I Am Not Leaving My Mom

I Am Not Leaving My Mom
My mother is not well; among other things she has had a stroke, stints in her coronary arteries, and mysterious blood loss. I am trying to get on my own feet and out of the house. I am catching a lot of flack about trying to get out of the house at a time when my mom is going to be eventually come home. Try to understand that if I cannot stand on my own, what will happen to me if my mom passes away? I must be able to stand up and take care of myself. I do not want to be penniless, homeless, and dependent on others. It is not wrong for me to be thinking of taking care of myself now because if I can’t take care of myself, I can’t be there for, or take care of my mother.

I am not leaving my mother. I will still be here to take care of her when I am needed. I plan to share the care of our mom with my brother. I would never just walk away from the woman who has supported me my whole life, and especially for the last 5+ years since I had to move back in with her. She supports my decision to get on my own feet. She supports my decision to follow my heart and get my MFA.

I AM NOT STUPID, are you listening Dad?

So many years ago I finally shed the label of stupid that I felt both of my parents, but especially my father, had put on me. I shed it and I knew myself to be smart, very smart. Then a few days ago my father and I are talking and he is going on about smoking, bugging me about it, pissing me off, making me more determined to smoke, and he says that smoking makes me stupid. Now he doesn’t say I’m stupid once, or even twice, but four times he says smoking is making me stupid. And there I was, that eight year old who felt useless and stupid and incapable of anything. I was lost again; I lost hold of who I know I am. It hurt, oh God did it hurt. I had to go and talk to the Is to ask why, why would my father want me to feel bad about myself?
I am so tired of feeling bad about myself. I begin to feel better about me, I make progress and then the word stupid can pull me back to a place I no longer want to be or even belong.
Do you want to know what I think is stupid, staying married for over 30 years to a woman who treats everyone like shit, who makes you choose between her and your oldest daughter, who is so awful verbally and emotionally to her own kids her son’s suicide note says he hates her. That is stupid. He is stupid to stay with her. I think he feels as bad about himself as he wants me to feel about myself. The difference is I realize I don’t feel good about me and I am taking steps to change. I have changed. I reject the labels of shame, and other negative labels that my father and my family have placed upon me, fuck them. I am smart, I am pretty, and I am capable. I’ve been stagnating someplace safe, but I am working to change that as quickly as possible.
I am changing my life now and every minute.

Suicidal thoughts

The title might make you think I am feeling suicidal right now, I am not, much. I want to write about a couple of things related to suicidal feelings, first is that I have realized that I have done something similar to what my mother used to do, tell people that I am thinking of it hoping they will save me. The second is that on some level, at all times, I am somewhat suicidal. I think about death a lot. I feel like escaping my life so very often, if people knew how often, I might be locked up forever.

I do not like my life, my past, my present, and what my future looks like from here, of course no one really knows what the future holds. I want to escape all of my debt. I want to escape all of my fears and anxieties. I want to escape my compulsions. I want to escape my alters. I just want to be myself, free of the baggage I have been dragging around for so long.

But, and this is a big but, if i leave this life, I lose friends, I lose the family I have chosen for myself. I would lose so much that is good in my life.

I am working with, and sometimes against, a therapist that specializes in the kind of things I think and feel, with PTSD, DID, OCD, and anxieties of all kinds. I have faith that she can teach me to overcome the crap and get on with my life.

I have realized that one reason I feel like I am still living my past is that since my brother moved in with us, I have been afraid I will do or say the wrong thing and set him off causing the anger and violence he holds just under the surface to come out. I am basically afraid he is going to hit or beat me, which is what I grew up with, never knowing if Dad was going to hug or to hit. Being afraid sucks and so far I haven't learned how not to be afraid.

It is not surprising really that I think of death so often, it seems like the perfect escape from this life I am so tired of. My other escape is going to therapy, doing what I am asked to do or try, going to group, and sharing with others like me. I have a very hard time letting go of my brother's suicide. It affects much of what I do and feel.