Time To Grow Up

I planned my great adventure to Arizona.  It was a loosely formed plan, filled with contingencies and fraught with an open invitation to go in a different direction.  Almost every plan I made has gone in a different direction, sweeping away with it my security and replacing it with fear and anxiety.  I barely managed to keep it at bay.  It hovered just below the surface, threatening to emerge into a full blown panic attack and it was bringing company.  The post traumatic stress I bear is coming along for the ride while I struggle to contain it.  Fear is not what most people actually fear, for it is often fear which has been a constant companion, much like the friend who is really detrimental to our wellbeing, always bringing out the worst aspect of our personality.  Still, though we know this friend does not act in our best interest, we cannot free ourselves from him, either.  Fear we know.  Fear we can face.  What strikes terror in our hearts is the fear of the unknown and what lies outside the comfort of our control.  I have lived with that uncertainty for weeks, and as each day rolled into the next, I became more reclusive.  I also tackled a huge emotional growth spurt; one which I denied affected me more than the moment I wrote about it.  The reality is, I dove head first into the cesspool of my childhood, taking with me only the little rubber floatation ring I used to play in the lake as I swam.  I needed a steel reinforced motorized boat with a spare tank of gasoline. 

Had any one thing been a challenge, I would have breezed through it.  When I am determined, I tackle projects like a hurricane, bringing what I want into the core of my soul so I may expel it forcefully from my being.  I hurl it back to hell, watching in a quiet satisfaction as the shards explode around me.  As the dust settles, my soul is cleansed, and renewal can begin.  The healing white light of heaven wraps me in its warmth, and I am at peace.  Too many things hit me at once, and I do what I do best in times when I am overwhelmed.  I retreat into the safety of my solitude, creating a shield of darkness between me and the outside world which represents all I fear the most.  I never once doubted my decision to move here, nor the need to create a life that originates from the little girl I hid from myself, my true self.  It is a difficult transition, because I am not an easy person to get to know.  I am guarded and suspicious, trust needs to be earned.  I need to trust in my spirit and faith to allow me to grow into the wonderful person I am meant to be.  My past shadows me, though.  It is an unwelcome intruder who waits near to me with every step forward I take.  It is waiting for me to acknowledge I am not meant to be wonderful, that my true self is a cowardly woman who has failed in every area of her life that ever mattered.   It whispers in my ear ever so quietly, reminding me the wonderful woman I desire to become is an illusion just out of my reach.  It whispers ever so softly and quietly, but it is patient and persistent.  Sometimes it drowns out the voice of Spirit, who is infinitely more loving and gentle. 

So I retreated while I struggled with my desire to know myself, and to heal what has tortured me throughout my life.  Depression began to swirl around me, my energy waned and I became numb.  And yet, I managed to do what I needed to do to survive.  That is undoubtedly what I do best.  Maybe I should make friends with the Arizona cockroaches; it would seem we have a lot in common.  Sometimes, I feel as if all I ever do is survive, and I am tired.  I want to go back to Spirit, to experience the glory and love I felt when I was there.  Do not mistake my desire to return as despondency, or a veiled suicide plea.  I do not wish to end my life here, but I am tired and I want to go home.  I spent the last several weeks in a self-imposed sanctuary of dark silence.  I withdrew from socialization, and contact with others.  I didn’t have the energy to do it.  I began to worry I might be rising a slippery slope into real darkness, into a great vat of depression I might not be able to pull myself back out of.  It is a vulnerable place to be, but for me it was the safest place I know.  Darkness has always been my friend. 

Just when I thought I was safe from the internal waves of mass emotion and pain, my mother calls.  I was not prepared, yet I chose to engage in a conversation with her.  It is a sharp and jagged path to get to where I need to be with her.  I also know she needs me to apply the Spiritual lessons and gift of unconditional love and acceptance I have been shown to her.  My mother needs to know she is loved.  She may not accept it, but she needs someone to show her life is not about suffering, misery and pain.  I failed in this conversation, because I immediately went back to being her daughter.  I saw myself doing it, I knew I have greater knowledge than that, and yet I returned to being her daughter without so much as a hesitant glance back to the woman I have become.  It was as if that woman never existed at all.

My mother is exactly the same, she re-entered my life with lies and manipulation because that is all she knows how to do.  Intellectually, I understand this, but it is hard to deflect and remain true to myself and what I know is truth.  A number with the area code from Alliance flashed across my screen.  I did not recognize it, but there is a bill collector there who would very much like to speak to me, so I allowed it to go to voice mail.  Imagine my surprise when the message was from a weak and frail woman, pretending she did not know she was calling her own daughter.  I was very specific with her apartment manager, Dave. He did not, could not confuse my phone number with Mary, this is your daughter.  My mother has also had this phone number as I have not changed it for many years.  My fractured and damaged family had this number at one time, and I keep it tethered as the last remnants of hope for the family I will never have.  I wait for my family, my brothers to call me.  It is a call that never comes.  Some damage cannot be repaired, and my family is irrevocably damaged. 

The message from her went a bit like this.  “Hello, (she did not identify herself) I was given this number, but I don’t know if it is for the home health care aides, the hospital, or the ambulance.  I would appreciate you returning my phone call so I know what is going on with my health care.   I am to speak to a Therese Sabier. “I shook my head.  Really mom?  Your health care providers do not have your home phone, but they know your apartment manager and leave a message with him?  And the name of the person who called rhymes with my name?  I wonder how long it took her to think of this story.  It’s no wonder I couldn’t keep friends if that is how badly I lied, and how silly the stories I created sounded!  I think when she first received notification I had inquired about her, she threw a temper tantrum.  Remember, my mother’s emotional development stopped somewhere in her childhood when the abuse she suffered met the heights of danger which threatened her very survival.  She is still a child in a 73 year old woman’s body.  Her temper tantrum started out as “Fuck her, she didn’t care enough to call me back a couple years ago, I don’t need her now.”  As time passed, her heart overpowered the temper tantrum and she could not leave the message unanswered.  This left a problem for her.  How does she explain why she didn’t return my call weeks ago?  Answer?  I got it!  I’ll weave a pretend story.  I have to make the story a good one, a story which will compel my daughter to call. 

Sadly, she does not know I love her, and would have returned her call despite what I fear our relationship is, and the impact it will have upon me and in my life.  Like I believed with my father, I have a duty to my mother.  I have been given the gifts of knowledge to understand her, and compassion to forgive her.  I have been surrounded by my army of Angels and the light and teachings of Spirit.  I know what I need to do, but fear I lack the courage, patience and wisdom to do it.  My mother needs to know I have forgiven her; she needs to know I wish her peace in her heart, and she deserves some shred of happiness.  I can’t achieve this if I return to being her daughter the minute I hear her voice.  I know our souls are at a pivotal moment.  Much is riding on my ability to apply what I have learned.  How my mother’s soul returns to Spirit lies in what I do next.  How my soul reconciles the horrors I have suffered lies in my ability to reach beyond being my mother’s daughter.  The stakes are quite high for both of us.

I took a deep breath and hit the send button.  The phone rang four times before her answering machine picked up.  It could have been 400 times because time froze.  I don’t know if I took another breath before I felt the safety of the answering machine.  It wasn’t her, I could leave a message.  I said “Mom, it’s me, Charlotte.  I thought you knew I changed my name (I have had it for around twenty years now) but I called Dave because I didn’t have your number and just wanted to check up on you and see how you are doing.  OK, well bye.”  I wrote it much more polished than I spoke it, trust me.  I stuttered, lost track of my sentence and was awkward.  I was relieved.  I called her back, my job was done.  I am so good at ignoring the white elephant when he pops by for a visit.  At least he didn’t shit in my living room this time. 

My mother called back a few minutes later.  It was awkward at first; neither of us knew what to say.  We both chose to ignore the past, and pick up as if nothing happened.  My mother blamed the message on Dave, saying all the pot he smokes left holes in his brain.  She started out by telling me all about her health problems, not directly, of course, but in a passive aggressive way.  “Oh, I have been fine in between all the surgeries and hospital visits.”  Of course that required an inquiry from me.  She broke out with saying a couple years back she had surgery on her neck, but claimed she didn’t know what for.  Her way of saying “I was facing life threatening surgery.  I called you and you never returned my call.”  We played twenty questions until she admitted the neck surgery was to open up her carotid artery.  A year later, she had the same surgery on the opposite side.  I explained I had tried to call, she told me her phone was off while she was in the hospital and that was why I received the strange tone.  Then she told me Milena had left a message on her machine for her, too.  Did I know what Milena wanted?  My mother was trying to bait me into believing Milena went behind my back to betray me.  I don’t see the world like that.  She began to describe more health problems, some of which I share, like going to pain management for my back problems, and the neuropathy in my hands and feet.  Here is where I lost it.  I unwittingly entered into a competition with my mother about who was the worst off.  I was simply letting her know I shared some of her experiences, but she saw it as a competition.  Everything she described I shared, she would bring out another trump.  My head was spinning, so I was caught into a sick dynamic which could only leave me lost.  She explained how she could no longer write, I told her about my right arm and the brain stem damage from all the concussions I had as a child.  I didn’t blame her for them; the one I used as an example was when I was on my bike trying to jump a curb.  I flipped my bike over upside down, the base of my skull landing on the curb I tried to jump.  She won, I wasn’t playing.  Yet, she believes she lost, which became evident a little while later.

I tried to change the subject, recognizing my mother may well indeed be as sick as she is stating.  She did not sound like a healthy woman at all.  I am surprised she has made it this long.  She smoked since she was around 10, was an alcoholic, and was obese most of her life.  She has never exercised, or even tried to pretend she lived toward health.  The stress and misery she has buried herself in has compromised her immune system.  I talked about the girls and their achievements.  She was impressed Eileen is graduating from Vet school next year.  She told me she watched Milena graduate from high school on the Alliance school network channel.  She let it slip she knew where I lived at Liberty Heights, but acted surprised when I told her I was in Arizona.  Dave and I talked about me being here.  For someone who cut me out of her life, she certainly went through some effort to keep tabs on us. 

I told her I was never Bipolar after all.  She replied “I never thought you were, but you had to see all those fancy doctors.” I ignored her and said the medications made me psychotic and I had a terrible time functioning.  I told her about the ADHD and I take Ritalin for it, which certainly would have thrown me into a manic episode had I been Bipolar.  She said “Well, I don’t think there is such a thing as Bipolar, they just make these mental problems up to make money.”  I told her I worked psych, and could assure her it is a real illness, but I was misdiagnosed because for a long time they thought kids outgrew ADHD.  I also told her I had a very severe case of it, and described what the doctor explained to me.  I don’t think she knows what ADHD is; she didn’t have an argument regarding it.  She did pop out with “Have you had any more car accidents since you have been on the medication?”  I laughed a little at that, “No, mom, I haven’t had a single accident.  I always take my Ritalin when I know I need to drive.”  She said “Well, it sounds like they finally got something right.  Never trust these doctors.”

She started talking about her health again, this time about a surgery she had on her foot.  She also told me she is still working as a security guard, but don’t know how much longer she can do it.  She makes rounds on the building every two hours, punching time stations to prove she checked the area as she goes along.  It takes her about fifteen minutes after which she returns to her desk for another two hours.  I asked her why and she said with her health problems, she didn’t think she was going to make it through this coming winter.  Before I could talk to her more about it, or change the subject, she said her blood pressure was high, her vision was starting to blur and she needed to take her pill to go lie down.  I encouraged her to do just that, and to call me again sometime.  My mother could not talk to me anymore, it was stressing her out.  I understood and did not fault her for it.  She wanted to win the Who's the Sickest competition and this was how she was going to do it. She did not want me to have a rebuttal, so she rushed off the phone.  She and I have had a difficult time of it. 

My mother has told me her death is imminent many times over the course of my life.  I stopped responding to it a long time ago.  But this time, it was not her pronouncements of dying that caught my attention.  I felt an urgency several weeks ago that I needed to act, no matter how much I dreaded reconnecting with my mother.  No matter how hard I tried to find information about her without alerting her, my efforts were futile.  The sense of urgency grew more prominent with every passing day until I finally caved to the boom box my Angels were holding to my heart.  I called Dave. I felt satisfied I had heeded their call, and it was out of my hands.  As it always does, my soul knew I was not finished.  My mother just needed a little time to return the call.  Without intent, my actions and responses to her have caused her great pain and she doesn’t want to be hurt anymore.  I can’t say I blame her. 

I will call my mother again on Sunday.  I will write little note cards out to remind me I am not her little girl daughter anymore, so I need to quit behaving as if I am.  I will write cards to remind me of unconditional love, unconditional acceptance, and to remind me of what it is I want for my mother as she prepares to leave this earth.  I have a duty to help my mother’s soul leave here with peace, so she can come into her next life without so much suffering.  It will be one of the hardest challenges I have faced to date.  I will write out note cards reminding me of the woman I am, and the woman I wish to become.  Maybe they are crib notes, maybe I am allowing myself a little cheat, but I need the crutch they offer me.  I have the strength and support of my Angels, the wisdom and love of the universe.  I have everything I need to do this.  I am ready.  Now I need the shadows of my childhood to back the hell off.  I have a feeling when the times comes, the only voice I will hear whispering will be Spirit.  I can do this.