I love my mother to pieces. She is a strong, creative, and sophisticated woman. She taught me style, social grace, and is endlessly encouraging of all my endeavors... on her good days. I've been reflecting on our relationship a lot these past two weeks, after an incident on my 24th birthday sent our relationship into a bit of a tailspin.
My mother and I have a history of no-holds-barred fights that end in tears, resentment, and silence. I can vividly remember crying myself to sleep, the feelings of intense fear, anguish, and anxiety that overtakes my life whenever one of these fights is imminent, happening, or passed. The strange thing about these moments? I can never remember why the fight happened in the first place. I remember the agonizing days or weeks of silence I endured, wandering around the house avoiding her vacant, disappointed gaze as much as possible. I remember the mean things said in anger, to make sure I was hurt and offended as much as possible. I remember the glazed look in her fiery hazel eyes. Not my mother's eyes, these eyes don't even see me. She becomes someone else entirely, someone consumed by pain, guilt, hatred and whatever else she keeps simmering on the back burner through her yoga classes and self-help books. This creature terrifies me, it haunts me.
These memories are painful, it is difficult for me to sit back objectively and try to make sense of them... what are the triggers? Is it something I am doing? Are there patterns that I just can't see? Is there any method to this madness?
I think it is a multi-faceted issue. Depression, control, and fear are all contributing factors to these perfect storms. When only one of these beasts is out of line, we can usually keep our relationship in check. But when all these converge at once, the results are disastrous.
Women in my family have a history of less than stellar mental health. My maternal aunt and mother both suffer from depression, my maternal grandmother is PhD-in-Psychology-case-study material and I myself have been diagnosed Bipolar II. My mother has found medication and therapy very helpful in her journey toward wellness. She's finally found a prescription that works for her, she has a (questionably healthy relationship with - in my humble opinion) therapist she really likes and she attends AA meetings. These are all great things, they're wonderful tools to combat depression but nothing is foolproof and mental illness is an immortal beast. You can placate the beast but it's never quite dead, just dormant. Sometimes it's difficult for my mother to watch me struggle with my mental health issues, especially because I am not particularly fond of her coping methods for my own situation. I've been prescribed various cocktails of mood stabilizers, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety medications and have always hated the results. I usually find therapy more stressful than helpful, because I really have never found a true connection with a therapist. For me, therapy consists of spilling your guts to a complete stranger and hoping they'll fix you. I've been fantastically burned in the past by therapists and am wary of trusting them. Group therapy was never really my thing either. I've been to AA style meetings and bipolar support groups, but none really stuck.
I have found solace in routine, exercise and marijuana. These are admittedly not the greatest tactics for coping with bipolar, but this is MY journey and no one else's. My mother cannot seem to accept that I could possibly be okay without a prescription, a therapist and a support group. I think in the future I will turn to more mainstream/constructive coping mechanisms, but this is my life and my choice and how I'm coping now.
I digress.
Control and fear are huge factors in our mother-daughter relationship. While she was never a "helicopter" parent she was probably borderline obsessed with my brother and I growing up. I especially - as the oldest and the daughter - was subject to strict rules for curfews, boyfriends, etc. It wasn't Draconian, but sometimes it seemed obsessive. During the summer after my sophomore year of college, I was not allowed to sleep anywhere but my parents' house because I partied hard with my sister and best friend during a family vacation in the Dominican Republic. I had my first date during my freshman year of high school and wasn't allowed to be in the car/on the date/out with the boyfriend after dark. Something as arbitrary as darkness somehow was going to keep me chaste. (Just between you and me, it didn't.) Anyway, the point is I spent much of my life worrying about what my parents thought about my choices and believed they had a great amount of control over everything I did. This, in large part, was true because they were funding all my decisions.
I think of all the elements that factor into these blowouts, fear is the most destructive. My mother and I live in total fear of emulating her relationship with her mother. Mutti and Nana have a saga that spans decades, ultimately culminating in silent detante and absence. Nana didn't attend my college graduation, nor my brother's from high school. I haven't seen her since 2011. No one knows the source of this feud or why the two can't speak, despite having listened to countless hours of my mother's babbling on the subject. Whatever the cost, my mother and I were committed to breaking the cycle. At least that was my impression.
I have come to terms with the fact that my mother and I have a codependent relationship. We both have unreasonably high expectations for one another that go beyond our actual capacities as human beings. I truly believe this comes from a place of love, but emotions of that intensity come at a cost. When the love, devotion, loyalty, etc. is compromised, the results are explosive.
Enter adulthood, working my first real-world job, in my first apartment. While I'm not totally financially independent (I drive a car registered in my parents name, I am on my parents' insurance, and every once in a while they help me with rent) I have my own bank account and credit card and rarely touch the joint accounts in my/my parents' names. This was all fine and dandy. Until I wanted my boyfriend of 5 months to move in with me.
This has been the biggest fight in recent memory. I informed my parents about the decision to cohabitate during their visit to my city for my/my mother's birthdays (our birthdays are 10 days apart). I calmly explained our plan, how it fit well into both our schedules and how we intended to split the rent. All hell broke loose and I ended up sobbing in the bathroom. My mother didn't speak to me for the rest of the visit. The next two weeks were wrought with difficult phone calls, passive-aggressive text messages and a veritable ocean of tears. This weekend I am supposed to travel to my childhood home, boyfriend by my side, to discuss this situation. She has called into question my own personal integrity with comments like "I thought after 8 years of Catholic education you'd have more respect for yourself than to make these kinds of decisions" and "I just find it alarming that you've moved in with two different men in under a year." She has insulted my boyfriend and his family. She has guilt tripped me to no end, saying things like "I understand you're building a new life in the city, it apparently doesn't include your family and we aren't important to you anymore" or "You only use me for convenience" etc.
I am a 24 year old female living with bipolar disorder. I am working a full-time corporate desk job for the first time. I am coping with financial independence in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I fell in love, not sappy made-for-the-movies love where everything is sunshine and puppies all the time but real love, where disagreements and challenges have to be met, discussed and worked through with a partner who is dealing with many of the same mid-twenties post-grad issues. Love is hard, but he is worth it. I will fight for him.
I have to go home and face her tomorrow. I am full-on panicking about it. I can't eat, I can't sleep, my mind is a twisted wormhole of anxiety and dread. I'm trying so hard to keep perspective, to keep my cool, to stay calm and hold my own like the mature woman I know I can be. But she brings out the worst in me. I'm scared of myself around her. My nerves are spastic and tightly wound, the smallest thought of tomorrow causes tears to run down my face. I feel weak and helpless, powerless to her vicious cycle. I feel defeated and tired. I am beaten. She has broken my spirit.