After dealing with a painful neck injury my mother became depressed when I was a teenager. She and I lived alone, after a divorce from my father and my sisters early departure to live with my dad. She had friends but somehow I still had to deal with way too much of her pain. When I was 16, she came to me one day and told me that she wanted to end her life by jumping in front of a bus. I was devastated, scared, and hurt. I cried, she cried, it was not a pretty sight. She came out unscathed by a bus, or anything else, but then as time went by she struck again. Several times she repeated this pattern and each time I became less fearful and more resentful, though the pain was still intolerable. Finally, I came my breaking point. One fateful day she did it again. What was my response, I kid you not, "Shit or get off the pot. I can not take this anymore!".
Strangely, she was uber angry with me, but it stopped; at least it did for several years.
Then, she added ailments to her list; diabetes, kidney failure, congestive heart failure. She could not write cohesive sentences, but thought that what she wrote was so profound. Her thought were incoherent, her mind a mess. Bouncing from one end of the spectrum to the other, you never knew which version of "Mom" you were going to get. One day the sourest lemons were lemonade, the next day - or next minute, the sweetest lemonade was the sourest lemons. She said things about wanting to end her life in front of my children, she was angry, bitter and hurtful. She wanted to save the world with Oprah. She accused of everyone trying to victimize her and managed to convince most people that was the truth. She tried to jump out of my car while moving if I said the least little thing that didn't fit into her picture of reality. I watched in abject horror as she frivolously spent money on things she didn't need - or really have the money for. I tried to convince my family that she needed to have someone put in charge of her affairs and her health. They over-ruled me, but not before she accused every single on of them of trying to destroy her - somehow I was immune.
After several attempts to make her get the help she needed, going through the Adult Protection services and such, she finally got a prescription that evened her out. I told her, without a doubt, she HAD to remain on regimen of drugs or I was out of her life for good. But after 60 years of mania, who would like boring average, right? So like any good mental health patient she decided she didn't need those meds any more. She became increasingly manic (and mean - I might add) and I knew something was up. After confirming with my sister, I became increasingly cautious with my children.
After a particularly random statement, of me asking her if she was taking ALL of her meds, she threw the world's largest temper tantrum in which she told me she would never do anything with me or for me again -even if I begged real hard. Finally, she went there. Disowned! I told you I wouldn't stick around and I meant it. Don't you dare try to hurt me and my family, it ain't gunna happen on my watch! Crap though, her 'memory' must be even faultier than I thought because she calls the next day acting like nothing ever happened and wants to talk to me and my kids. I tell her no and she is angry. Then she comes over unannounced a couple days later arriving when I have a friend there helping me with replacing my floors, but I have left to go get something. She bursts in the house without asking permission and begins to talk trash about me to my friend, in my house! He texts me a warning and I show up to remove the unwanted intrusion.
I arrive home and usher her outside where she states that she wants to know what is going on with the kids, though she hasn't really asked much about them any more than she has asked questions about anyone other than her in the last lifetime. I remind her again that she has disowned me and therefore she is not in the need to know seating section. She hurls obscenities and foul statements of the supposed atrocities that I have committed against her and tromps away and I was again left with the traumatic effects of her disease. Months go by, I see her once or twice in public and say only the briefest, "hi" to not make a scene before disappearing. I have no desire to be burned again, or to even think about it. Life goes on.
Then she calls today. I made the mistake of answering the phone. No apology, no acknowledgement, nothing. It is all about her, all 30 some-odd minutes of conversation (or should I say monologue). Her birthday party, her new house, her computer someone supposedly tampered with to prevent her from accessing the internet, her new bestie (which is apparently her twin separated by birth - unless you count their viscious argument surrounding the concept of turquoise as more than one shade *boring*), her car's new air-conditioner. It took three attempts to make her listen to one of the few statements I made - of, "you think it's rough to not have air in your car for a few days, try your house for over a year!". Three times!
Then somehow things got onto finances, and she stated that she tried to protect me from the money worries she had when I was a teenager because I was too young to have to worry about those things...
WHAT???
(Insert sound of someone scratching a record player in the hurried attempt to stop the music)
Oh NO - you did not just say that! This is the same time period that I started with in this blog! WTF?!?
So apparently it is okay to tell your child that you want to jump in front of a bus, but not okay to tell them you are worried about money. (Which by the way I knew all too well about anyways).
Well, I guess I'm back on the Sh#t list because she hung up on me.
My Momma is my Drama... you see what I mean?
