May 11 2008
One I owed you
Actually this will be part one of TWO posts! I know I know … Shocking!
I haven’t posted here in a couple of months and I am extremely sorry if I worried anyone … it was not my intention to disappear honestly.
There have been a ton of things going on, I just haven’t been able to find the will to sit down and share them. One of the hard parts about blogging for me was always the whine factor.
If all I am going to do is whine …then screw it, I’m done.
I enjoy reading all of your blogs and love getting all of your comments, but when it came to my writing it began to feel like a chore, and believe me the last thing I need more of is chores or commitments! HA! Honestly I just am so critical of my own writing and I get all frozen and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of what I have to say, that I just don't say/write anything. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but there you go… thats me. I still keep up with all ya'll (and always will) my gang, my posse, my peeps … my friends :)
For a welcome back I decided to write about something that is really bothering me … something that has gotten under my skin and totally pissed me off. And boy is it a long one … sorry about that!
Gossiping Relatives.
I know we all have them. Most of it is harmless family gossip that gets whispered down a phone line while sipping coffee or talked about around the family dinner table. The kind I’m talking about here is the malicious, hateful, judgmental gossip, of a relative that truly thinks they are superior.
I have shared a lot with you over the last couple years. When I was all but spilling over with grief or happiness I shared it here with you.
One of the biggest and also the hardest things to share was my oldest sons decent in to drugs. As a family this can be one of the longest and roughest roads you will travel together.
I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
A little over two years ago when I discovered that not only was my oldest son an addict, but that my brother and his girlfriend were also drug addicts… I was completely blind sided.
I went through the stages that I imagine any mother and sister who had been in complete denial would go though. Disbelief. Anger. Disappointment. Disgust. The ups and downs were extreme, the road ahead of us unbelievably long.
Month after month I struggled with lies, emotional scenes and arguments, bargains, pleas, denial after denial and never knowing what the right thing to do was.
First and foremost I was determined to break the cycle that my mother had unwittingly become a part of since my father had died 5 years before.
Don’t get me wrong, Mom had been enabling and spoiling her children and grandchildren for many years, but after my Dad died it was on a completely different scale.
Mom & Dad didn’t see it as enabling. It was all done in the name of Love.
All the loans, all the assistance, the advice, the repeated hand outs when something went wrong, all of it, was because they wanted to help us have a better life. They didn’t want to see us struggle. And I say us because I also benefited from their generosity. Repeatedly. I was always grateful and forever ashamed of accepting their help.
After my Dad died my Mom was unknowingly supporting their drug addictions by allowing them to live rent free, borrow money without paying it back and bailing the three of them out of financial trouble repeatedly. It was a small loan here and some groceries there, paying an electric payment here, buying a cartoon of cigarettes there. What was the harm in letting them use your car to buy drugs look for a job?
Bringing the issues to light was just the beginning.
As in everyone’s life (or maybe its just mine?) There is one thing after the other … not only were we coming to terms with being enablers and having to confront these issues with the Queen of enablers my 80 year old Mother, but we also had a good friend whose 18 year old son was murdered while away at college, and my grandson’s mother committed suicide, leaving her 4 children bereft.
Although I am a pretty strong person and I don’t go looking for sympathy, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I often turned to my childhood friend who just happens to be my cousin, for support.
Our relationship had always been more like sisters than cousins. While growing up she was always held up as an example of how I should study or of how I should behave or try to act more like. We couldn't have been more different if we tried. I was the tall brunette, she the short blonde. I was the rebellious trouble maker, she was the well mannered responsible one. She was always the one that made better choices and smarter decisions, even if they turned out to be the wrong choices, she always managed to weather them with determination and style. Needless to say this carried on in her adult life and she is now in a position of comfort financially, with a recently retired and doting husband, while I have remarried again, still cant hold on to a dime and am struggling to raise 5 kids.
No I am not bitter. It is what it is. Choices.
Many nights on the phone I would cry my heart out and describe to her how bad our deception truly was. I described the depths of their addictions, the vicious cycle that everyone was living.
I begged for help. I begged her to help me pull my Mom away and break the enabling circle. My cousin was always very close with my Mom and she helped a tremendous amount by taking her on trips to visit Moms sister in Washington. It also helped that they were looking at buying some property near by ….and so the push to relocate started. Moving is never an easy thing to do, it took months of planning and plotting to get my mother to even think of moving to another state.
I admit in the beginning I wanted to run away and never look back. Somewhere along the way I started looking at the big picture and long term possibilities. I saw it as an opportunity for our whole family to get a fresh start in a beautiful small town and close knit community. It was a far cry from the city we were living in. I blamed a lot of what was happening within my family on the constant enabling, and the drugs of course but also the culture and mind set of the town we were all living in. Robbery, murder, over doses and gang bangers were the norm, despair and depression were a part of their every day life. I could see how it was going to swallow us all up.
We can debate society and all its issues later. I promise.
I wanted our family to stand on their own and be strong and independent. I wanted them to be the people I knew they were capable of being. I believed that with a fresh outlook on life and new start they would have something to work towards. If I could just get them all sober!
What I thought started out as the both of us wanting something different for my Mom’s golden years, ended up being a rescue mission in my cousins mind. Saving Mom from her immediate family who she saw as dysfunctional and draining, became her mission.
It became obvious that she was disgusted with all that she had learned. I was ashamed to have been so blind, ashamed we weren't more disciplined, more successful… more everything.
As she and her husband moved she helped Mom prepare to move also. Financially I couldn't afford to make the trip to Washington and help settle her in. It was the beginning of the Christmas season and my focus was on unburdening my Mother and making the transition easier for her. I moved my brother and his girlfriend out of my Mothers and in with me. I held an intervention and threatened talked my oldest son in to rehab. I was all about the tough love. I was going to save them from themselves if it was the last thing I did.
Mom was bewildered and overwhelmed with the emotions of not only leaving the last place she had lived with my father, but just the move itself. As she looked forward to starting a new chapter in her life…
I stayed behind and dealt with the enormous amount of emotional upheaval left behind.
To be continued :)
