My Latest Regret
Dec. 2nd, 2022 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
I've signed up for Masterclass (thanks, Dissident Love!) to take the writing classes offered there. Maybe I'll do a cooking class too or something else, but for right now I'm learning from the great Neil Gaiman on the art of storytelling.
It's early days, but he's already said something that feels like it will be a game-changer for me. He talked about submitting his first few short stories and watching them come back, deciding that he either didn't understand the world as he thought he did, or he just wasn't a good enough writer. Then, he went to a workshop with other writers and learned that while he had a facility with words he wasn't putting any of himself into his stories. And because there wasn't honesty in his fiction, the lie couldn't ring true.
I relate to that quite a bit. I've always been worried about what other folks would think of me if I truly wrote what was in my heart, or built the stories that I'd really enjoy writing. In general, I fear exposing myself in ways that break whatever spell I've woven to make people like me. It's difficult for me to trust that I'm someone who could be loved, and that's...all because of my upbringing.
One of the exercises recommended for this section of the course is to write about something uncomfortable for you, like a secret you don't want to be shared, or the saddest thing that's ever happened to you. For me, my regrets immediately came to mind. These are the times where I've failed to live up to my best self, times where I made a conscious decision to step away from my values because it was easier for me.
This month will be the one-year anniversary of my mother's death. I can't remember the last conversation I had with her, but I promised that I would call her on her personal phone and couldn't connect. It turned out the phone was disconnected and it's unclear if she had been told that before. She had a habit of forgetting the things that she didn't want to remember. At times, it felt like she weaponized her dementia to get her own way -- but that's an unkind thought.
After that, she fell into a coma and wasn't lucid much for the next few weeks. Local family visited her and that was enough to bring her back into good spirits for a little while, but by then a hospice worker had been assigned to her. During the month of her death spiral, I got several calls a week about her status. More than once, the hospice worker told me that I should come to her if I wanted to see her one last time. I never did.
If anyone asked, I had reasons for this. There were a few times I had been told death was imminent, but it turns out she could hang on for several more days or weeks. It was a really bad time at work with my transition out of Support and into Community Management. The holidays were near, and plane tickets across the country were hellaciously expensive. All of that was true, but the real reason was I just didn't want to. My secret reason for not seeing Mom one last time was I didn't think she deserved it. I knew she didn't want to die alone, but I had watched her push away every single person that had cared for her over the years. She created this situation in which no one wanted to be around her, and so the consequences of her choices in life had to play out.
Even after all this time, a year after her death, I'm still so angry at her. She disowned me after she found out I was gay and said some of the most hurtful things I've ever been told before or since.
"Don't touch me; I don't know where your hands have been."
"It's a good thing we weren't closer when I found out, because if we were I would have hated you."
She sat me down and made me come out to the rest of my family over the phone, which was a terrifying ordeal for me. Everyone else accepted it, told me they still loved me, and more than a few told me they already knew -- they just "had a feeling". It was a relief that it went better than expected, but I know my mother was being cruel at that moment.
During that summer, she told me that when I went to college I shouldn't come back home. I left to live with some local furs later that week and didn't return to Baltimore until the death of my sister. Which is another thing I blame her for.
My sister also struggled with her mental health, and during one of our last conversations she told me that she had been diagnosed with chronic depression, anxiety disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. She hadn't had an easy life. Our biological mother was a paranoid schizophrenic, and we were adopted by a severe, abusive woman. She had run away from home multiple times, been raped while on the streets, got hooked up with dealing and taking drugs. Ultimately she had four children by three(?) different men.
But she also desperately wanted to get her life together for her children. She knew she couldn't do it on her own, so she tried to rely on Mom until Mom's abuse drove her away again. Mom would give the PIN for her debit card to...anyone who would be willing to go to the store for her, but when money was taken out of her bank account there was only one person who could have done it. My sister had the police called on her by her own mother over this. It's possible that she was the culprit, of course, but...in my mind Mom drove my sister away when she needed help the most. She kept my sister's oldest son in squalor and abused him through neglect while he struggled with schizophrenia. She drove my sister to abandon her attempts to get better, drove her to an overdose, to death by despair.
My mother was so difficult that everyone who volunteered to take care of her eventually threw up their hands and stepped away. Her congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses largely abandoned her because she wouldn't accept compromise solutions that would make helping her sustainable. She fell out with every one of her sisters over something or other. My sister's friend, a registered nurse who operated an assisted-living facility out of her home, had to stop caring for Mom after my sister died because Mom accused her of theft and abuse, threatening her license and livelihood. She was ultimately put into a nursing home because there was no other place for her and there was no way she could live alone. And through all of this, she blamed me for her predicament.
She told me multiple times that she didn't want to die in that nursing home, but she made any other option impossible. She begged me, harangued me, accused and blamed me in the years after the death of my sister. She never apologized for any of the trauma she inflicted on us, and denied that much of it happened. Every interaction with her was exhausting and depressing.
Yet...she was also my mother. She sacrificed a lot to raise us, and she tried her best to give us opportunities. Her belief in me is what allowed me to get out of Baltimore, and she did instill a strong sense of resilience in me. She was an old woman, in the grips of advanced dementia, who didn't understand why her only living child stuck her to die alone in a nursing home surrounded by strangers paid to look after her.
I knew, from the very first conversation with the hospice worker, that I didn't want to see Mom before she died. But everyone deserves someone who loves and remembers them to be with them when they pass on. And I don't want to be the kind of person with hatred in their heart so strong it makes me do cruel things. Letting my mother die alone was a cruel thing, and instead of letting the cycle of abuse die with her I perpetuated it through neglect.
I couldn't be the kind of person who would suck up their personal feelings about a situation to do the right thing. I knew that if I had gone I would have sought some kind of closure I just can't achieve with someone who may or may not remember everything they'd done to hurt me. But...in the end, I want to be the kind of person who can set aside their ego to make sure kindness and decency are given in these situations. And I just couldn't do it.
I know that a lot of my friends are uncomfortable when I talk about my relationship with my Mom, and the anger that flares up when I think about her. I understand that. No one I knew grew up the way I did, in the inner city of one of the most dangerous cities in America, a gay blerd bullied at school and neglected at home. What's more, I don't think most understand how prevalent those familial relationships are. In so many ways I grew up without a family. To this day, I still feel like an orphan.
But I have an opportunity now to undo some of that damage with my nephews, my brother-in-law, a host of cousins and aunts who are still alive. I could possibly get to meet my biological father for the first time, and through him learn more about my biological mother beyond her diagnosis. But I'm torn. It's been a long road to get here, where I finally feel like I've built a community of my own. What could I offer a family that has a long history of rejection and distance? Is it even possible to build a relationship with my blood relatives at this point?
I don't know. Some part of me wants to try to keep communication alive, and another part of me doesn't believe I have the spoons for it. But I know I won't heal the scars of childhood until I find a way to make peace with what happened, and I consciously avoided the opportunity to do that just about a year ago.
It's early days, but he's already said something that feels like it will be a game-changer for me. He talked about submitting his first few short stories and watching them come back, deciding that he either didn't understand the world as he thought he did, or he just wasn't a good enough writer. Then, he went to a workshop with other writers and learned that while he had a facility with words he wasn't putting any of himself into his stories. And because there wasn't honesty in his fiction, the lie couldn't ring true.
I relate to that quite a bit. I've always been worried about what other folks would think of me if I truly wrote what was in my heart, or built the stories that I'd really enjoy writing. In general, I fear exposing myself in ways that break whatever spell I've woven to make people like me. It's difficult for me to trust that I'm someone who could be loved, and that's...all because of my upbringing.
One of the exercises recommended for this section of the course is to write about something uncomfortable for you, like a secret you don't want to be shared, or the saddest thing that's ever happened to you. For me, my regrets immediately came to mind. These are the times where I've failed to live up to my best self, times where I made a conscious decision to step away from my values because it was easier for me.
This month will be the one-year anniversary of my mother's death. I can't remember the last conversation I had with her, but I promised that I would call her on her personal phone and couldn't connect. It turned out the phone was disconnected and it's unclear if she had been told that before. She had a habit of forgetting the things that she didn't want to remember. At times, it felt like she weaponized her dementia to get her own way -- but that's an unkind thought.
After that, she fell into a coma and wasn't lucid much for the next few weeks. Local family visited her and that was enough to bring her back into good spirits for a little while, but by then a hospice worker had been assigned to her. During the month of her death spiral, I got several calls a week about her status. More than once, the hospice worker told me that I should come to her if I wanted to see her one last time. I never did.
If anyone asked, I had reasons for this. There were a few times I had been told death was imminent, but it turns out she could hang on for several more days or weeks. It was a really bad time at work with my transition out of Support and into Community Management. The holidays were near, and plane tickets across the country were hellaciously expensive. All of that was true, but the real reason was I just didn't want to. My secret reason for not seeing Mom one last time was I didn't think she deserved it. I knew she didn't want to die alone, but I had watched her push away every single person that had cared for her over the years. She created this situation in which no one wanted to be around her, and so the consequences of her choices in life had to play out.
Even after all this time, a year after her death, I'm still so angry at her. She disowned me after she found out I was gay and said some of the most hurtful things I've ever been told before or since.
"Don't touch me; I don't know where your hands have been."
"It's a good thing we weren't closer when I found out, because if we were I would have hated you."
She sat me down and made me come out to the rest of my family over the phone, which was a terrifying ordeal for me. Everyone else accepted it, told me they still loved me, and more than a few told me they already knew -- they just "had a feeling". It was a relief that it went better than expected, but I know my mother was being cruel at that moment.
During that summer, she told me that when I went to college I shouldn't come back home. I left to live with some local furs later that week and didn't return to Baltimore until the death of my sister. Which is another thing I blame her for.
My sister also struggled with her mental health, and during one of our last conversations she told me that she had been diagnosed with chronic depression, anxiety disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. She hadn't had an easy life. Our biological mother was a paranoid schizophrenic, and we were adopted by a severe, abusive woman. She had run away from home multiple times, been raped while on the streets, got hooked up with dealing and taking drugs. Ultimately she had four children by three(?) different men.
But she also desperately wanted to get her life together for her children. She knew she couldn't do it on her own, so she tried to rely on Mom until Mom's abuse drove her away again. Mom would give the PIN for her debit card to...anyone who would be willing to go to the store for her, but when money was taken out of her bank account there was only one person who could have done it. My sister had the police called on her by her own mother over this. It's possible that she was the culprit, of course, but...in my mind Mom drove my sister away when she needed help the most. She kept my sister's oldest son in squalor and abused him through neglect while he struggled with schizophrenia. She drove my sister to abandon her attempts to get better, drove her to an overdose, to death by despair.
My mother was so difficult that everyone who volunteered to take care of her eventually threw up their hands and stepped away. Her congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses largely abandoned her because she wouldn't accept compromise solutions that would make helping her sustainable. She fell out with every one of her sisters over something or other. My sister's friend, a registered nurse who operated an assisted-living facility out of her home, had to stop caring for Mom after my sister died because Mom accused her of theft and abuse, threatening her license and livelihood. She was ultimately put into a nursing home because there was no other place for her and there was no way she could live alone. And through all of this, she blamed me for her predicament.
She told me multiple times that she didn't want to die in that nursing home, but she made any other option impossible. She begged me, harangued me, accused and blamed me in the years after the death of my sister. She never apologized for any of the trauma she inflicted on us, and denied that much of it happened. Every interaction with her was exhausting and depressing.
Yet...she was also my mother. She sacrificed a lot to raise us, and she tried her best to give us opportunities. Her belief in me is what allowed me to get out of Baltimore, and she did instill a strong sense of resilience in me. She was an old woman, in the grips of advanced dementia, who didn't understand why her only living child stuck her to die alone in a nursing home surrounded by strangers paid to look after her.
I knew, from the very first conversation with the hospice worker, that I didn't want to see Mom before she died. But everyone deserves someone who loves and remembers them to be with them when they pass on. And I don't want to be the kind of person with hatred in their heart so strong it makes me do cruel things. Letting my mother die alone was a cruel thing, and instead of letting the cycle of abuse die with her I perpetuated it through neglect.
I couldn't be the kind of person who would suck up their personal feelings about a situation to do the right thing. I knew that if I had gone I would have sought some kind of closure I just can't achieve with someone who may or may not remember everything they'd done to hurt me. But...in the end, I want to be the kind of person who can set aside their ego to make sure kindness and decency are given in these situations. And I just couldn't do it.
I know that a lot of my friends are uncomfortable when I talk about my relationship with my Mom, and the anger that flares up when I think about her. I understand that. No one I knew grew up the way I did, in the inner city of one of the most dangerous cities in America, a gay blerd bullied at school and neglected at home. What's more, I don't think most understand how prevalent those familial relationships are. In so many ways I grew up without a family. To this day, I still feel like an orphan.
But I have an opportunity now to undo some of that damage with my nephews, my brother-in-law, a host of cousins and aunts who are still alive. I could possibly get to meet my biological father for the first time, and through him learn more about my biological mother beyond her diagnosis. But I'm torn. It's been a long road to get here, where I finally feel like I've built a community of my own. What could I offer a family that has a long history of rejection and distance? Is it even possible to build a relationship with my blood relatives at this point?
I don't know. Some part of me wants to try to keep communication alive, and another part of me doesn't believe I have the spoons for it. But I know I won't heal the scars of childhood until I find a way to make peace with what happened, and I consciously avoided the opportunity to do that just about a year ago.
