What do I do now?

[stellaris]

OK, my mom's BPD, 74 years old.  The history is all in my backposts, but really if you're on this board you already know the details.  We haven't really spoken in 8 years, relationship that has been steadily deteriorating since I was 12.  I occasionally see her at family functions, where I smile warmly, give her a hug, tell her it's great to see her, and avoid anything of substance.  I find these pretend-its-all-ok moments incredibly painful, a thin papering over of an unhealed wound.  I got tired of having her never really SEE me, just those facets of me that fit her view, and a bunch of hit she made up.  I got tired of never being heard. I got tired of reaching out, of needing her and being begrudged that need.  6 years ago I had that breakthrough epiphany of child abuse that brought me here.  The last time we had any contact was 2.5 years ago, at someone's funeral.  She's never seen her grandson, now 4.  She sends him presents through my sister, which I accept with grace, but no more.

I don't think she's evil, but I can't handle the Jekyll-Hyde thing, and though I have good EQ and negotiation skills, dealing with her just brings me down to a really stupid level.  I don't like the way I wind up behaving with her, and it takes more energy to rise above than I can count on mustering.

The last two years have been really full, including two trans-oceanic moves and a very high-stress, year long career course.  And for most of that time I've been considering writing her and trying to rebuild something, but I've been determined to do it when I'm ready, at my own pace, a certainly not while I have these other things going on.  The course ended in July, so I've been thinking about this more actively since.

I called my sister tonight.  My mom fell down the stairs, cracked her skull, bleeding in her brain, hospitalized, released herself, fell again, rehospitalized, rereleased, fell a third time - more or less.  My sister had to go deal with her daughters, so I didn't get a complete picture.

And I am just a mess.  Part of me is suddenly very aware she could die at any moment, if not from this then from something - her physical health isn't much better than her mental health.  Suddenly I feel rushed on the reconciliation thing I swore I would not be rushed on.  Suddenly I feel pressure to go look after her, to be her effing parent YET AGAIN.  I feel guilty for not taking action sooner, worry for her health and her future, some degree of pissed-off at my sister for not telling me about this when it happened (although my sister hates being in the middle, so why would she?), and really angry that I feel guilt, worry and pressure because why can I not consign this woman to that vast sea of people who were once important in my life but have now moved out of it for any number of reasons.

WHY CAN I NOT LET GO OF THIS?

Why?  Because she was really great sometimes, as loving as a mom should be, creative, fun, generous.  Because I want so much for that greatness to be the "real" her, because I just can't wrap my head around the Jekyll-Hyde thing.  Neither one is the real her, or both is, or whatever a BPD's reality is.

So here I am beyond sleep and typing this.  Which is helping actually.  I wrote my sis and offered to help if she needed it.  It seems like the right thing to do.  I don't want to be sucked into being the effing parent yet again though.  I won't be.  Will.  Not.  Be.  Limits, boundaries, and I don't care if she's about to die, if I get a fraction of disrespect I'm gone.  Sis probably won't accept the offer anyway, she hates to accept help.  That's her own issue.

OK, at this point I have done all I can do, said all I can say, and I need to go to sleep.  I was nearly in tears when I started this, but I'm better now.  Thanks crew!

Gnight!

[Bonus mom]

WHY CAN I NOT LET GO OF THIS?

Guilt.

Five little letters that cause so much pain.

I feel for you, your struggle is painfully clear.  Reading your situation, makes me think that for all you try to do to separate from your mom, you just haven't been able to break those emotional ties to her.  It sounds like you're still on the treadmill - trying to walk away, but not realizing that you're still in the same place.  Guilt.

It took me 12 years to sever my relationship with my mom, so I understand the amount of time you have to invest in the "divorce" and how hard it is to find a place where there is no (almost no) hurt.

I'm looking at the list under the "survivors guide" to the right of this post, and thinking maybe you could start there?

Remember, it all comes down to FOG; fear, obligation, guilt. That's where we get stuck!

Wishing you well as you try to make it through this crisis!

[stellaris]

Yep, you're right bonus-mom, thanks for the insight.  Guilt.  I would have thought I was over it, but evidently not.  I've been on bpdfamily for 5 years now.  Maybe there's more.  I still care for her, still worry about her.  She's really barely functional even when she's not falling over from hypertension.  The waif, the hermit, the witch, the queen.  What a house of mirrors those roles make for.

I wish I could just have a positive, generous interaction with her without feeling I'd been sucked into it, taken advantage of and disrespected.  I wish she could see ME and not this weirdly warped version she insists on.

I also wish I had a pony.  I like ponies.

Anyway, doing better today, and very grateful the BPD community exists.  Very strange when a randomly shifting group of anonymous internet strangers support you better than your own mom, but here we all are.

[nevermore]

Several years ago my mother suffered a broken neck. I was waiting in the hospital while they tried to figure out what to do. She is very old and frail. We have had a complicated on again off again relationship. I am certain she thinks I am her best friend in the world because she is oblivious to all of the havoc she rains down on us.  As I stood in that hospital I felt like crying for this poor tiny woman, so broken and helpless.  They did surgery and she was discharged to my home. This was against everything I knew to be true. I told the social services person that it would not work.  They ignored me.  She came to me totally helpless, unable to even raise her head. I took care of her 24/7 and scampering to answer her ringing a handbell to call me.  She was beyond difficult but I made it through six weeks. One day I found a person who would sit with her while I ran errands. This would be only an hour or so a week. I was so happy. I told my mother and she went crazy. Her eyes turned to shark eyes and she hissed that the person would probably have a problem with her smoking in front of her. I HATED her smoking in my house but had not said anything.  She continued to fume and then she starting insulting me.  She said I am lazy and hadn't been "nice" to her and didn't want her there.  She looked like she wanted to kill me.  My husband had never seen this behavior and he was scared. We slept with our bedroom door locked that night and the next day I had her leave. 

We want a real mom, someone who loves us unconditionally but that isn't what we were dealt. The minute things were not exactly as she wanted she tore into me.  Among my many boundaries that I will not swerve from are I will never take care of her again. I will hire someone to go to her or help her find a place to be cared for but never again will I be in that position. I just wanted to share that experience.  After this happened she wrote me a note asking what had happened and claiming to know nothing of any trouble we had had.     Do they really not remember these rages?  I don't know... .but I will never let myself forget it.

[Sasha026]

Nevermore and I share the exact same experience. It's uncanny.

I, too, had to rescue my mother in Feb.07. I was coming home from church and I got a call from my husband (still alive then) who told me that my mother's friend called and told him that she was in the hospital. It seemed that she had a stroke (she didn't). My mother had a cold and took too much cold medicine. This elevated her blood pressure and the pharmacy she was at called the EMTs. They put her in the hospital. I got home and quietly made dinner, not going near the phone. I just stood there shaking because I knew that this just another one of her methods of making me drive all the way to Pa. to worry over her hospital bed. She had done this fifty times before.

I eventually did call her and decided to go get her and bring her back to her apartment. I had my son call the hospital in one half hour increments while we were on the road because I needed an expert medical opinion - not trusting my mother's. They said she was just fine and they were releasing her that afternoon. I could come and pick her up. The nurse even told me that they gave her a cardiac workup - she was fine.

When we got to the hospital, she took one look at me and had a heart attack. They stabilized her then brought her up to CICU for a weeks stay. While on the way up, she kept pulling the blanket off of her naked breasts so that my son, her grandson could see. The nurse and I kept covering her up... .but she kept pulling off the blanket, trying to get my son's attention, saying, "I bet my grandson thinks his grandma has some great boobs." The nurse and I just stared at each other... .I was humiliated.

I took her to my house because no doctor would talk to me about her care. I found out in 08 the reason for this was because she signed paperwork telling the doctors not to talk to me. I cared for her night and day, took her to the best neurologists and cardiologists. I babied that woman. She was at my house for two months. We even drove her home and back so she could get her taxes done - we paid.

What did I get for all of my fawning? She laid into me telling me all kinds of awful things. I actually had a nervous breakdown of sorts after she left. I cared for that woman night and day like a small child and she ripped my heart out.

I should have never picked up the phone. Don't think that things will change. I know they get sick, but you will break your back helping her only for her to do exactly as she has done in the past. Don't get caught up in the FOG. Save yourself.

We drove her home and left her there. On the way home I said to my husband, "I feel bad - like I'm leaving a small child to care for herself". He said, "don't feel so bad, she'll be standing over my grave".

Oh yeah, right after that my husband dropped dead of a heart attack right in front of me. She came and never even gave me a hug. Not one hug. She was standing over his grave just like he said a few months earlier ... .bored. SHE wanted to go to the mall.

[nevermore]

Sasha, I'm so sorry your husband passed away. That is my greatest fear.  They do seem to bury most everyone. So far my mother has outlived all of her brothers, a son, a husband and nearly every friend.  My mother stood across a field glaring at me during my brother's funeral. After it was over everyone came to my house... .except her.  You and I seem to have a lot in  common... .sadly.

[Sasha026]

Yes we do. Thank you for the condolences. Picking up the pieces of a broken life is not only sad, but it takes a long time. I'm doing my best to piece together a very disorganized, scattered life. I just don't understand what happened, why it happened and why I allowed it to happen... .this I need to "feel". I know some of it intellectually, but I don't feel it. I have lots and lots of questions. Sometimes this really bothers me, sometimes it doesn't. It's strange. I recently found out an interesting piece of information that made perfect sense - another piece of the puzzle.

Losing my husband so suddenly, then finding out the heinous things he was secretly involved in, is maddening. What happened after his funeral still plagues me because I have no one to ask and no where to go with the information that I do have. I've had EMDR for this, talked about it until even my poor therapist is bored silly and still... .I have unanswered questions.

My problem is that I still blame myself. I can't help it. When your told a lie all of your life, you start to believe it. Thanks again. 

[BlueCat]

Why?  Because she was really great sometimes, as loving as a mom should be, creative, fun, generous.  Because I want so much for that greatness to be the "real" her, because I just can't wrap my head around the Jekyll-Hyde thing.  Neither one is the real her, or both is, or whatever a BPD's reality is.

Stellaris,    I get this. This is how my mother was and still is. She can be awesome. When she's not angry over some imagined slight my mother is great. She and I can get laughing til our sides hurt.

And what you said is what I think too. It's not that the Hyde is the real her, it's not that the Jekyll is the real her. Both are her. That's hard to accept. I guess it's easier to think in black and white. She's really bad, pretending to be good, or she's really good, but the sickness makes her bad. But the reality is that both are true. It's hard to wrap your brain around it sometimes, but yeah, I agree with you.

I don't want to be sucked into being the effing parent yet again though.  I won't be.  Will.  Not.  Be.  Limits, boundaries, and I don't care if she's about to die, if I get a fraction of disrespect I'm gone. 

Good for you for recognizing that possibility and taking steps against it before it happens. My mother recently went into the hospital and they called *me* about her insurance and home care. This part of me starting thinking oh crap, will I "have" to take care of her? Thankfully, a much bigger part of me explained what a load of crap that idea was, ! So good on you for standing up to yourself, for yourself  

[stellaris]

@nevermore - that's outright scary.

@Bluecat - thanks for the  .  It's a confusing place to be - easier in a way if she was just purely toxic.  I'm fortunate in that my younger sister can and does deal with her.  I've basically washed my hands of the situation.  Nevertheless, dammit, I worry about her.  She copes so poorly.  When my dad died she promptly, violently severed relations with my dad's extended family.  I felt so desperate trying to repair those bonds.  She'd already severed ties with her own family, and I wanted her to have help and support from my aunts and uncles - who were quite close to us growing up.  I subsequently learned that many of them had just tolerated her.  One aunt in particular actually blamed her for my father's illness, which I thought was a bit over the top although I get where she's coming from.  However even those who genuinely liked her she pushed away.

And I heard some stories, from before I was born.  Like the time she was at my grandma's house hanging with my dad and uncles.  Some friends of there's were over, and happily announced their engagement.  My mother looked at the husband-to-be and said "Why don't you just hit her already?"

Anyway, she broke those bonds, hard and fast, and I felt so burdened knowing I'd have to be the one to look after her.  Didn't work out that way though.  I got divorced, the biggest obstacle to which was asking for her support (which came, but very, very grudgingly) and then I moved far away.  The bond gradually eroded, once incident after another.

I >can< make it work.  I >did< make it work for awhile, and I suppose the guilt is coming from the feeling that I >should< make it work.  But why should it always be me?  I get sucked in by the hermit and the waif, and then smacked upside the head by the queen and the witch.  Not this time!  No! No!  No!

Oh yes, I must recount the more recent episode, about six years ago, when she came out to an event in my honour.  My wife's aunt (who is a delightful woman) introduced herself.  My mother looked at her and said "So?"

I'm rambling a bit.  But the bottom line, is, my sister can deal.  I'll support my sister, and I'll keep right on with my plan to reach out when >I'm< ready, not before, and on my own terms.

It is a very confusing thing to navigate though.