Not Feeling so Well...

I;m not feeling so well tonight. My stomach hurts and my head hurts and all I want is to get a dose of a major narcotic and go to bed. But I don;t feel bad enough to go to the ER and have them believe me, so I guess I'm stuck in this situation.

probably two of the reasons I feel so bad right now is I'm trying to work on two things that cause me pain and grief: Locked, which you all should know about by now if you read this blog regularly, and a letter to my mother. Locked is easier.

I often wonder why I go to the trouble to keep in touch with my mom. This is a woman who caused me untold pain in my younger years. She never beat me or anything--she hardly touched me, when it comes to that. But she's cold emotionally and her own traumas really prevent her from sustaining any kind of satisfying relationship with anyone, much less her children. Plus, she is a woman who is full of blame. Blame for the things that went wrong in her life. It's never her fault; it's always something else, like bad kids, that cause her grief. I can't count the number of times I was told that my two older sisters were bad and caused her pain and I was bound to turn out just like them. (I wonder if my middle sister ever heard this? She was the "Good" one, I guess). because I had problems no one could fix and thoughts and feelings no one wanted to hear about. That made me bad in her eyes for some reason.

I still don;t understand thesde things and I don;t think I ever will. We went through a period of family therapy but all that got me was my mother denying she'd ever said to me things I KNOW she'd said--I'm not THAT crazy thank you--and my father telling me again that I was terrible and treated my loving parents like mud. I don;t know what the therapists thought of this; they never told me.

Yet I still keep up with her. Asmuch as she;ll let me. I write her a long letter every month or two or three and I never hear back from her except at times that it would be no trouble and in fact is a requirement that she respond. Like my birthday or Christmas or my wedding anniversary. And she never says anything real. Just the same old stories of how her garden and cat are doing and what she's doing at church.

But I told myself long ago that it was my choice to keep up and not my responsibility to make her respond or not.

I wish sometimes I could have a real mother, one who really cared. One who would give me love and attention, who would have had some kind of reaction when I told her I was Bipolar. One who would have written right back when I told her I had published a book and was thinking of publishing another one. But mine never goes into those things. I don;t know why but I do care and I hate myself sometimes for the caring. I cant let go.

I know lots of people who have divorced their families over less and I have thought of doing so. But frankly, all I have to do is wait for my motther to pass away because I have no contact with any of my siblings and I doubt they'll keep any up once she's gone. Besides, coming out and divorcing my family would be like kicking a puppy. They would never understand beccause they have never taken the time or put in the energy to understand me. I imagine their sad little faces and then the blame coming down: well we always knew she was a bad 'un. Of course she'd go off and do something crazy and hurtful like that.

I'm not a hurtful person. I keep writing. I keep sending the Christmas cards and the birthday cards to the sibs who send them to me. I just have to stop hoping someone will understand some day, because that's not going to happen.

My stomach feels a little better now but I feel like crying. I wish I could.