This was a bit hard to write. It almost feels like a betrayal by painting her in such a bad light. But expressing my feelings about her is not a betrayal. If you know her, you know she is talented, kind, and good hearted to strangers. (So much so that at one point, she had a collage titled “My family”. Many pictures of several strangers. I’m fairly certain that no one I know, beside my grandma, is on that collage—including me.) She really would rather pick up strangers to encompass temporarily than to work on family relationships.
She’s caring. She adopted and raised me—going without so we could exist. She brought me up despite some really hard times. She’s really thoughtful in ways I would like to emulate. She’s patient with children and loves teaching them “down on the farm” type things.
Occasionally I reflect on how far she came. She didn’t have a good childhood. Dad died young. Mom remarried what sounded like an abusive drunk. She recounts a story of her first experience driving—home in a blizzard at age 10 or 12 because he was drunk. It doesn’t sound like my grandma had much of a backbone at protecting the kids. (She certainly hasn’t ever shown ME evidence of one.)
So, my mom is pretty much no one I ever go to for real advice. I learned this the hard way in my 20’s. Her advice is not grounded in sanity. She is not known for level, clear headed rational thought.
I should have guessed when I was a teen and she FOUND GOD. Not in the we-had-been-going-to church-and-I-even-attended-church-school-for-most-of-my-elementary-years but in the speaking-in-tongues-hand-waving-passing-out-just-short-of-snake handlin’ way. When I was 16 or 17, she dragged me to her latest church—or as I think of it, “The beginning of the downhill religious slide”. It was there that she believed she had been healed. Somehow, despite the fact that she had not had a uterus since her 20’s, she had been healed and she was pregnant. This went on until it became apparent that she just wasn’t pregnant, several months later. God also told her that I was going to marry (at age 18) the semi-balding, epileptic, 20ish going on 60ish son of her preacher. (Over 15 yrs later and I’m still shuddering at this one! EEEWW!)
So, for years after I moved out, it was how terrible and UNGODLY I was. I was accused (not to my face, mind you) of numerous horrible things to different people. People I knew were accused of heinous acts—but she would never name names. This was the tip-off. If she had even one leg in sanity, she would be telling me who did these things so that I could protect myself and my son. The fact that I was terrible was all supported by the fact that I was a screaming punk rock rebel—trying to distance myself as much as possible from a society I loathed because of it’s screwed up values. (Now I realize that in my 20 yr old mind, society meant HER.) Please don’t for a minute think that I DIDN’T do some things I wish I hadn’t, but mostly in a “Why did I put myself through that?” way than in a “I was a really horrible person” way.
I was about 24 when I started coming around to realizing that ‘this was NOT normal’. She would ebb and flow; I was ok one day, but terrible and going straight to hell the next. Even the boss I had during that period knew about it and would ask where I was on the “Mom scale”. (That boss was great and I gave her more grey than she deserved!) The unfortunate thing was that my dad bought in to her insanity. Despite the fact that we had previously been close, I became persona non grata to him because of her lies and his flawed perception. I wasn’t living the “Christian, doily head wearing, married with 16 kids” life they wanted for me, so it was easier for him to write me off. (Someday I will write about the effects of male indifference/absence on a developing female…not today.) So I stopped caring about their opinions and realized that I needed and wanted very little from them.
Well, this indifference on my part had an effect. After I was happily married and truly well out of her sphere, she turned the crazy on daddy dearest. “He was trying to kill her. He was in poor health—she was sure he’d be dead next year. He was having an affair. He had driven them into bankruptcy by spending all his money on the floozy.” There was one poisoning episode: her dentist supposedly told her that he noted symptoms on her teeth that pointed to arsenic poisoning. She supposedly sent a hair sample to a lab in CA and they confirmed it. Bingo, dad was poisoning her! (Did I mention at this time that she obsessively trash picks and occasionally eats things from it?? Or that she had been working recently with lumber from that trash, which very well could have been treated with arsenic??) Did she leave him, or go to a REAL Dr. or anything SANE? Oh heck no! If she left, it was right next door, and she went back. They have been so on and off that I don’t even bother to keep track.
I occasionally feel sorry for my dad, but mostly I remember how HE FREAKING ABANDONED ME and thought the worst. He wouldn’t ever set foot in my UNGODLY house; and minimized all contact for years. In the beginning I did try to reach out, but he was so ingrained to NOT spend time with me that he just doesn’t. Life is too short to deal with this. They are both stressed and terribly unhappy. I have tried to help, but now I don’t need to be drawn into their mess. I’m not even bothering disguising the fact that now I’m echoing him—You’ve decided how you need to live and I want no part of it.
