Help Me! My Baby Has Fallen Down a Well!!!!

It is pretty obvious, in the gently process of deduction, that my mother was a kind, sweet and nurturing soul to her children, when not whiplashed by the interspatial wicked nature of the madness that nature and nurture bestowed upon her.  I say this, this surety of her good nature, even as memory fails, as I am all those things with my children and I had to have gotten it somewhere.  My father was never those things, nor is he today in most respects, but I am pretty sure my mother was at some point.  

As best I can recollect, piece together and generally speculate, she began to slip into the warm clothes of generalized madness sometime after my first two siblings were born.  I know she was in and out of mental facilities and other inpatient hospitals for severe depression and delusional behavior.  My only real source for information is my father, and he is extremely protective of my thoughts towards my mother.  He would never want me to think that my mother was nearly as crazy as she obviously has become. He means well, but it bothers me to some degree.  My feelings about my mother in the years when she was around vacillate between an manufactured memory of sweetness and goodness and the rolling, creeping snippets of my real memory, where insanity ruled the roost.  I don't trust my memories any longer, and more try to breathe in an acceptance that I will never truly know more than a guttural feeling that its was rampant craziness, and that I got spun up in it.  The simple truth of the fact is that my mother didn't suddenly become a full blown toxic Borderline Personality after she left my childhood home.  


In the years that followed, BPD ran her over, and everyone else around her.  She married a couple of times, joined many New Age and Holistic/Homeopathic groups, never staying long in any single one, but all and each having the underlying characteristics of paranoia, delusional thinking and a lack of logic and common sense to them.  Crystals, blue algae, ethers...  who the hell knows what other crocks she bought into.  I know that it was very likely the ready made communities of the weak and the vulnerable that she could infect with the poison of her BPD that made it truly attractive to flit from one nut group to the next.  :(


As for me, she played out the same routine.  Blame me for the fact that we didn't have a relationship.  Manipulate me into defending why I didn't call/write/send telegrams, and then infect me with her poison.  I wish there was a nicer way to put that, but it never, ever changed.  She attacked, and infected.  Manipulated and toxified.  I finally gave up on it 5 years ago, where I flew out west to see her, told her that if she didn't stop that pattern I would not talk to her any more and then came back to my hotel the next morning to an email playing it all out again.  I replied in that email that I wouldn't talk to her any more.  I am at peace with that, I really am, because I can't let myself be infected.  It made my life so hard and it would wreck me for months.  Accepting that she was who I knew she was, a full on, raging BPD is peace, but it still sucks.


Being manipulated, or having my emotions manipulated is a core trigger for me.  It makes me rage beyond all measure and fires the full force of my limbic cannon.  I can close my eyes and realize that I can call upon being a very young child and having felt the tug of disbelief of being used as an emotional pin cushion.  I know that, and it makes me sad now and sad that I still act that out as an adult.  I want that to be better.   I've been cursed and abused by some wicked crazy people and it pisses me off.  Maybe I am just admitting my anger at the raw deal I've been handed.  I have a tendency to pragmatize these things and just sorta gloss it over with the "what can you do" look, and I don't think that is the healthy approach.  But I am deciding to be consciously pissed about that fact in this moment.  I find that I don't stay angry once I am angry.  I would like some real peace about my loss and grief, maybe being outwardly pissed off is a progressive step in getting through the gates of mourning. 

The Tide is Neigh And I'm Mooning On.

So much to say, so much to say, so much to say.  I am having that moment, where I have a million things to say, but no thread upon which to tug to find my voice.  So, I take the advice of an old writer friend of mine, and "sit your ass in the chair and write".   It was a better day than almost any I've had in the previous year, absent the 30 days or so I've been seeking help.  That said, it was a moderately mentally and emotionally challenging one, mainly as work has seen the tide rise and the demands on my time, effort and brain cycles rise to a higher ebb.  It is nothing in terms of the stress I would have taken on in my corporate salad days 5 years ago, but it is still fairly heady.  I am being asked to champion to some corporate masters the fruit of my work in the next two weeks.  The good news is that my corporate masters are generally very intelligent and very open to "big ideas" and as such my élan will sweep them away.  Or something like that.  Lots of hard work to get there, but I am feeling the righteousness of the cause and that is lightening the load.  

I reached out to a fellow member of Al-Anon this evening for a chat.  It was very nice, and very rewarding to hear so much, in so much detail all the things I do, I've done and the hope for the future.  I've known that my compulsions are the sign of a weakened psychological state, not some addiction, and it was heartening to hear so much of the same from my friend.  We spoke about being in touch with feelings and being there for our kids and our partners.  It felt and feels so good to be heard.  I am very grateful for both my friend and the courage it took for me to reach out, cause I don't need anyone.  Or something like that.

I finally spoke with the parental units last night.  I've not spoken with them since the balloon dropped.  They've been worried sick, as they've gotten word of the situation and I know they care deeply about all of us here.  My father, much more emotional than I've ever heard let me know that he loved me and that he knew exactly what I was going through.  I knew that he did, but it felt better to hear it directly.  I was ruing calling, because I felt so ashamed.  He just told me to do what I needed to do and make things right if that's what I needed to and that no matter what, they would support all of us.  I knew these things, but it broke my heart to hear my father tell me that he loved me, cause I don't think I've heard it before, to be totally honest.  My step-mom, a wonderful person, explained that she knew what we were going through, from both sides of the equation, and that she wanted me in particular to work on fixing me.  Nothing else.  They've known how deeply I've been suffering since the cancer, something my Dad has alluded to occasionally, but have felt powerless to help.   I am still swimming in emotions on this, and I feel that I just need to let it be, and to just let myself feel loved, like gentle waves crashing on the rocks.