It’s just past five in the morning and I have been up since
three and even before that, my night has been restless. So many things going
through my head that I just can’t sleep. I can’t get the internal loop of
dialogue to quiet down and so, after fighting the urge to write it all out for
almost two hours, here I am, in a quiet house trying to purge myself of the
screaming voices that are shattering the silence.
It all comes down to one person. We all have that one person
in our lives who seems to drain us of every positive emotion and then
effortlessly and skillfully fill our spirits with such toxic debris. For years,
I have dressed myself in an emotional hazmat suit whenever we see each other or
interact, and still, each time, I need hours if not days to decontaminate from
the experience.
It’s difficult to spend time in the presence of or be open
to a person who seems to perfume themselves in misery and unhappiness. I also
don’t understand people like that. I know we all have our down moments and
times of wallowing. I have been very open about a lot of mine over the past few
years. But even in the depth of all of that, I still struggled to not let it
define me. I don’t understand people who choose not only to live their lives in
anger and guilt, but who choose to hold onto it with all their might in fear
they will lose the very thing that is making them miserable.
I know that often times when people are negative or critical
of others, it is not really abut the person they are being negative towards, it
is about themselves. Logically, I know this. Emotionally, the nuclear fallout
from people like that is still devastating. It is hard enough when I am the
brunt of it. Harder still when I see others I love being attacked with such
shocking brutality.
Normally, I distance myself from people like that. I cut
them out and don’t give them the power to influence my life at all. One quote I
love is “Not my monkeys. Not my circus.” I’ve been repeating it as my mantra
over the past twelve hours. My advice to anyone dealing with someone like that
is to get away, as far away as possible and never look back. But I don’t know
how to do that with this person. I want to. I know I need to. What makes it
difficult is that the person is my mom.
This is not some random fight or isolated event. This has
been going on for decades. I have tried to be passive and see if it will work
itself out. I have tried every tactic from every book and lesson I’ve had. I
have tried ignoring it. Confronting it. Distancing myself physically. Pleading.
Reasoning. Bargaining. I don’t know what else to do. A few weeks ago we had an
argument over the phone. A few days later, she told me I have a heart filled
with anger and hate and she worries for me. I spent days examining myself,
wondering if indeed I am a hate-filled person. I questioned if I do really have
an angry heart. I questioned my integrity and cut my way through the jungle of
guilt. Guilt I felt for things I had nothing to do with but she manages to take
me there all the time.
I examined my relationships with the other people in my
life. My sisters and I haven’t had an argument in well over a decade, and the
last time things were event emotionally tense was when my dad passed away,
which is understandable. Our emotions were frayed and right on the surface. But
even then, it blew over in a matter of minutes. In over fifteen years and even
going through a divorce, Ulco and I never really had a huge fight. We had
disagreements, but we worked them out quickly. Jan, my stepmom, and I haven’t had
an argument or even upset words in well over a decade. My friend Ken, who I
have known for almost thirty years and I have never had an argument. And he an
I can both be stubborn and emotionally charged people. The only person that
seems to bring up anger in me is my mom.
I have also noticed she likes to bring up anger. She loves
guilt. She loves to be the victim. Anything said that she doesn’t like or agree
with somehow gets turned into the fact that she was a bad mother. Her words,
not mine. The last time she said that to me on the phone a few weeks ago, I
finally said “yeah, you were.”
Yesterday, she handed me a very long, hand-written letter,
which I knew would be a bad idea to read, but I did. And the letter she wrote
my sister was worse by a factor of ten, at least. I got through mine. I only
scanned a few sentences of hers.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to respond. I want
to and I don’t want to. I know it won’t do any good. I have been here before.
Countless times. Each time, I think and let myself believe that maybe that will
be the time. That will be the moment there is a breakthrough. For years, I
wondered what was wrong with me. I wondered what I did to bring out that side
of someone. Now, I see that she does it to everyone in her life.
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