Is It Weird?

Is it weird that it still makes me sad when I hear Chris Cornell’s voice come on? He was one of my favorite singers since his Soundgarden days and as he forayed into his solo career I was excited to watch his journey. It was a beautiful journey to watch take place. Personally I felt he fearlessly entered into various musical genres.  His voice, to me, was always so haunting, beautiful and calming.  It didn’t matter if he was screaming or harmonizing.  His voice always sounded like it was coming from far away, like it was lost and trying vigorously to find its way back.  Back to what though and coming from where?  The power in his voice was like a beacon cutting through the darkness, reaching out… it reached out to me and on more occasions than I can remember it saved me.  It was something to guide, comfort and anchor me to a spot so I wouldn’t tumble into the endless abyss that has always been so close. So, when I heard that he had left us I cried.  I wanted to scream because I was so mad, but not at him.  I was mad because he had survived so much longer than expected that I had forgotten that there was a danger of losing him this way. His survival lulled me into a false sense of comfort and maybe the same thing happened to him. So he wasn’t watching and couldn’t see it coming until it was too late. 

What I mean is that kindred broken spirits recognize each other. It doesn’t take much to know the darkness that lives or haunts a person especially when that person can channel it into something like music and reach so many through song.  A lot of us know we are on borrowed time having stepped off the edge of the abyss only to be wrenched back by someone or gotten caught on an outcrop and had to fight our way back to that edge we stepped off of in the first place.  Usually this shit starts early, in the teens and then slowly it is supposed to dissipate.  And you know sometimes it does… and it goes away and you get the false sense of feeling that it is gone forever and won’t ever return. Don’t ever believe it is gone forever, don’t ever leave yourself that vulnerable. Eternal vigilance is required to hold the ground you gained from the darkness into the light.  Don’t ever believe that you are cured and never have to face that darkness again. Darkness is a part of life and like the natural world it will cyclically come in and out of your life.  

You must learn to not lose yourself in it and therein lies the most difficult part. Because the darkness remembers you and you will remember it too as it overtakes you.  The darkness & abyss are joined but just because the darkness is there doesn’t mean you will fall into the abyss. Most, don’t fall into the abyss without having stumbled in the darkness for a while. The problem is that the time in the darkness isn’t situational, it is cumulative.  So, when you find yourself back in the darkness, and you will, after not having faced it in a long while it isn’t like falling for the first time where you have to be lost or wandering around in it for a while.  It can pick-up and envelop the individual, re-infecting them, oftentimes, much faster than before.  The learning curve is greatly diminished with each revisit.  This can make each subsequent encounter with the darkness more and more perilous.  And if you have ever been to the edge of the abyss you can find your way back there really fucking fast. I didn’t realize any of this as I survived my teens and grew into my life.  My illusion was that the older I got the further away I would get from it.  Not true. So my advice is to learn to love yourself and your life. It’s not easy especially when you have wanted to throw your own life away. Make peace with your body so you don’t want to harm it. Make peace with your mind so it doesn’t torment you. Feed your soul so it makes you resilient, strong and compassionate.

Orphaned in an Instant

 I've known for a long time that my mother is a challenged individual with her struggle with bipolar disorder. All of kids have experienced the high and lows. The manias and the depressions and all of us have suffered for it by having an unstable, unreliable, self-centered, delusional parent. And since we all 3 were raised by this one single parent the problems were amplified and compounded. As the oldest of the 3 and being 10 years older than both younger siblings I've gotten a longer front row seat to the madness for much longer. I can remember being 4 years old and getting a wet cloth to put on my mothers head because she was falling apart. Back then there were no diagnosis just an amphetamine and barbiturate roller coaster that I couldn't possibly understand. I don't remember a time when I haven't been caring for my mother, defending her against the family and being her shoulder to cry on. That eventually turned into random yet continuous financial support once I started earning money. It wasn't any substantial sort of money mind you, I was a supervisor at a bookstore. But I managed what little money I had much better than her. For her money is like water in her hands, it lacks meaning other than to purpose whatever her manic heart desires. She used my unconditional love of my sisters to emotionally blackmail me into giving her access to my credit cards and lending her money. I guess you could say I should have known better but really I was 19 years old and raised by a person who conditioned me to anticipate and prioritize her needs over anyone else. She was the parent and she should have been seeing to my needs. The correct term for this is emotional incest, when a parent uses a child as and emotional support or seeks an emotional relationship with their child that should be sought through an adult relationship. It's weird to think that my mom did this to me but it's true. Because my mind is littered with painful memories of my mother falling apart in front of me and coming to me for help and support. 

All of this has freshly surfaced in my mind because recently I've been struggling a lot with some pretty severe depression and old ugly thoughts of not wanting to exist were creeping into my consciousness. Recently, one night it got really bad and my partner didn't know how to help me and in a moment of desperation he called my mom to see if she could help by talking to me. To be fair there had been moments in my past when I was struggling with sadness that my mom had been able to talk me through. He was crying as he communicated to her that I was not well and he was worried that I might harm or injure myself. He said she didn't really respond and when I came in the room he asked if I wanted to talk to my mom. I was very dis-raught and I said  "No".  

Days before when I could tell things were getting worse for me I had reached out and called her. I'd left her a message and told her I was not doing great. This was not the first message she had received from me indicating my declining mental health. In the weeks before I had communicated to her that I was not in a good headspace and was struggling.  Though she had that information that had been communicated out more than once or twice she reached out to ask for $1k, to start, so she could do some fixes on a house she wanted to flip. She had also asked for money from at least one of my sisters. 

So, no I really didn't want to talk to her because she had not only made no effort to check on me, she ignored my messages and proceeded to ask for something to fulfill her needs, again at my expense.  So after I say no and I ask my partner why did you call her. He says "You are not in a good place and I wasn't sure how to help you.". 

He tells my mom "I worried for her safety she isn't acting like herself". 

My mom ask in an annoyed tone "are you guys fighting?" 

He says "no". 

Because we weren't he was just dealing will a severely de-stablized and depressed version of me.  The phone goes dead and he looks down at the phone shocked and then looks at me and says "I think I lost the call or it disconnected". 

In that moment something clicked in me and I came back to myself because I knew in my heart my mom's selfishness had reached its pinnacle and the call had not dropped she had hung up. All the times since childhood that I'd held her up on my then tiny shoulders, wiped her tears through the years, listened to her rant and been on the undeserved receiving end of her rage meant nothing. I knew this because I could hear the annoyed and bothered tone in her voice through the receiver when he'd been talking to her. I looked at him and said "Call her back. I want to know if she hung up." 

He says "No, I really think the call dropped." 

But he calls her back, has the phone on speaker and she answers and says hello with even more annoyance. He asks, "Did you hang-up?"

And in a flippantly defiant tone she state "Yeah, I hung-up. She didn't want to talk to me so why should I waste my time." 

Two things happen at that moment. One, I realize that I don't have a parent I have an emotionally stunted adolescent who is so self absorbed that she feels no concern for her child, and instantly I feel orphaned. Two, my partner's concern turns to extraordinarily controlled rage at her tone, actions, and callousness in regard to her child. He interrupts her statement by repeating her name a couple of times to get her attention. She goes silent. And he, with amazing control, says "You called my wife 2 weeks ago out of the blue when you knew she wasn't doing great to ask for $1000 and that request, which mind you wasn't the first, sent her mental state into a tailspin she has been struggling to recover from since then. Now if you could get your head out of your ass long enough to realize your daughter, who by the way has spent her life caring for you, needs your support because you are the parent and she is your child." 

At that point I said "It's okay it's done. Mom we are done, good-bye" 

It hurt, it still hurts but each day I feel a little lighter, a little stronger because for the first time in my life I'm not also carrying the weight of my mom and her baggage. For the first time I understand why I feel so tired so often and why I am looking for ulterior motives. I realize that I've been gas-lite by a woman who doesn't know how to love or care for her children properly but more importantly does not appreciate how much her children have tired to love and care for her. I wrote her and email that was a short "bye" and ended it by saying I loved you the best that I could but I can't anymore.