FUBAR and Then Some

Spoke to my mother who, in addition to having legitimate reasons to be upset, is out of her fucking mind. She is furious with me and doesn't understand where i'm coming from in the slightest. She couldn't because i've never given her any insight but she is looking at things in such an absurdly twisted way that i know logic won't penetrate anyhow. So here's to you, Mom:

Dear Mom,

You are hurt and you feel betrayed and abandoned. i get that. i'm sorry that the path i needed to take did that to you. You say i was wrong to leave so i'm going to give you some background information and see if things might look just a bit different to you. You say you don't understand why i've kept secrets from you. Well i'm ready to answer that. It's because you will respond by stressing yourself to the point of physical illness, narrating the exact nature of your malady to me every step of the way so as to ensure that i feel like total shit for causing it. You will use the information to create additional problems and do nothing to alleviate any existing ones with it in the way of offering unconditional support or love. Why would i possibly want to tell you anything stressful. Keeping secrets has spared us both.

When i was twelve and told you i was suicidal, finally getting up the nerve to reveal to you the depth of my pain, you had the sage motherly advice of "stop being an idiot". Wow, i didn't come back for more over the years after your imparting those pearls of wisdom? Imagine that. i remember it so vividly. i was so screwed up after Daddy died, more socially insecure than ever, and without the slightest help as far as how to cope other than hiding it. First it came out physically and i wound up with all sorts of stomach and bowel ailments. Then it went to an emotional level and it turned inward. There was what was for me at the time a huge upset in the restructuring of who was going to sit at which table in the school cafeteria at lunchtime. i was sure that i'd be without the few friends i felt i had and was genuinely considering harming myself. How did you help me through that one again, Mom? Oh yes! "Don't be an idiot". We were in the car when you said it, the gold Pontiac Grand Le Mans and driving past Goldman Bros. which made me think of Daddy since he'd worked there for a little while. Do you even remember this? Or was learning that your daughter is suicidal and calling her an idiot so uneventful to you that it slipped your mind?

i spent the time from when i was ten hurting myself in different ways and struggling to cope with absolutely no help whatsoever. There were teachers who saw and knew, especially those who read the poems i wrote which spoke directly to killing myself. Did they ever contact you? Did anyone anywhere ever think to rescue me from myself? i burned myself and cut myself in minor ways and grew up in more pain than i would wish on anyone, pain i still have today because i've never learned how to channel it effectively or appropriately. At eight, i rode the school bus home every day absolutely petrified that the house would be empty when i got there and i'd have no way of every finding you again. i was in such a panic by the time i arrived home. i can still feel it just in recollection.

And remember Daddy's father? At the Rusk Institute when we were there visiting Daddy in the hospital one weekend, he took me aside and told me he loved me. Wow! i was floored for a second since no one ever said that to me, including you, until he finished his sentence. "Lissa, i love you very much... but i'd love you more if you were thin." This is what he said to an eight year old coping with her father's stroke. What he said is not your fault although it's my sense that you knew what an idiot he was and should have known better than top leave me alone with him even for those few minutes. But for me to have grown up feeling so unsafe with you that i couldn't even take that sort of hurt to you is unconscionable. i have never felt safe my entire life and i don't today. i've never been safe.

i learned to act as if no one could make me hurt and then go off on my own and punish myself for the wrongs i surely must of done or simply to focus the emotional pain and drown in out with much more tolerable physical pain. i taught myself to go somewhere in my head when i needed too escape and i got good at it. i still do that to this day though less now than i did at some points in my life. When they describe how multiple personality disorder begins, i've always felt as if they were describing my travels within my head. One psychologist described them as almost psychotic at the time i was seeing him. But what's a little psychosis as long as i don't bother anyone with the burden of my feeling like shit and needing for someone... anyone... maybe even... i don't know... my MOTHER to tell me i wasn't?

You know what? i really thought i'd forgiven you for all of this and i think i truly had until now, until you kicked up so many of those old feelings. Your parents raised you in less than ideal ways and you did the best you could. You tried to improve on what they did and didn't hurt me physically as they had hurt you. You were not much older than i am now and were coping with Daddy's stroke and eventual death and all that went along with them as a parent who had relied exclusively upon him to handle income and finances. i grew up enough eventually to see you as a person and understand that you acted without malice and did your best. i was in my late twenties by the time i understood that and we got close. We had been close since then and i let go of all the anger i had toward you regarding how you raised me.

Fast forward about fifteen years and my life was spinning totally out of control. The self-injuries i'd caused myself as a kid have given way to hacking out self-deprecating sayings into my flesh with razor blades. You should see the scars on my stomach... nothing but layer after layer after layer of assertions as to how much i suck. They are hard to read at this point with so much overlapping scare tissue but you can still pick out some of the words if you peruse it carefully. And let's not forget the most recent "ALL BAD ALWAYS" which is still fresh enough to see easily. Of course i could have told you about this or even showed you the cuts but somehow being called a moron again or advised to stop being an idiot didn't hold much appeal. No, you didn't speak to me like that any time recently because i'd reached a point at which i'd refused to tolerate it and remain in your life. When i was getting thin and at least somewhat healthy, i'd also learned to set forth a standard of how i would allow others to treat me. It didn't erase the damage done to that lonely hurting little girl though. Nothing ever will.

So i come to find myself, with the very best of intentions, married to the nicest man in the world and thinking myself healthy enough to be his wife and a mother to two boys with a past which makes it look as if i was raised by Ward and June Cleaver. i tried my damnedest to make it work. i tried through the Shane's psychotic break and his burning me with the bared light bulb and coming at me with knives and threatening to kill my in my sleep and punching me and bruising me and terrorizing me in any number of ways. i tried through all of Ethan's psychiatric issues too. i tried while professionals blamed me for not being for them what i was incapable of being and providing the type of environment i'd never lived in and didn't have the first clue how to create. i tried while i doubled my weight and cut myself and planned my own death.

But there's even more to it than that. my thinking got so crazy at times that it wasn't just myself i thought about killing. i was convinced that i couldn't leave you so i considered killing you and then myself. i was convinced that i couldn't leave the dogs so i considered doing the same with them. And sometimes when things were just so bleak the ides of killing Shane or both boys actually made sense to me. i have told most people to whom i've wanted to explain that i left because i was afraid i'd kill myself. The truth is, i was more afraid of killing someone else and becoming a news headline and a self-fulfilling prophecy of evolving into the evil being that i've always seen myself as.

i've been hospitalized on a locked psychiatric unit. You didn't know that either, did you? And yet i'm sane enough to know that getting out of a living situation that's making me suicidal and homicidal is a good idea. my psychiatrist agreed it was a good idea and he has known me for well over a decade already. i trust him and that's saying a lot since i tend not to trust anyone, another result of growing up in the emotional climate i did.

Now you profess to know, Mom, that i was wrong to leave. Does any of that information maybe shed just a bit more light in things for you? Do you think that just maybe you might be wrong here? And of course you also know better than i do where i should be living if it's not with Jason and the boys. i think you mentioned New Jersey. Yes, going to a closer state where i know absolutely no one would have been infinitely better than being a few hours further and with someone whom i know and trust. Good call there, Mom! i wasn't capable of being entirely independent and i'm still not. It's not a goal of mine either. i do know that if i'd stayed too close, like on Long Island as you stated, i'd have given in to a bout of loneliness or guilt and put myself back in the lethal situation from which i've finally extricated myself. It wasn't an option. i needed to get away and stay away and that meant putting some distance between myself and New York.

For the record, i don't see things any differently now, two months later. i did what i had to do and i don't regret my actions in the slightest despite my hating that they have visited hardship upon others. i have to believe it is lesser hardship than if i had remained with the mentality i just described to you. What would my suicide have done to you? To the boys and Jason? What about my snapping entirely and committing a murder? i only survived as long as i did because i'd known since the fall that i was leaving. Even with that knowledge, i barely made it. i was in that much emotional pain.

So you have the nerve to take this out on the same boys you berate me for leaving? You belittle me for what you call abandoning them and then refuse their calls yourself. They were upset that they couldn't get in touch with you yesterday and your conduct was shameful. Take your problems with me out on me, not on them! How dare you? And your justification would have been laughable if it hadn't related to their upset. i left New York just days before you got out of the rehab and returned home. You have the fucking nerve to play victim for them or Jason not having called you when you got home? Do you think that maybe my leaving and all the ensuing emotional and financial turmoil might have trumped a social call to you? My God, how selfishly can you view things?

As i said on the phone, i will wait until you are ready to stop prioritizing your happiness ahead of my health. And that's not selfish either. The state of my mental health was at a point where it was in danger of compromising the safety of others. This is in your hands now. You've still got a daughter. You've never been without one. i'm on the cusp of turning forty so i guess we've had a good run. If i no longer have a mother then that is the result of your decision, not mine. Hey, a mother turning her back on her child! Now where have i heard that before?

Love,
Lissa