Free Fall

Do you ever feel like you were walking and then all of a sudden the floor is ripped open from under you and all of a sudden you are in free fall, not sure which way is up and which way is down? Well, that’s exactly how I feel right now.

Ever since the big fight with my mom and my fiancé transpired, things were a bit rocky at first and then gradually, they started to get better. We were quite a ways away from being back to how we all used to be but we were on the right path. Today, all of that changed.

There have been some fights here and there but I’ve been working hard on how I react to things and haven’t allowed those fights to become anything more then just arguments in their initial states. However, I am human and sometimes things just trigger me and I can’t help but snap.

Growing up, my mom was often snippy and curt with me and at the time I thought it was just out of nowhere or that I have messed up in some way or other. Well, now I know better. All thoughtout her life, she was always going through something stressful and these things would take a toll on her nervous system and as always, I was the scapegoat. At this point her nervous system is so fried that I am not even sure we can ever get to a good place again considering we can’t even seem to be able to calmly talk things out without her hyperventilating or screaming her head of or crying buckets.

At the moment we are going through something particularly difficult, especially for my mom. My grandma is not doing well with her cancer and she is all the way in Russia so it’s extremely stressful. We are all coping with this in our own way.

Today my mom announced to me that she will be delivering the renewal passport applications to the post office, weather I’ve done them or not. She has been asking me to fill it out for a few days already but since I rarely have a moment to myself without kids climbing on me or making a mess somewhere, I wasn’t able to get it done. In response, I asked her if she could hold off for one more day to which she got angry and replied with a firm no. Oftentimes my mom gets these notions into her head and she needs to do something NOW. And even if it came out of nowhere and somebody isn’t ready, she will make that person sorry they failed her so horrifically. And don’t even think about trying to reason with her, that’s a language she is not accustomed to and will just say that you are bullshitting, even if your reasoning is on point.

So, after the kids are done with school and naps, she storms down demanding her stapler, which apparently I’ve misplaced or lost and for which she is pissed off at me. After I find it, she is working on putting all the applications together and makes one of her negative remarks. I think in this instance it was something about her not being able to live with us anymore and how she is going to move out. I’ve heard all of this so many times before and at this point I usually just roll my eyes and walk away but something prompted me to continue the conversation. Perhaps it had something to do with my desire for everyone to get along and my undying hope that we can fix this and should do anything in our power to do so.

I ask her a question about when we are going to talk about our fight and something triggers her to reply in a very mean and negative way and from there things just took on a life of their own. I tried to talk about things in a very calm and understanding manner but I was met with nothing but ridicule and negativity. She started hyperventilating and freaking out like she does when people don’t say things like how she believes them to be and screaming like a banshee. I was terrified for my kids to have witnessed a person literally be driven mad for no legitimate reason.

Then all of a sudden, at the height of her tantrum, she sees the kids and says out loud, “she is a blank space, don’t pay attention to her. She is just baiting you.” I stood there in shock, all I wanted was to have a calm talk with her and I wanted to be heard by her, finally, for the first time in my life. She proceeds to ignore me as I’m pleading with her to talk to me and to hear me out. At one point I try to get her attention by standing in the doorway and she literally pushes me and I am slammed against the wall.

And this is what really pissed me off above everything else, as she is ignoring and killing me with her treatment towards her own daughter, she talks to my kids as if nothing is wrong. As if their mother isn’t coming apart at the seams, sobbing her head off and wondering what she ever did to deserve that kind of disregard for her as a human being. This really upsets me and I go up to her and say, “Oh no, don’t talk to the kids as if nothing is wrong when you can’t even pay attention to what I am trying to say to you.” Her reaction of, “really?”, totally does me in because it’s unbelievable. They are a part of me and Mike and you have some kind of personal vendetta against us that you can’t get through? How about you work on that salvaging that relationship before the circumstances turn out dire for everyone.

She left, slamming the door and telling me that she is moving to a family friend’s place. This kind of hurt is unbearable. If it wasn’t for my kids, I would not be able to stay on this earth and continue living this nightmare. I think it’s true what they say, we were put on this earth to fulfill a purpose and I think mine has to do with overcoming my relationship with my mother and either healing myself from her or something like that.

She keeps saying that what Mike did to her was unforgivable but I’m pretty sure that everything short of murder is forgivable. It just goes to show how important mental health is, once it’s out of balance and damaged, you can’t really get it back. I am beyond fearful that at this point, especially with how far things have progressed, that we can never fix what has been broken. My mom is who she is and it’s extremely difficult for her to open her mind up enough to see things from others perspectives.

This incident has stressed me out beyond anything and at this point I am realizing that getting a house together with my mom has been a dire mistake and at this point it’s more of a curse then anything else. I need to be able remove myself from her to be able to be truly happy but that’s not possible in the current circumstances. I pray that God will give me the strength to get through this and to ultimately deal with this once and for all. I can’t go on living like this, I just can’t.

And I realize, I did not handle the situation in the best way possible either but I am only human and there’s a kind of hurt you just can’t tolerate no matter how hard you try. At this point, I just need to focus on working through the damage that has been caused so that I do not repeat the same thing with my daughter.

Insecurities and Accusations

Wow, what a productive session we just had, especially the last 30 minutes of it. For the first time since this whole incident with the car I feel hope that we can eventually all move foreward from this and have even a closer/stronger bond with each other. I was not feeling like this at the beginning of the session but I definitely feel like this now.

My mom is still downtown, staying at her condo, so we had a three way Skype session which didn’t start off too great. I found out earlier that my mom was still stuck in the whole, “throwing things that she’s done for us in our face when we’re going through some sort of conflict” thing. Basically, the accusations that Mike made against my mom, weren’t really based on fact and conspired mostly because Mike got upset and had a lot of negative feelings to communicate towards my mom on behalf of himself and me as well. Let me point out that my mom and Mike have never had a direct conversation with each other in that way.

So, she can’t move on from this whole incident because she feels that we are using how much Mike is worried about me and my relationship with my mom as a bandaid to not discuss and talk through specifically the accusations that were made against her by Mike. What she is finding difficult to understand is that Mike didn’t mean all the accusations he made against her because she doesn’t want anything like this to happen in the future. I don’t know what it will take for her to understand that Mike actually didn’t mean what he said on account of her and what he accused her off. It seems my mom is not believing many things that we are saying and trying to communicate in terms of this whole fight, which is actually not very new for her because she doesn’t believe most of the stuff I say anyways.

Halfway through the session, she got really upset about me bringing up her saying little “remarks” in a passive aggressive way and how much they hurt and bother me. She actually got so upset about them that she outright left the session and I was just one-on-one with Lisa at that point. That last half with Lisa was really helpful though and I was able to understand where my mom is coming from, at least partially. I can understand her getting upset by me bringing up her little remarks because she’s been working hard to improve this and not do it as much. I have seen an improvement in her doing it less definitely, it’s just something that was inevitably brought up during the huge blow out argument because things tend to come to the surface when emotions are running high.

Lisa also brought up a very good point, that what usually triggers us and makes us more emotional or upset in some way, usually happens because it addresses something in ourselves that we are either insecure or feel negatively about in some way. For example, my mom’s remarks about me being a bad mom really hurts me more then anything else that she says does because I am insecure in my own success or failure as a parent. Being a mom has by far been the hardest thing I have ever had to go through or do in my life and for this reason it’s still very new and I am trying to figure things out as I go along. I question myself all the time, “Am I doing enough social things with the kids?”, “Do other moms struggle as much as I do?”, “Are my kids hindered in some way because of how many temper tantrums they throw daily?”…..the list goes on and on. My mom actually wanted back into the conversation but Lisa called her at the end instead to share what I shared with her about how I feel about being a mom.

All in all, it was a very good step in the right direction and I hope that we just keep making progress towards improving everyone’s interaction and relationships with each other. Also, we came to the conclusion that Mike needs to be part of these sessions as well because he is a big part of this family and can benefit from this as well.

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