It is nearly four weeks later and I am not sure what I was thinking before but things sure are not whatever I thought they might be. I thought the holiday would create a brilliant curtain through which I walk from my old life into this brave new world. That all that was wrong would suddenly be right but hey, that has not exactly happened. The holiday was great, and just what the doctor ordered and am so glad we did it, but it didn't entirely provide that doorway. I have been up and down and in and out of some sort of stupor. Some parts of my life are getting back on track but other parts just lay around. From inside my body I look out and just look. Some things like answering the phone to clients are vital to any sort of a business but I just don't and I wonder why.
It is the middle of the night and I can not sleep so I have made camomile tea and sit here writing. I am about to dig out some of my writings about my childhood. All those things bounce around and seem to need some further processing. Some sort of attention. I am not crying but I am shocked and amazed and can not quite figure it all out in relation to the daughter I have been these past couple of years caring for my mother and looking out for her.
The night before last there was an episode of CSI Miami that had me pinned to my seat hardly daring to breathe. It was the case of the murder of the soccer mom who it turned out was abusive to her children in private. Her husband was complicit in the silence and web of lies to cope with her behaviour. The writer pressed buttons I had forgotten I had. One of the characters said she had an abuse test where she would go to brush a bit of fluff off a child's shoulder and if the child flinched she knew there was abuse. I am not sure what age I was before I stopped ducking but it did get a bit embarrassing when as a young independent adult no longer living at home that I still did it. All the way through the programme, the CSIs showed their disapproval of this deceased mother's behaviour and yet they showed only a mere fraction of what went on in our household. It once again struck me the night before last that I was abused as a child. And I suppose I can not reconcile that with now.
Tomorrow, or later today, I have a second session of counselling and then later a well woman check up. I think it a good idea in the light of my mother's illness that it is recorded on my notes that she did die and what from. I think I am in shock but I don't know why. I didn't expect this.
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2 comments:
Reading that makes me remember something. I wish I could unpack it but it's just snatches. It's my mother saying to me, with amusement, that for years I used to sit down as soon as she came into the room because I was so used to be hit. Sitting down made it harder, apparently. She told this as a joke. I can't really remember.
I do recall being chased around the garden, or the house, by her so she could catch me and hit me. I remember begging her to not.
It seemed so normal. It seemed like that's what happened to all children, what all mothers did, I guess.
The extra sadness in that is that she actually revelled in the telling of the story! Oh jeez, that is so horrible. And I can identify with that normalising of such behaviours. Hugs to the little you. xxx
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