Tired

At the beginning of this year one of our local library branches announced 2 writing contests. My caustic cohorts merry band of writing friends decided to all submit a story for the second contest after one among us entered and earned an honorable mention in the first contest.

And it was all fun and games (which really boils down to snark) until I received the email that I'd gotten an honorable mention this time around.

Incidentally, my friend placed this time around and one day will be a Pulitzer prize winner, which is not currently relevant beyond my need to remind this person to write more. *cough*

I now, with literally a few days' notice, am to present myself in a library multi-purpose room and read the story I wrote. Aloud. In front of other people.

Instead of quietly rehearsing in my own private hell, I'm having to manage my mom completely coming undone. All because of the fact I'm getting a little paper certificate.

God help me, when I got the email notifying me I was at my desk with my mother hovering nearby. I was startled to see "Congratulations" in the body of the email and didn't think quick enough to take the proper precautions. Which means, as a general rule, keep my mouth shut until whoever I'd tell is in a more private area. And in an instant my mother knew. And demanded to attend the small award ceremony.

When I was little and would have school events and award ceremonies I never hesitated to want my mom to attend. She was, as far as I could see, perfectly together and didn't do anything weird. And at the time, social anxiety aside, she was a perfectly doting mother. Once I was a teenager and had finally witnessed her have a full breakdown, once her meds had been adjusting I still didn't have a second thought to her attending stuff.

We've crossed a bit of a burning bridge at this point though. And while I took a day to consider that she's on a new medicine and has seemingly had less problems as the week progressed (the amount of time she's been on this new medicine), today happened. Full meltdown where she all but told me I was a horrific mistake that never should have been born - or at least a really shitty daughter who has failed her miserably. The best part was when she started spitting out favorite sayings her predatory father apparently used to say. Nothing dirty, just sayings along the lines of 'right as rain' or 'more than one way to skin a cat'. I also enjoyed her shrieking swear words at me, telling me what a potty mouth I have.

If only.

Mom later told me her outburst was because she was overtired and NOT because the topic of the award ceremony and my story came up 15 seconds before it started.

I'm tired, folks. It's suddenly the night before what I hope is a quick and relatively painless event and I'd rather skip it and take a nap. Or drink a pitcher of margaritas. Or doze on a gently rocking boat with a paperback resting on my chest and a floppy hat covering my eyes.

Made possible by

My day was made possible by my TENS unit and my mom's psychiatrist.

A TENS unit, for those of you not in the know, is a magical little device that shocks the living hell out of your nerves to ease pain. That's a little dramatic, but that's the kind of mood I'm in so I'm going with it.

My electrode pads, those little white patches in the picture, don't typically stray from my spine. The basic idea of the unit is a current travels across the skin and along nerves to disrupt pain signals. The unit can also help increase your body's production of endorphins. Provided you don't crank that bad boy up to full strength immediately to imitate getting kicked by a mule at the same time you lick an electric fence, it doesn't hurt. It is, quite frankly, a miracle in my opinion. Long time readers may remember I have an issue or two I've inherited from my parents where the best solutions doctors offer are those nifty drugs advertised on tv as may cause cancer, tuberculosis or death.

And to those who have the delight of intense menstrual cramping? Give it a go. Seriously. Minimize your time in the fetal position of agony - unless that's your thing. Sciatica? Migraines? Chronic pain? It can help, though as with anything else, results vary. For me so far, it's worked like a champ. And it's a relatively inexpensive purchase from everyone's favorite on-line retailer.

My mother has been on a manic-y and hallucination-filled ride of late. She picks apart her food at every meal to look for things hidden within. Last week she claimed someone had etched a message on a chicken bone. She thought her chair was full of ants, but sat there anyway taking on imaginary bites. After a meal out with my father on Valentine's Day and a generally pleasant day, she ended February 14th asking my father if he wanted a divorce so he could be free of her. And she sees pencil shavings in ice cubes at the moment, so hold the ice for the time being. I won't even begin to explain the debacle that took place when she asked for hot chocolate and believed we'd given her something else.

"She claims that's what she gave me." This is what she told my father about 30 minutes in to what became a night-long event.

So, I was delighted when the psychiatrist's office moved her appointment up. Because these day's it's a constant weighing of each situation to decide if she needs to be seen ASAP or this is just the new normal.

He makes it look effortless.

In addition to adjusting Mom's medication this time (for about the 4th or 5th time in less than a year), the doctor gave me her personal cell phone number to keep her updated more easily.

Well that's gotta be a good sign. Right?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

It's a difficult step to add another new medication to my mom's list and not one her doctor took lightly. Decades of being on heavy-duty anti-psychotics, some for far longer than is now recommended, have wrecked some of my mom's organs. It limits what she can take now. Gold standards in treatment have to be avoided because they would kill her.

So we add a new, fast acting prescription and wait and see if it helps control the rampant visual & tactile hallucinations, delusions and off the charts paranoia.

No Stigma, but not my finest hour

My family story is not as convoluted as I once pictured it. Sure, we're weird and have a hefty dose of things plenty of people only whisper about as part of our day to day life, but (and I mean this with all every iota of sincerity in my being) plenty of other people are royally messed up. Like, next level warped.

And regardless of how intense things can get on a daily basis when my mom is having troubles, it is what it is. My mom is an abuse survivor. She has been battling a mental illness for more than three decades. If you've been around on my blog at all, this is not news to you. But I say it, I repeat it, I state it over and over. On purpose. Because so many others will not.

So my dad and I do our best to take care of her, to get her the help she needs and do what we can. I have tried over the course of my life to come to terms with my mom's illness and history and how it has impacted my life and our relationship. And just when I think I've got a handle on it, as is often the case (at least in my experience) I uncover some unexpected wrinkle.

The other day my aunt, a woman I haven't seen in almost 20 years (unless you count social media re-posts of recipes), posted a cute picture. A sweet image about loving your sister.

And it set me the fuck off.

I fought the urge, over several days, to start some serious drama. WTF, me? Get a grip!

See, the last time my aunt and mom saw each other it was going through their mom's stuff after her funeral. There has probably been less than a handful of calls in all the time. Maybe one letter. But hey, at least there's pre-printed Christmas cards most years from her! And she comments on my social media posts regarding my mom to say hello or wish her well on her behalf.

On that sweet, sisterly post she put up, a friend of hers asked how her sister was doing. My aunt liked her comment but said nothing. At least not publicly. Nobody else between her family or 'ours' liked or commented. While I seethed, my fingers threatening to unleash venom.

I want to reply to this person and say that my aunt wouldn't know how her sister is. That her illness has ravaged her life. That my aunt can't deal with their past and more or less walked away from my mom decades ago.  That when I wrote to my mom's siblings years ago at one of mom's worst points in her illness, nothing changed.

This is wounded and protective daughter. This is the me that howls for the agony my parents have endured on their own. I want reparations for a wound that will never heal.

A wound that wasn't my aunt's fault.

My aunt is an abuse survivor, too. While I mourn the connections my parents lost over the years, families don't fracture for no reason. The strain on her over the years took a toll as well. I know bits and pieces, enough to know it's not been easy. Enough to know she probably misses my mom but doesn't know how to bridge that divide. Enough to know that when I wrote to her, detailing what I'd learned about my mom's past and their childhood, she wept. It's not fair of me to have expectations of these people I never really have gotten to know, my aunt or the other siblings. It's not fair to me or them.

It's a convenient lightening rod for my frustrations. Assign a blame or blow up at the slightest of provocations over something well-meant or at the very least not well thought through. Not my finest moment to be sure. Not my worst either.

The timing didn't help. Mom's been declining enough to make her psychiatrist concerned. As a family, we've begun discussing what may be coming next and consider what plans or arrangements we should be preparing for. I've tried over the course of a few cards to explain to my mom's siblings that Mom is declining. I gave up on the updates when all I get in response are those lovely pre-printed holiday cards. But mostly silence.

Again, these people have their demons, too. If you've tried desperately to forget hell on earth, how would you handle random reminders of that time? And my mom isn't capable of having a deep and meaningful connection with these people anymore (not that they know it). If I'm being honest, at this point trying to interact with them doesn't benefit her as far as I can tell. So the updates from me have stopped.

Maybe one day I'll get the opportunity to sit down with my aunt and talk to her. Maybe it'll be healing and cathartic. Maybe it'll be nothing of the kind. It's just as likely it won't happen. It's becoming more clear to me that there is no information I could get, no extra piece of their story, that's going to make things any better. It happened. They both are the way they are and their kids are the way we are. There are things I don't need to know. Nightmares I don't need made more real.

I'm down from seething over that post to mildly irked. For me, it represents such loss. A gigantic disconnection. And no good will come from my flying off the handle about it. I can march around with a banner about mental illness and supporting my mom all day, it doesn't mean the rest of her family is there. Or will ever be there.

Win, lose or catch 'em all

I'm tired.

This is the third time I've started a post that way this week. Fingers crossed, the third time will take.

Mom's had a difficult week. She came unglued a few hours after reading a chapter in her light-hearted cozy Christmas mystery novel I found for her at the library, convinced I was trying to hide snakes in her bed and sticks in her meatloaf. None of those things happened in the book, for the record. As I refer to it, she adds 2 to purple and gets fish. Her brain leaps around and makes connections fueled  by paranoia. I got her calmed down, quicker than I expected that night, but it was the second night in the week she had a complete meltdown. I got her settled in bed for the night, triple checked with her for snakes, and offered to put something on the television in her room to watch to help occupy her brain.

If a mild mannered mystery about a Christmas pageant in a small town triggers her, then just imagine how long it took me to find something relatively safe for her to watch. No cartoons or anything magical or out of reality. Nothing sad or religious. Absolutely nothing with the slightest hint of suspense or violence. Nothing with story lines that involve any kind of spying/covert ops/secret societies/conspiracy theories/etc. The list goes on. She specifically asked for nothing that involved the holidays because it would make her think about the book.

I settled on the PG-rated large, ethnic marriage movie. God bless Nia Vardalos. She'll never know how her movie, beloved by so many (even my cranky older folks), soothed the paranoid twitch in my mom that night. Well, after over an hour of me talking her through it and then the just-in-case medicine prescribed by her doctor. Still, it kept her mind occupied.

It's starting to look like this less stable, more easily upset version of my mother may be here to stay. Her doctor and I are both kind of leaning that way.

I'm not entirely sure if I should tackle what happened at the end of the week with her, under the banner of TMI. So much TMI. Sufficed to say, if you know someone with an issue with constipation, Aldi's brand prune juice works as well as the prescription strength stuff gastroenterologists give patients to clean out their systems before a colonoscopy. Also, adult diapers are not leakproof in that department. Oh, and my parents need a new bathmat. And the funny videos of the dads' retching while changing a baby's diaper? My dad makes that noise now. And I almost peed my pants laughing when he did. The man who changed our cloth diapers and cleaned them, overcome by the whole thing.

You have got to laugh. You have to. Crying doesn't make the mopping go any faster.

And then there's this pokémon thing. This fricking pokémon thing. Want to play with friends? I can't connect. Want to go for a walk? I can't login. In the middle of restocking game supplies (for free)? Server takes a dive. And then I noticed a friend of mine who is also testing out the game was able to catch something not long after I got booted from the server for several hours. I did a little digging. Okay, googling. And I discovered users who registered the way I did, creating a trainer account and NOT using their Google credentials, are having a much more difficult time with their game access taking a dive.

As I bitched to my husband after being locked out of my account this afternoon (again), he suggested I create a separate Google account for gaming credentials. Separate password, blah blah blah, so that if hackers did go after accounts or personal info, there's nothing of importance there. Well shit. Where was that suggestion a week ago? With a literal middle finger at the "sorry, we're working on restoring your access as soon as we can" message on the trainer account webpage, I set up a gaming email, loaded up the app and was creating an avatar in the blink of an eye. Son of a pus-filled shrew, not the slightest hesitation or issue. And of course, all the freaking critters I collected over the last week and the eggs incubating are stuck in my original account if I can ever get in it again. I had even hatched a ghost pokémon and caught almost all of my favorites. But this new account? I started off with a Pikachu. Which might make up for all the aggravation. Because, I mean, come on. It's Pikachu.