Last night, KT and I walked around the Golden Gate Park in the evening, then ran a few errands.
I loved being together, but my body and mind was still distracted and off by the stress. My stomach was upset, my body was shaky, my mind was in a bind. I don’t think she knew, but I did.
I made a visit to a client yesterday and another one today. It’s been interesting to get on-site and learn from them.
I also started taking Prozac again this morning. When we visited our doc friends the other night, they said it’d probably be good for me to start taking meds again. Sleeping pills help too. I hate taking meds but still brought them with me. I started again this morning.
It feels like a huge relief to feel like the bottom won’t fall out, that I can go through this and not fall apart. I think my adjusted reality about how to go through this, less hostility and the acceptance of how families work along w/ a nice pairing of Prozac and Trazadone have set me up to go through this next phase w/ more sanity and less hysteria and rage.
It’s also been a huge bonus to have this week long break in San Fran with two women I love and love me. That’s sort of everything.
I feel relaxed here in my aunt’s house, relaxed, loved, surrounded by beauty and peace, the roar of the ocean outside along w/ hawks flying overhead, beautiful California groundcover, plants, sea grass, flowers.
It’s a combination of having the city at your back and the ocean out your window. Literally, an amazing combination. I’m trying to enjoy the time w/ P and the setting as much as possible. I know it won’t last forever.
There is a lot of insane drama with our family right now. Ther fundamentalism continues to ripple through a situation that needs mostly just logic, communication and planning. P is reading a book right now called Educated by Tara Westover. It describes growing up in a fundamentalist Mormon family with the insanity of an uneducated father and mother that fully subscribed to patriarchal survivalist/religious beliefs. My childhood did not at all scale to the levels in this story including severe physical abuse as well as extreme mental and emotional manipulation. There is always someone that’s had it better and worse.
But like the HS lesson this morning on connecting with others who are stressed, there really is an ease that comes from hearing about other’s issues and stress, realizing you’re not alone. Considering that, you have to get your focus off yourself, try and consider with other’s life situations and even explore empathy when you think you can’t afford energy for anyone else.
With that now in mind, I see everywhere and am listening to other’s stories. P’s friend stopped by today and talked about her siblings, all mentally ill in some fashion. ALL of them, all three. She’s 68 so her entire life, she’s had siblings that all needed her help. There’s a sadness and heaviness to that that she exudes. It’s crushing. It makes you feel messed up, and it messes up your life. That’s just today.
Last week when flying down, I heard a woman talking in the concourse about how her brother had tricked her and had her mother sign a new will, cutting the sister out of the estate completely. It was causing a horrible ripple effect, right down to their inability to bury their mother.
It’s everywhere. Family drama, it’s everywhere. I’m not escaping it.
Instead, how about I focus on how amazing it is that I have a few folks that I love being around that are family: my kids, my husband, my mother-in-law, my amazing aunts, my sister-in-law. How about that? My parents have been spectacularly flawed and difficult. These other folks are spectacularly amazing, like, balancing out the insanity with so much beauty and aliveness.
So I’m learning about perspective. I’m learning about limits. I’m learning that there’s only so much even I can do with all my smarts and planning and creativity and doggedness. And that’s not me being defeated; that’s just life. This isn’t personal. This isn’t me failing or losing. It’s just life. My mom was traumatized for sixty years of living, starting with her childhood then marriage to my father. Next comes another man and while a much better life, still not ideal and a lot of drama. It’s just life. It’s how it all fell out, and I’m in the middle because she’s my mom. Again, this has nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to help manage it down and land the plane.
So I’m calmer. I feel a much healthier attitude evolving as well as a nice foundation of meds. I feel some space from the insanity by leaving town and feel more hopeful about the future. I hope it helps us get through the next month of (hopefully) moving the parents and getting things really settled.