Not really but it is a hard month-Christmas dealing with family, the loss of my husband on the 27th, the dealing with family issues over stressful holidays and the damn cold weather. I am not a cold weather person. My answer to cold is to lay in the bed under covers and watch my cat sleep, watch 24, read or sleep. I become very hermity. Of course, in the summer, I lay on a lounge chair by the pool and read so really same difference.
My mood is much more level. I have started taking my antidepressant at 5:30 instead of 9:00 and it is making a huge difference. I am not sure why but I am not quite as tired. I have not had any panic attacks, crying or suicidal thoughts. All good. I still have a certain amount of lethagry but it has been only about six weeks since the attempt and since I got back from my misadventures over seas. It might just take some time.
I have still been going to therapy with my mother and it has been fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. It is like I thought I was in this certain landscape my whole life and I realize I was actually in a different one. I have resentment and anger and hurt more than I ever knew and I also have learned my childhood was not the way I thought it was. My social worker at the hospital said I had to have been abused somewhere in my past and it really scared me. I have never been physically abused. Never sexually abused that I remember but I do feel I was emotionally abused.
I have discovered that both of my parents were emotionally unavailable. When I tell people my parents are divorced, they kinda wince and say "Lots of fighting, huh?" Actually no. My parents never fought. We were a household of ice and silence. Feelings were not allowed. Anger was definitely not allowed. My parents just froze each other out and also, by extension, my sister and I. Even now, when I get angry or one of the kids gets mad, my mother leaves the room. She simply can not handle it.
I was reading a website this evening about emotional abuse: http://eqi.org/eabuse1.htm#Minimizing and it has been fascinating. I match many of the characteristics of adults of emotionally abused and I feel absurdly guilty already. Emotional abuse is nothing. I have never been molested or hit. I didn't have parents that drank or did drugs in front of us. I am luckier than many but....I did have parents that could not handle emotion. They could not handle love or personal interactions.
One of things they talk about is denial. With my father, there is no real discussion. He just ices out anything he doesn't want to hear. He shuts you down and that is that. With my mother, though, she says horribly cruel things and then denies she says it. I always thought I was going mad as a child. She would just say things and then deny she ever said it or I took it wrong. When I was pregnant with my second child, she said, "I can't believe how selfish you are-to bring a child in this world when his father is going to die!" Yet, she denies she ever said it. It is so. Well, I am wordless. Imagine being a child and thinking you might be going insane because your mother denies her own statements.
I finally talked to my sister about it and she admitted that she felt the same way. She finally has just stopped Mom about some things because Mom would never admit to her part in the discussions. I don't know why it took so long for us to even talk about it but it so freeing to know it was not just me.
So, finally as an adult, I am starting to realize none of my feelings of personal rejection were valid. I was being rejected because they simply could not do better. They couldn't give me what I needed and, as an adult, I no longer have to take that rejection personally. I can look at it objectively and free myself from that scared 8 year old that needed to know why no one talked about anything in the house. I can free myself from the child that couldn't understand why her parents weren't like other parents or wasn't allowed to express herself. I can free myself from the anger and confusion and sadness I felt when I realized our family was different but couldn't quite figure out why. I am not like my parents. I am doing a better job parenting emotionally than them (I am sure my mother would disagree). I am no longer a scared, frightened, confused child.
Our joint therapist has said my mother is very limited. My other therapist said she will never change but she is manipulative and emotionally cold. My job is to accept that. I am not sure why I was in such angst about it. I think it is because I thought she was rejecting me but it might be that I was changing and she was staying the same. She wasn't rejecting me. I was rejecting her way of interacting with me. I need more. I don't want to relive my childhood and I honestly feel like I am living with her. I have retrained myself not to look for her approval or worry about her moods or accept her criticisms as valid. It is so difficult and so hard. I sometimes feel like my eight year old self wanting to cry out, "Just tell me what is going on? Why don't you love me?" My task is accept the eight year old self but move on. Talk to her like an adult and realize she simply can't love me the way I want. It is not my fault but hers. Totally hers.
It is really hard to write that sentence. My mother is suppose to love unconditionally and deeply. When your own mother can't love you like that, then it has to be you right? No. It has to be her.
She told me she felt I was being possessed by Satan or at least hounded by demons. This is not the first time she has said this to me. It is weird because we are Methodist. We don't even believe in Satan! OK. I'll stop trying to use humor to deflect. I didn't even get mad. I just snickered quietly to myself. She would rather me be possessed by Satan than admit there might be actual mental problems with me-some stemming from childhood. She wants to cure me-exorcise my demons-but not have it be messy with feelings and emotions. And you know what? My heart aches for her. What is a world where you repress your feelings to the point that your child is suffering and you still can't reach out? How bleak and scary is that world? Desolate and frightening? I really can not imagine and I am so glad I can not. I feel. I feel too much sometimes but thank God I do have feelings and express them. I am sad today. Yesterday, I was content. Tomorrow, I will be frustrated Christmas shopping. My mother could never admit any of the previous three sentences.
I will talk more at length about this but my therapist quit today. It is so frustrating. Damn frustrating. I am going to try to go back to a former therapist but I already miss her.
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