Who Knows?
The wind blew past my face with a gale like force, and I had to laugh. Only Mama would show up with such a description, her name being Gail, the pun caught me by surprise. I turned to face the movement of air with confidence looking over this mountain range. “Mom, am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right place? Are you proud of me? I had no idea how bad things were between you two. I had no idea he had never gotten better. Why did you hide so much from me? I could have protected you more.” The whistling of the wind was my only answer. Along with the soft sounds of the waves’ fingertips smoothing out the pebbled beach as it drew back into itself.
The truth is, my childhood was not exactly ideal. Everyone says, “well no one is perfect,” and “every family has secrets,” but when someone actually hears about what happened in my life behind closed doors, they have nothing to say. The people that do know what I am going through, but are perpetually trying to see the positive, find my current predicament to be, well, a source of frustration? I am still not really sure. There seems to be two camps. One that feels with my mental health at stake, that I should cut off from my qualifier and when I have cut him off, say, “well, done. Now, let’s move forward.” When I fall backwards, unblock my qualifier and allow myself to fall prey to his verbal and emotional abuse and end up in bed crying for 3 days, that camp of people seem to not have time for the continued saga I said was “over,” the week before. The second camp are those who text, call, and just listen. They simply say, “Well, hun, I truly have nothing to say, but I am here for you.” It’s not that camp one cares less, or is not there for you. I think it is just a matter of seeing time and how it is spent in a more efficient way. Crying in bed for three days is not, to most people, seen as time spent efficiently. And since they have never been dragged down a drive way after falling from an open car door because they father was angry you didn’t sit down soon enough for his liking, they just do not understand the abuse cycle. For that I am grateful. I am grateful that when I talk to those people I know I won’t be talking about my qualifier and driver of said car. I know it will be a mix of the weather, what their kids are doing, their recent recipes or mixed drink experiments. I know the conversation will be tidy and not have a need for a tissue box next to my body.
These “shallow” conversations never really used to fill me. I was always leaving wanting, my deeper thoughts and questions left unanswered. Now, I welcome talk of the weather. You see, I can visibly see a person’s feelings and energy shift as topics go from safe to deep and unknown. I am so much more aware of it now after marrying my husband who is helping me see the benefit of not hitting a possible new friend with my deepest, darkest truths. I used to not think about it at all, and when someone would avoid me I’d chalk it up to seeing that they were not good friend material if they couldn’t handle the heavy, heady topics right away. I now see it in a totally different way. With the assistance of time, age and a husband who can have both shallow and deep conversations depending on a situation, I have been learning a lot about the first camp, and the fierceness of their love no matter how it’s shown.
This blog started before I asked the questions above with such an earnest desire to have them answered in a timely fashion. After my Mamabear passed, and I was stuck out in the country, isolated with my grief and my fear, I didn’t know how dangerous my qualifier could be. I thought he had changed indefinitely when I was 24 years old. In the last 4 years, but especially in the last six to seven months, I have come to know what my mother protected me from for 36.5 years and what she held onto. The stress, the cortisol that must have coursed through her body on an hourly basis were just two of the many things she held onto to keep me protected. I mostly know this because I am the one now with the cortisol coursing through me, and what a rush it can be. When I looked at that mountain in the picture above, when I captured the moment on film, I asked my mother the questions written here and I did not get a reply, but these are what I think the answers would have been.
Am I doing the right thing? My mind and my heart do not agree on an answer. Guilt and shame are my constant companions when it comes to my narcissist qualifier. Am I in the right place? I believe I am. I am 400 miles from my qualifier. Is she proud of me? I really believe she is now and always has been. In fact, I don’t think I have ever questioned if my Mom was/is proud of me. For that I am forever grateful. Why did she hide so much from me? I am guessing because she didn’t really know exactly how toxic my qualifier was until the last 4 months of her life. I am also thinking that as a Mom (I am not one) you want to keep your kids safe for as long as you can, and she had a better understanding of codependence and abuse than I did at that time. She gave me the tools I needed for this time. Everyone says that she prepared me for this time. I just didn’t want to do all this without her. I am happy she is no longer enduring the emotional, verbal, spiritual and mental abuse he would put her through (and the pain of cancer, obviously,) but I don’t feel ready to live this life without her coaching me onward. I know she is still with me in spirit. I know I can feel her and she sends whispers from heaven, signs from above to tell me I am on the right track. But I hurt. I feel often that I am a failure because I don’t keep my qualifier blocked. And even though my qualifier didn’t drink, I am getting stronger every Adult Children of Alcoholic’s meeting. They call him a dry drunk. He has all the “isms,” they say.
Meanwhile, my heart is broken, the three musketeer family has broken apart not only by cancer, but by, “isms.” I long to be back by the salt water and wind. To hear the waves and see their fingertips smooth out the pebbled beach. I hear her so much louder by the salt water. Though, even in these mountains, when a gale like force wind comes, I turn and face it and hope it will bring me more direction, because I feel I do not know what I am doing right now with my qualifier and I don’t want to be hurt anymore or spend any more time weepy and in bed.
