distance

Sometime since Saturday I decided that this, at least in this moment, is my only option for survival.

Literally.

I feel like I'm dying trying to sort out my feelings about mum. I invest SO much time and energy being reminded of past pain that my present is dramatically affected and my potential for the future has become about managing these feelings and not about what I'm capable of achieving.

That's not mum's fault, because despite being so resentful and full of blame, I do see that we are the Masters of our own universes and where we are is where we choose to be. This is my thing. This is because I've been too scared to take myself away from what amounts to a lifetime of abuse. I don't think I'll know who I am without it, and maybe, and this thought is emerging only as I write, maybe I'm scared because without all that bitterness, what if I'm still a failure? Then it's my fault, my own failings, and I can't use the excuse that this constant crippling angst is the reason I can't make this life a successful one.

My excuse used to be my anorexia. It was a safe place to be because with it, I had a reason to spend life treading water. Ditching the emaciation meant that taking control of my destiny no longer included the permission to be less than my potential foretold. Ditching it meant that I had to face the potential to fail. Ditching it meant I had to be someone rather than be an eating disorder. In losing it, I lost my identity. The time since then have been the hardest of my life. It was easier starving to and maintaining 33 kilograms of pathetic.

Excising my mother for my life means much the same thing. Without this burden, I don't know who I am if I'm not whoever it is I am when I'm being hurt by my experience of her. Which, what? Point being, I'm scared that that once I lose the excuse I'll still be a failure.

I can't explain the money thing. It's not about money and yet, money is the issue. I think I've been afraid to cut her off before because it's the ONLY way I feel mum cares. I equated financial assistance with love. My thoughts absolutely lack definition but maybe I felt she bought stuff because she loved me. I see now that it's merely one more way in which I give her power over, if not me, then certainly aspects of my life.

I want her love but I don't, I want her financial help but don't. Mostly I don't, because it's what she promises that's so alluring. The promises rarely come through though and because I'm a moron, I allow their continuing appearance to leave me unsettled. Per essempio, in the same phone call that mum went apeshit about what an ungrateful ho I am, not five minutes earlier she'd been imploring me to come to HerTown, to stay at a health retreat and be pampered on her dime. It's the inconsistencies that fuck me up, both in love and money, I guess.

Literally the last conversation I had with my father contained something about "not believing your mother when she promises you money". Good advice considering she regularly comes out with offers of this and tells me she'll pay for that. She even promises to buy me a house at regular intervals. Fortunately that pipe dream is too big for even me to believe.

I wish I'd remembered this ridiculousness and drawn on my own experiences when she promised to fund The Project. She stood to gain though, one grandchild, over easy, so maybe that's why I trusted her? God, I am SUCH a hopeful (if by "hopeful" I mean "idiotic") fool. I guess I wanted it so much that I'll believe anything. Or maybe I get off on being let down. Either way, I really need to grow a damn brain.

ANYWAY

When mum's here I spiral down, and I'm in a worse place emotionally than I was two years ago, despite the weekly sessions with my shrink that are ALL focussed on dealing with this mess of ugh swirling around in my head. I feel like a big and giant raw nerve, and have got to a point where everything is too hard. I dont have the headspace for anything else and I feel like I'm panicking all the damn time, fortunately without the adrenaline rush but with all the chaotic thinking.

I feel so guilty too, because for Daniel's entire life, he hasn't been my primary focus. Keeping my feelings in check and struggling to be whoever it is that makes mum happy while blowing so many of my emotional resources on resenting doing so, that was...no, is my focus, which, yes. Is awesome.

My son is the most important thing in the world and I want him to be able to enjoy his world with none of my baggage sullying what should be an idyllic place full of bunnies and kittens and his mother's love.

We form ideas about ourselves based on how others respond to us, we see ourselves reflected in their reactions. That reflection though, is inherently flawed because we are inherently flawed. We can't help but display a hinky image, so what we learn of ourselves is based on another's idea of the world, we believe we are what we see, and yet what we see is as accurate a portrait of who we are as one of those freaky warped mirrors at a fun fair is of how we look.

I want to stop feeling all the time. I want to be able to process and rationalise without automatically going into high alert damage control. I want to just be me without freaking out because it isn't enough. I want to know how to plan that first step, and I want to just be who I am.

And yes. For that, I need distance.