#that face to face interaction (homeschooling for a semester was a pain and I was so unproductive) so yeah...

[chippedteakettle]

I have never met anyone filled with more fear of what they can’t control than my own mother.

Growing up, I often felt entirely imprisoned by what she cut off in life because it caged me in too.

When we lived isolated in the country, She taught us to hide- close the blinds, cut off lights, turn off sounds- when the neighbor she didn’t like popped by for a visit to make it look like we weren’t home.

When we moved to the city, I was scolded heavily once for going outside to get the mail without letting her know because the alert from our security system about the garage door being open scared her so deeply she accused me of negligence. When I said the only way to get the mail was to go through the garage she accused me of ignoring the fact that I could be abducted and raped in the time it took to open the mailbox so I should never have left the garage door open unless I was driving out of it.

I could not leave my house to even step into the yard without permission in advance.

She and I both have autoimmune issues. I have responded to mine with optimism, attempting to live all the life I can with the capabilities I still possess and choosing to see my chronic pain as a thing I deal with, not a definer of who I am. She however has become a terrified shut in. She views herself as incapable of so much- she is scared so many things will cause her death. She is scared of strangers, scared of disease, scared of lack. She attempts to shield herself by “staying informed” but it also means she panics for everything. She does not work. She does not volunteer. She does not have friends. She does not commit to anything outside of her home. And all that worry has nowhere else to go but be funneled at her family.

My sister is stuck back at home because her college semester has been canceled. And after a week shut in at home, she mentioned wanting to see friends and my mother vaulted the tension of the conversation through the roof when her immediate reply to my sister was “are your friends more important than my life? Do you want a dead mom? If I get the corona virus with my immune system, it will kill me. I will be dead- just because you wanted to spend time with some friends?”

My mother has always been a hypochondriac in my eyes. She’s treated every flu season I can remember as the plague. She greets its annual recurrence with panic and paranoia. So to reach a point in the world where our own president has been diagnosed with a virus that is the focus of a global pandemic is her worst living nightmare. She’s been living as if this was our reality for years now, but to be actually faced with quarantine and closures is I’m sure terrifying for her. I can’t imagine the nightmare in her mind.

But to speak to my sister that way is even at the surface appalling. And if it was a one time thing it would be traumatic at best to put that kind of weight on a child’s shoulders. To narcissisticly imply that my sisters need for fresh air and a lack of confinement for even a few hours is a selfish request spoken with ill intent and malice toward my mother when it’s just a cooped up teenager wanting a little space.

But this is NOT the first time she’s done this. Hardly. Not by a long shot. Shes been pulling that card since I was 4 years old and I am 29. The “do you WANT to have a dead mommy” card is how she taught a small christiana right and wrong. When I was right, it was what I was supposed to do. When I did wrong, “it causes stress in mommy’s body. And that stress makes me sick. And if I’m sick, I could die. Is that what you want? Do you want a dead mommy?” This was the threat leveled at a child who couldn’t figure out how to tie her own shoe laces yet. When the wrong I did was simple things because I was a child.

So I never did. I never did any wrong. I was her best friend and confidant. I was her fixer and encourager and care giver. Any attempt I made at having new friends or a boyfriend was greeted with contempt and animosity and a viscous accusal that I didn’t love or care for her if I even desired those connections. How unready I was. How I’d make someone miserable if I were their girlfriend. How I needed to stop reading so much because I was just trying to escape my life instead of dealing with the real world and it was shameful to constantly try to escape. How, if I couldnt figure out how to wake myself up with my own alarm in the first grade, I’d never be able to make it in the real world and she was terrified what would become of me when I was an adult. How unstable I was. How I needed to be in the care of a psychologist if I was so unhinged or in boarding school because she shouldn’t have to deal with how much work I was emotionally- it was too taxing for her body to have to deal with the stress I caused it daily as she homeschooled me in isolation.

That was my life.

Those words and actions shaped my reality for years.

But now, I live on my own. In a cozy den of furry blankets, pastels, and starry string lights. A peaceful sanctuary all my own. I get to luxuriate in knowing that no one will yell or scream at me, or tearfully accuse me of wronging them by simple innocent behaviors. No one can come into my home unless I let them- it is safe here and beautiful. There are usually soothing gentle nature sounds playing or the pride and prejudice soundtrack or the whistling of a kettle filled with hot water for tea. Things that are soft on the heart, soft on the ears, soft for the mind. It’s a shelter I’ve worked very hard to earn on my own and create and I am grateful every time I wake up in it.

I work daily with preschool age children at a church program where I can love and hug them all I can and tell them how precious, valuable, smart and kind they are. Where I can squeeze them lovingly -just for being them, not for anything they’ve done so they begin to learn that love is given, not earned. I volunteer at church singing worship music to calm and ease people’s troubled hearts and minds, and spend time with teenagers who are overwhelmed with life and home lives and trying to find their way. I have side jobs where I get to intricately weave hairstyles together for brides and their maids and help a woman feel like a true princess for a day. And side jobs where I can visit a home on my own and pamper a woman by blowing out her hair for her, so she goes into the world feeling confident and assured instead of nervous that she didn’t do her own hair “right.”

I have a few precious friends who- although our lives are busy and scattered these days- are like family to me and have seen me through the hardest days in my life. They will always be down for a hug, chick fil a, Mario Kart and a deep talk if I need it. They are the family I chose, that chose me. I am dating my best friend, a man so kind that he once compared my heart to a beautiful piece of literature because it was so complex and layered and nuanced that you can have read it forty times and still not catch things and said how much he’d love to keep re reading the story of my heart for the rest of his life.

I have cultivated a life where i can be creative, where I can possess my soft, gentle heart and it be viewed as an asset that helps me flourish not a crippling liability. I can make things with my hands and my voice without her harsh criticism or subtle, perception bending manipulation. I have put boundaries in place with the people in my world who try to step on me with rude behavior. And eliminated as many of those relationships from my life as I can. At work, where I cannot control who else is there, I respect myself enough to not even feed into those relationships, because their power grabbing behavior is not my fault and I don’t need to interact with them if it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t have to continue being around being who make treating me like I’m small a recreational hobby.

I have kept my schedule full of things that matter to me and bring me joy, to the point that I am often over committed and yearning for a slower life . But I also know, I love the doing. (Until I do too much)

I know that right now the world is shutting down, and it has so many scary ramifications for people. I may address that in a separate post, but right now, a closed schedule means that, even though my weary body is eager to find rest amidst the uncertainty- there is so much open space I suddenly can’t account for as a reason I can’t accommodate my mother.

Her panic and paranoia this week is unprecedented. She is insistent that I be in contact with her every day. Demanding I be as informed as possible. Her world -that is always so ruled by fear that she won’t even go to a park by herself for fear of a abduction- is in absolute disarray as the United States begins to try to even partially match her own caution. My sister is stuck home in her freshman year of college, going stark raving mad having to stay with her and I haven’t contacted her as much as I’d like to because my mother gets jealous when I contact my siblings more than I contact her.

I want to bring my sister to my apartment to give her some much needed breathing room but I don’t know if I my mother will allow her to leave after proclaiming everyone in her home would be under a 7 day quarantine last Friday after my sister asked to leave the house. My brother recently graduated and asked if he and I could start spending time together at least once a week. He’s been trying to better himself as a person and wants our connection to be better which I couldn’t love more.

This week has broken our streak and it saddens me immensely but I don’t know if our mother will allow me in her home without hysteria. My brother has become her new favorite in past years because he views her with the most compassion, which seems to come from a place of good intentions, but also a blindness to her manipulative nature. She truly has been through so much and a very harsh life before she made a family of her own. But she used that to keep me pliant for so long that it no longer holds weight with me.

Because of his stance of protectiveness with our mother, he views my resistance to her as wrong. Poor sweet boy. There’s so much he does not know and can not comprehend. He would find this entire post offensive if he knew of it. So in his eyes, the behavior I’ve suffered from her were a misinterpretation because of my easily offended sensitive nature. Which breaks my heart.

But his hope is for reconciliation for our family. He wants to be the glue that binds us all together. And I love his hearts intentions. But at the end of the day, whether can see it now or ever will, my mother’s behavior was and is abuse.

So I have not set foot in that house for fear of being transported back to an era i no longer wish to visit. Because my own schedule has left me very run down and our area has had some major weather fluctuations, I’ve had some minor flair ups of pain and some allergy sinus drainage. It breaks my heart to know I can’t tell my mother that I’m a little sniffly without chaos being unleashed. It breaks my heart to know that I really wish to see my siblings but I don’t think she’d let me in the house if she knew I was even slightly under the weather in any way because she can’t separate it from the corona virus outbreak. I hate that if she did let me, she may not let me leave, and if I try to anyway she will vilify me- the outcome im most afraid of.

I hate that I can’t ask her for tips on where I might be able to find groceries and toilet paper an laugh over how insane this is. I hate that when she called today and said I sounded congested that I had to lie and say it was just because I’d just woken up.

Because when you have a mother like that, you don’t get to be comforted. You don’t get to go to her for reassurance that everything will be alright or for care or advice. There is too much in her that demands to control, to micromanage.

It is impossibly sad to know that she will always be like this.

Especially when you need her.

I want to feel sad and compassionate for her. To have mercy for her mental health issues that she refuses to admit she has. But I’ve spent my whole life doing that.

And right now? I really wish I had a mom.

Not a mother.

I want to see my sister who’s 20 minutes away and have us all laugh and smile and make the best of life. I want to not be afraid that seeing my mother will mentally and emotionally send me back 5 years.

I wish she was okay.

#chippedteakettlerants #chippedteakettlethoughts #covid 19 #i hate that things are this way #i hate being envious of other peoples mothers