that God is acutely aware of me. More than I’m even aware of sometimes. So I will make it through this. I will.

 

I will. 

 

What a difference a year makes.  As I spent my week in California last month, I was given an incredible gift:  I was able to watch my mom function within her own family system.  I've had opportunities to do this before, but was never in a place to really grasp it. I was more concerned about my own interactions with my mom to be able to see her and what she was dealing with.  But this week was different. For the first time, I truly saw the family system my mom came from and how it functions.  I watched my grandpa verbally assault and emotionally abuse all daughters. I watched my aunt emotionally shut down my mom with just a few words.  I saw, first-hand, what my life could have been like, as I interacted with my cousins, most of whom are sex offenders, drug addicts, in and out of jail, married/divorced multiple times, and just generally dysfunctional. 

 

I cried as I watched my grandpa say things to my mom that she has said to me.  Things like: You can't cry. You can't feel that way. You just need to put your own feelings aside and be happy for the family. You need to fix this. You have a responsibility to fix this. If you can't be happy, go to your room. Maybe you shouldn't be here if you can't put a smile on.

 

The gift came in the moment my mom called me crying.  As she started to explain the most recent argument and her feelings about it, I could hear myself saying some of the same things to my therapist.  She feels about her family, the same way I have felt about mine.  I am my mother's daughter. The best part was that I knew exactly what to say to her, because it is what I say to myself to talk myself down about our family.  She heard me.  She really heard me. Even when I said, your dad is an alcoholic, she listened and responded that she thought I was right. 

 

In that moment, every ounce of anger I had towards my mother disappeared. Seriously, I could feel my body relax and release the anger in a similar way I did around my dad.  Truth is: My mom is amazing. The fact that she raised us the way she did and broke as many of the dysfunctional cycles that she did is a miracle. She gave me everything she had to give. How can I be angry about that? She did everything she possibly could to be sure that we, her children, were better off than she was.  And we are! 

 

I love her more than I ever have.  When I was sick last week, I just wanted her to tell me it would be ok. I feel a mix of that childlike, pure love mixed with a big dose of compassion and reality.  She is not instantly better and I will still need to have solid boundaries, but they no longer feel like wall of separation between us. I don't feel like I'm explaining it well. I just love her. 

 

Just like I felt like the compassion, understanding and forgiveness I found for my dad was a gift of the atonement, I know that this is. My therapist would say it was a result of all the hard work that I have been doing in therapy.  But really, it's a gift from a loving Savior, with whom I have been developing a better relationship with and a greater understanding of.  It is only through his infinite atonement that I am able to forgive and also to be forgiven.  I am eternally grateful for this gift of the atonement.