My Mother's Version of Events

My mother's version of events, as written for the Butterfly Glen house psychologist. All grammatical and punctuation choices are her own. I'll embed links to relevant blog posts so you can compare different perspectives. The only emails I've made into blog posts so far were the big ones, and most of my retellings aren't dated at all, so I'll have to go through my old emails and post the excerpts from the events my mother references in her letter (from 2005 to 2008), partly just to confirm the timeline.

She doesn't mention the times she called me or talked to me during the events detailed below, but we were still in contact. A lot of what I know comes not just from my dad but also from her.

She was often high back then and, based on how long she says we've been estranged, she presumably wrote her version within the last year. I don't trust my own memory that much, let alone hers.

Dear Curtis,

    Could you please help me find my long lost daughter Christina Rosetti Martin DOB 7-31-1980. The last time I saw her was on her wedding day 15 yrs. ago!

    When I married my paraplegic husband, I married in sickness & in health and I took care of him for 36 yrs. but as soon as I got sick he filed for divorce. Paul was in the VA Hospital in Cleveland when he filed for divorce. I was totally blindsided. We had talked on the phone and he hadn't said anything. He followed up the file for divorce by cleaning out our bank account right after I paid the entire mos. bills (wrote checks for) All of the cks. bounced & I was faced with pay up or we'll shut off water, lights, gas, phone & cancel insurance on house & Cars. Naturally I panicked, I called the bank & they told me that my husband had closed out our joint account & opened a single account leaving me penniless & deep in debt. He received $8,000.00/mos Disability & $325.00/mos SS. All tax free.

    I called Paul at the hospital in Cleveland & said, "What the hell do you think you're doing? I just wrote checks for all of the months bills & now thanks to you there's no money to cover them!" He hung up on me, so I called him back & he hung up on me again.

    Paul had an extensive music collection in our family room so I called Guitar Center where he bought it all and told them that my husband passed and I wanted to sell his music studio. Notice that I didn't say my husband died, I just said he passed, as far as I was concerned he passed for asshole of the century!

     I kept out his keyboard & bartered it for massages & as mad & desperate as I was I couldn't bring myself to sell his 3 prized guitars. I just sold the amplifiers & the recording equipment. I donated his harmonica collection to the church, and I donated microphones to the church. 

    Guitar Center came to the house & gave me a check for $1,000.00 which was a rip off but I didn't have time to quibble. I took Jeff's wedding ring (had diamonds) & his grandmother's second husband's wedding ring to a pawn shop, and I sold his computer. 

    I still didn't have enough money to cover the checks I had written and I took all of his record collection (jazz & blues) to vintage stock and they gave me $60.00 which I'm sure was a steal for them and a rip off for me but beggars can't be choosers.

    I went to the bank in tears and told them my sob story all they said was I could've done the same thing to him, he just beat me to the punch. You'd better believe if I had known he was going to clean out our account I would have done it.

    I went to my best friends house and used her phone to call Paul so he would answer the phone after I got served with divorce papers at 8pm on Tuesday. I asked him what brought on the need for a divorce and he said it was because all I did was lay in bed all the time, didn't cook & didn't do laundry. I told him I had been severly [sic] depressed for 6 mos and I had only gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom. I was hospitalized 3 times in 6 mos. for dehydration & falls. He hung up on me again but he said he would put some money back in our joint account.

    Many times after that I called to try to talk some sense into him about the divorce and explain bipolar disorder but he refused to listen, he said I was just lazy, no good.

    Eventually the hospital disconnect [sic] his telephone so I couldn't call him anymore. My mother always said, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." So I bought a bus ticket and rode 4 hrs. to Cleveland, to confront the jerk face to face. He was in the ICU so I couldn't see him very long, he looked like Jabba the Hut all propped up 350 lbs. buck naked with a colostomy & foley catheter & IV's & Blood. I slept in the waiting room til it was time to catch the bus for home. As soon as I got on the bus I fell asleep and when I woke up my head was on the shoulder of the man in the seat next to me. I was so embarassed [sic]. We got to talking and he told me he had just been released from prison. I told him my story and when we got back to the bus station in Cincinnati I discovered that I didn't have enough money to take a taxi to my house so he offered to share the cab & he would pay for it. When we got to my house I drove him to the building where he was staying downtown but first we had to go to the Emergency Room to get him some medicine. He asked me to get in touch with some friends of his and tell them that he was back in town.

    I got in touch with his friends and they decided they were my friends too. They moved in with me and proceeded to sponge off of me. I was lonely so I went along with it. My son, Dante came over and he expressed his concern for me taking in a bunch of strangers. Without me knowing he hid my husbands prized guitars in the garage.

    We had a bad storm and the roof was damaged, when I called the insurance company they said they would have to do a walk through inspection of the entire house. The house was a mess so I offered $100.00 to every man, woman or child who would come over & help me clean up & get ready for the inspection, Of course the ex convicts friends were the first in line and the five teenage neighbors of my parents came over too. Dante was suspicious of all the people who helped me.

    After about a month I got tired of supporting 3 freeloaders and I told them it was time for them to go home.

    Dante came over and he asked me what I did with my husbands guitars. I told him they were on there [sic] stands in the family room & then they just disappeared. That's when he told me that he had hid them in the garage. I don't know who took them but it wasn't me.

    Anyway, I'm sure that's why my daughter quit talking to me, because I sold part of my husbands things and she thinks I sold his 3 prized guitars. She hasn't ever let me tell her my side of the story. Being left penniless. I had no choice. She also doesn't understand bipolar disorder.

    If you can help me find her, you can share this letter with her.

    Thank you in advance!

    Annie Rosetti 

 

From checking my old emails, I know that she took the Greyhound bus across the state to visit my dad at the hospital in November 2006, right before Thanksgiving. She says in her letter that it was to confront him about surprising her with divorce papers, but he didn't file for divorce until April 2007, long after she'd invited the ex-convicts to live in their house, and long after two of the convicts had been arrested for stealing Dante's car. Based on old emails, she sold my dad's music equipment at least a week before being served with divorce papers, and she had been threatening to sell all his belongings since at least December 2006. I also knew Dante took the guitars. My dad had been relieved that he'd managed to save something. I don't remember being aware they ever went missing. The only pieces of information that seem new to me are that she pawned his rings and told people he was dead.

Meeting My Sister for the First Time

I'm hesitant to write about this because, as largely unread as this blog is, it's not private.  My nearest and dearest are well aware of it, though they aren't interested enough to come here (they hear enough of this stuff in person), and I should assume any up-and-coming nearest and dearest will be clued into it too, which is why I don't talk much about my paternal half-siblings.  I want them to like me, even if they someday read my blog.

To recap, I was conceived with anonymous donor sperm.  The only half-siblings I've found so far are the two adult children my biological father raised with his wife.  I'm the only DC one I know of, though there are probably more.

When I found Joseph, my biological father, he seemed very concerned that I would out him publicly, tag his children in Facebook posts, or somehow stalk or inconvenience his family.  I forgive him for this because he doesn't know that's not my style (except for the stalking -- I'm an exceptionally quiet cyberstalker).  He didn't want to know me, but my half-siblings did.  I have spoken to my half-sister Simone once on the phone.  We text sometimes on holidays.  We're Facebook friends, as I am with my half-brother Hans.  It's a strange relationship.  I've always been afraid of being perceived as too forward or forcing myself on them.  Both have been welcoming and kind to me.  Neither have seemed particularly interested in me though, so I've tried to take their lead.  Our relationships cooled, which I think was actually a good thing because they feel more solid now.  I feel more vested.  I feel like I would have to make a misstep for them to strike me from their lives now, whereas I previously checked Facebook every day to see if they had spontaneously unfriended me yet.

Here's the point of this post.  Simone wants to visit me and stay in my house.  Right away.  I do not want this to happen.  I would like to meet her.  I would like to share a meal and talk for hours, maybe even spend the day together.  She is my sister, and she will be forever, no matter how this relationship plays out.  But we have never met in person, we've only spoken once, and I don't want to host her in my home.  I am self-conscious of my home, and I have a husband and child and dog to take care of in my home.  I want to be able to give Simone my undivided attention somewhere else.  I want to be able to decompress after we meet and be alone to process everything.  I declined her request.  I said maybe in a few months.  Want to set a date in a few months?  Maybe then I'd have time to get to know her enough I could handle it, though I didn't say that part.  She asked again.  It needed to be now.  To avoid saying no again -- but also avoid saying yes -- I asked what was going on and expressed concern.  I knew she had had a fight with her boyfriend.  I knew to a certain extent what this was all about because she posts a lot of information on Facebook, which I appreciate as a quiet cyberstalker.  We messaged back a forth and few times over the next couple of weeks.  Then she asked again if she could stay in my house.  I've gotten good at drawing boundaries over the years, but I never learned how to maintain a relationship with someone who might not want those boundaries in place.  At the advice of my best friend Jerry, who is good at complex interpersonal relationships, I did what Simone frequently does and didn't respond at all.  The next time we talk, I will -- like Simone frequently does -- pretend it never happened.  This might sound cold, but I think it's the kindest way I could handle this particular situation.  It's strange.  I feel like I'm relearning how to play a game I was never particularly good at.

In case you're reading this ever, Simone, I do want to know you.  You are interesting, and we have so much in common in spite of all the ways we're different.  I think we'd both enjoy taking absurd numbers of selfies together and posting them on social media for attention with various #sister tags.  I like you and want to know you better.  But I want to take things slow.  I know it's been over two years, but we've barely spoken in that time, let alone bonded.  I am afraid of being the rebound from your current relationship.  I am afraid the novelty of meeting a new sister and posting selfies together on Facebook will not be enough to make you feel better again and that you might end up upset or mad at me.  I can be a good friend, but we barely know each other, and I'm not the best person for this job.  We could talk over the phone, and I could listen and sympathize, but I'm not good at hosting guests.  I don't like doing it, and that's not about you.  I want to get to know you, but if I let you light a fire under this sister relationship, I am afraid it will explode.  You mentioned starting DBT once on Facebook.  I clicked "like."  It made me happy that you were getting the kind of therapy I had always thought would work best for you.  I wanted to express support in that small Facebook way.  You don't know that borderline personality disorder is one of my areas of expertise.  You don't know anything about the family that raised me (well, you might now, if you're reading this here).  I want to have a functional relationship with you, so I'm not letting this go too fast.  Maybe I could come visit you and stay in a hotel.  We could go out to eat and you could show me around.  This is the best I can do.

On Not Fitting In

I watched a documentary on Amazon Streaming the other day (free with Prime) called "Adopted."  It follows two different stories:  an adult Korean-born woman who was adopted into a white American family at the age of 4 months, and a white American couple in the process of adopting a baby girl from China.

I like reading blogs and watching documentaries that feature adoptees.  While my brother Dante is the only adoptee I've been close to, we were never close enough to talk about it.  I knew almost nothing about adoption before I found my biological father.  What I think interests me most about adoption -- or, more accurately, adoptees -- is that, while it's distinctly different from my donor conception, a lot of adoptees and donor conceived people seem to share a lot of the same feelings of genetic bewilderment, wanting to know where they came from, and wanting people to stop telling them they should be grateful to be alive. 

I know a fair number of donor conceived people who feel adoption is different primarily because the children exist before the "intended parents" find them, unlike in donor conception, but the more I read, the more I believe children (and often mothers) are commodified in adoption just like in donor conception.  Most adopted children are not actually "saved" from some unspeakable fate (though some people like my mother like to tell them they were).  The bigger difference, as far as I can see, is not between intent but between how many biological ties are broken at birth, and in some cases of donor conception and surrogacy, all biological ties are broken just as in a typical adoption.  Lines start to blur.  We have a lot in common.  There are very few blogs by donor conceived people that have been updated in recent years, so I read adoptee blogs and breathe a sigh of relief that someone else gets it.  Someone more daring than me is blogging the outrage I'm afraid to show.

I enjoyed the "Adopted" documentary.  I don't share much in common with Jennifer, the Korean-American adoptee, but I related to her.  She grew up with white parents who had been raised "not to see race" and refused to recognize that she was any different from them, as well as classmates who mocked her for her physically Asian qualities.  As I've heard many transracial adoptees say, she felt white.  She wanted her outsides to match her insides.  She wanted blue eyes and blond hair and felt somewhat bewildered looking into the mirror as she grew up.  As a white donor-conceived woman who has experienced this phenomenon -- aspects of my face and body looking "off" because I can't place them in the context of my family, long before I knew this was a phenomenon that existed -- I can only imagine how Jennifer must have felt.  As she got older and attended a high school where she wasn't the only Asian student, she tried to pass as a "real Asian" since her new friends wouldn't immediately know she hadn't been raised in an Asian family.  When she reached adulthood, she even moved to Korea for a time, but still she did not fit in.  In Korea, where she'd been born, she was too American.

My best friend Jerry and I were talking about "Adopted" when she mentioned the fact that no one ever feels like they fit in -- that the very idea of fitting in is a fantasy that only makes people sad, like finding the meaning of life or finding one's soulmate.  While I agree with her to a certain extent, I think there are different levels of Not Fitting In that we experience.  I don't feel like I fit in most places or with most people -- I think I'm pretty common in this -- but I've got this Great White Halloween Costume I wear everyday that usually makes it look like I do.  I think my problem is less serious in part simply because it's less visible.  I don't expect everyone with "costumes" like mine to feel that way, but blending in has always meant a lot to me.  I've been in situations in which I stood out uncomfortably because of my race, and I've been in situations (most situations) in which I blended, and having the option to blend in simply by changing my clothes or hair or behavior -- whether or not I feel like I fit in -- makes a pretty huge difference.  This is only one of the struggles facing transracial adoptees, and it didn't even occur to me it existed until I started reading blogs in which people talk about it.

A lot of parents take their children's life challenges as personal insults.  As a parent, I get that.  It's annoying though, both for parent and child.  It makes parents defensive and children either angry or overprotective of their parents' feelings or both.  It creates an unhelpful barrier to communication.  Jennifer wanted validation from her adoptive parents, who she loved and cherished and cared for both physically and financially, but they seemed to treat her problems as a transracial and transnational adoptee as made up problems she'd invented to garner attention and pity.  What did she want them to do about it now?  They'd done the best they could.  They'd been raised not to see race and they never saw her as any different from them.  How could she ask for any more than that?  And these were good parents.  Loving, adoptive parents. 

I got the impression what might have helped was if they'd recognized that any daughter who loved them and cared for them as much as theirs always had was not baring her soul to hurt them.  She loved her parents and wanted to feel seen by them in her entirety.  She wanted them to understand and love her for all of who she was, and that included being Korean and an adoptee and not just a chameleon who could and would change who she was to gain their approval.  I get that.  I'm a chameleon too.  I think it might have meant a lot if they'd said, "I had no idea.  I'm sorry you've felt so much pain.  I did the best I could, and it's hard to hear you felt this way, but I understand that you didn't have the words to express these feelings earlier.  Thank you for trusting me with this now.  I've always loved you as my daughter, and it didn't occur to me that you might still feel adopted or want to know about where you came from.  Is there anything I can do to help?"  Empathy is important.  Validation is 50% of every cure. 

Breaking Up with My Mother

Near the end of our relationship -- just before the several months of silence that preceded my wedding -- my mother left me some rather fucked up voicemails.  I've mentioned them here before.  Sometimes I would come home from work to a happy morning voicemail chattering away about wedding cakes and an angry afternoon voicemail calling me an ungrateful little bitch.  Sometimes there were more than two.  I still have them.  Almost all of them.  My voicemail at the time was set up to send mp3 files to my gmail account, and I didn't delete them.  I starred the most fucked up ones so I could find them later if I needed to build a case against her or I guess just feel sorry for myself in a masochistic sort of way.

I listened to two of her starred voicemails the other day for the first time in at least five years.  I'm not entirely sure why, though I have wanted to post them here for a long time.  I've run across them before in my email, but I have avoided them until recently because I anticipated they would make me feel bad or start shaking like I used to whenever I heard her voice.  It was the first time I've heard her voice in at least five years.  I didn't start shaking, so that was good.  I didn't cry either, which is also good.  They were a lot meaner than I remembered.  Pretty much every time I run across an old email or story about her, I'm surprised again by how much worse it was than I remembered. 

In both the voicemails I listened to, she said something along the lines of, "Answer me this one question and I'll leave you alone forever.  What did I ever do to deserve the way you treat me?"  That might not be verbatim, but I don't want to listen to them again to check.  Take my word for it that it's close enough.  And the answer to her question is that she did very little to deserve the way I treated her.  I was kind to her.  I tried to help her and make her happy.  Bear in mind that these voicemails were before I ever cut ties with her, when I tripped over myself trying to save both my parents at the expense of most other things in my life.  Most people would have considered me a good daughter, or at least that's what they say out loud.  She didn't deserve the way I treated her.  She didn't have to because she was my mother and I loved her and felt responsible for her. 

After I got married and my mother stopped contacting me again and my dad made his threat to let himself die of infection rather than live in a nursing home, my husband I moved.  That was when we bought our house so that my dad could move in with us.  My mother hadn't reached out to me in the ten months following my wedding, and I didn't reach out to tell her I was moving. 

I didn't hear from her again for three years, when she finally found me on Facebook.  She sent me this message:

I miss you, I love you. I sent you an anniversary card but it came back. Just wanted you to know I am getting the help I need and would love to be in contact with you again. I am living in a group home called Butterfly Glen and it helps. My address is 12986 Appleton St Cincinnati, OH and my phone number is 513-555-9876. I would love to hear from you. I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and am being treated for it. I feel much better. Love forever and always, Mom

My first reaction was shock.  Not at the content so much as the fact that it was her.  Sort of like how I used to start shaking whenever the phone rang.  Flushed face, pounding heart.  I'm not sure if it was more fear or excitement.  I find them hard to tell apart. 

I didn't know what to say.  I wanted to tell her good job.  I wanted to praise her for getting help, even if the help she was getting was not by choice.  I knew from my dad that she had only ended up at Butterfly Glen because of another "suicide attempt" after both her parents died and she was going to have to find someone new to take her in and take care of her.  No one retrieved her from the hospital's psych ward, so she had been released to Butterfly Glen, an assisted living home I presume she selected from a short list based on its name.  She has always loved butterflies.  Butterfly everything.  Also, it's a shithole -- I've looked online.

The problem with responding to her was that I didn't want to renew contact.  It felt like an abusive ex with a drug abuse problem was reaching out to say she'd gotten clean and was ready to be together again.  Why?  I'm fine now and it was so hard to break up -- why would I ever walk back into that?  I want her to be happy and healthy, but what I don't want her to be is my problem.  I reached out to my best friend, Jerry.  I explained that I didn't want to have to deal to my mother again but that I felt I owed it to her until the next time she went off the deep end.  "Don't respond for three weeks, and I bet she'll comply," Jerry said.  Jerry knows my mom.

The fact of the matter is that I don't know if my mother was still abusing prescription drugs at Butterfly Glen.  I have no idea how much of what she was on or how diligent her doctors were.  I thought back to how she'd been before the muscle relaxants and the sleeping pills and god knows what else.  Back when I was thirteen and younger.  Her behavior wouldn't have been mistaken for bipolar disorder back then, before the drugs.  And that's when I started remembering some of the stories I've told here, and I realized I still wouldn't want her in my life.  No version of the mother I've ever known would be someone I would choose to have in my life.  Life is easier without her. 

I explained to my therapist, "The more I think about my childhood, the more the good memories are colored by the things I know now.  It seems like the love I felt for my mother was mostly Stockholm Syndrome." 

She replied, "Maybe it was."  I didn't expect that response.

I didn't reply to my mother's Facebook message.  She sent me another a few months later on my birthday, but I didn't see it until even later because it was in my "other" inbox, where unsolicited messages from strangers go.  She wrote:

Happy Happy Birthday!!! I can't believe that 30 years ago today you came into my life and changed it forever. I wanted to update you on family events. I'm sure that Dad told you that Grandma Wilkes died in May after your wedding. Uncle Jim died last November and Grandpa Wilkes died on August 4th this year. All I have left is Dante and you and Michael. I'm living in a great group home called Butterfly Glen I am being treated with medication and group therapy for Bipolar disorder. I am doing great and the only thing that could be better would be to hear from you. I don't want anything from you just to hear from you and to know where you are and what you're doing and how you are doing. Love Forever and Always, MOM

I was pregnant with Eliza at the time.  I never replied.

My Mom... Again: An Email

This one is from January 2007, the year before I cut ties with my mother.  My parents were mid-divorce, my dad was back in the hospital, and my mother had come out of her lengthy bout of not eating or moving or bathing to refinance the mortgage on the house and become worse than ever before.  

When my mother refinanced the mortgage, the monthly payments increased by about 50% (until the first rate adjustment, when it increased by about another 20%) and the mortgage reset for another 30 years of payments.  In exchange for this deal, my mother would receive $40k cash (as referenced in A List of Mom's Antics While Dad's in Hospital).  In order to ensure my dad's compliance since she needed his signature on the refinance paperwork, she promised him half the money.  I honestly think he would have signed no matter what because he tended to do whatever she demanded and then throw his hands in the air and claim he had no choice, but whatever.  

When she spent her half inside three weeks, my dad moved his $20k from my parents' joint account to the new joint account I had opened with him so that my mother couldn't spend it too.  That's the $20k referenced below.  Since she didn't appear to monitor her bank account back then (or ever?) and simply spent until it was empty, I hadn't expected her to notice.  Seriously.  It normally went from five figures to empty in a matter of days anyway.  It might seem odd to a third party that I didn't try explaining to her, "You promised that half of the money to Dad," but knowing me and knowing her, it wasn't odd.  It wouldn't have lessened the yelling or the retribution, and my primary wish back then was to stop getting yelled at.  In my family, telling the truth tended to go badly.  Lying was easier and more effective.  I just wish I'd learned that fact before my twenties.

It gets a little dark at the end. 

Dear Jerry,

I think I mentioned the last time we spoke that my mother had started calling again.  I've found the best way to get through her tirades without dissolving is to put her on speaker phone and watch the amused reactions of Michael and anyone else who happens to be in the apartment at the time.  They reinforce that she is crazy, which means that I am, by default, sane, and this is always a reassuring thing to find out.  

Today was the worst since the "day of inappropriate voice mails left in irrational anger."  First off, the bank sent a letter to my dad confirming that he had transferred $20k to our new joint bank account.  Of course, my mother opened it and read it, as she does with every piece of mail that enters the house, regardless of to whom it is addressed.  The only thing I could tell my mother was that he had wanted to send me money for the wedding.  I had planned out the entire story in minute detail beforehand -- explaining that the money was for my wedding, which she had told me she'd pay for and clearly would not be able to, was the only way she would consider it a lost cause and not try to recoup it later.  Now she is under the impression that my father just gave me a $20k gift and she is trying to convince my brother, who is holding my dad's favorite guitars for him so that my mom cannot sell them, that my dad only cares about me and clearly does not love him.  I had to relay these new developments to my dad so that he could try to explain things to Dante as best as he can without having to trust him with too much information.  Luckily, my mother's interest in anything I have to say wanes the second I open my mouth, so I mostly looked like a spoiled daughter who has no idea what is going on in her finances.  

My mom then asked why I ignored everyone at Christmas.  I think she was referring to the fact that I didn't send her a present.  Neither of us mentioned the fact that no one in the entire family contacted me at Christmas, either by mail or by phone.  She probably didn't think they needed to; I just didn't mention it because I didn't want to get involved in the fight she was trying to have with me. I had meant to send everyone cookies like I did last year, but by the time I had enough time to bake them all, none of them would have gotten to their destinations in time.  I explained that I didn't call her because I didn't want to get yelled at.  I can't think of a nicer way to say it, so that's how I say it.  I have told her this before, but apparently I should know that I deserve to be yelled at and I should stop trying to avoid my punishments.  

The part I remember best was when she told me that I should buy cards for everyone and treat my elders with respect (I guess this was a reference to the fact that my grandparents and I don't write to each other anymore -- she used to get angry when we did because I wasn't writing to her) and that I'm 25 years old and "need to grow up."  I'm already planning to use that line on her the next time she cries about not having enough money to care for herself.  "You are 56 years old, you have never had to work for a living, you can't manage to take care of yourself when handed $6000 per month, and you blame all your problems on everyone but yourself -- it's time to grow up," I'll say.  "I shouldn't be the one to tell you that you have to learn to take responsibility for yourself, but since you've alienated everyone else you know, it seems I'm the only one who will."  That might be a little too preachy.  Maybe just, "Stop whining!  Take responsibility for yourself!" or "Good god, I'd like to set you on fire!"  That would be the most frank.

I hate her so much.  I hate myself so much.  Her calls just make both worse.  I've never been good at taking these things in stride.  I try to act stoic, and I'm trying to be strong for my dad, but I hate her so much.  Every time I hear from her I feel more useless and hopeless than before.  I'm a bad person and everyone in her family apparently thinks I'm a deserter and a "selfish little bitch," and if my genes come from her, what if I get more like her?  What if I have children and ruin my marriage and their lives?  What if they hate me as much as I hate her?  Part of me is totally fine and hopeful and wants to see the world and do big things, but the part that she talks to just wants to kill myself.  My logic is that, even though she'd still hate me for doing something so self-centered, I wouldn't be able to do anything to make the situation worse.  

I'm sick of things being my fault, and if I'm dead, I can't be blamed, can I?  Not logically anyway.  I don't think too much anymore about all the stuff I'd need to put in order beforehand -- since she wouldn't be the one going through my things, what do I care if I haven't destroyed everything I ever wrote? -- though I would want some sort of will in place for the money in my bank accounts.  I've done a little research but the internet isn't terribly helpful.  I don't know what to do.  If I died, I think it would kill my dad, but I don't know what to do.  If I someday decided this is what I want, I don't know if anyone would support me, and I'm not sure of the legal ramifications if Michael knew in advance.  I don't know what to do.  I'm sorry if this sounds stupid or silly.  I don't make rash decisions, so it won't happen tonight, but I've been thinking about it for awhile now, and I think I might do less damage in the long run this way. 

I hope you had a good trip to New Orleans.  Did you do anything fun?  Sorry for the long, depressing email.  -- C

How I Realized It Wasn't All My Fault

The first time I saw a therapist, I was 28 years old.  I hadn't spoken to my mother in over a year, and I basically sobbed uncontrollably while saying everything I had kept predominantly bottled up for most of my life.  My tears poured nonstop for the first several sessions, even when I wasn't upset.  It seemed like an automatic response to being allowed to let everything out.

When I got to the part about how a mother's love is supposed to be unconditional and, if my own mother hates me, then I can't possibly be a decent person, my therapist prompted, "But you ultimately realized the thing about mothers is just a trope and it isn't necessarily true.  You realized what your mother thinks has no bearing on who you are as a person... right?"

To which I replied, "...What?"

Post-Divorce Antics

The following email chain took place a year after the last time I spoke to my mother.  It was awhile after my parent's divorce became final, when my mother had moved in with her parents and finally made an effort to cash the spousal support checks my dad had paid her for the entirety of their separation.  Because she had ignored the checks for months and then couldn't find them, the court had replaced them with a $30,000 mega-check.   

Dear Jerry,

I can hardly fathom how much junk food one could buy at Walmart with $200. 

My dad's lawyer sends him regular notes on what he's been doing on his case (i.e., "why I'm charging you another $250" notes -- just think how much junk food he could buy from Walmart!).  He's ultra-professional and the notes normally just state quick little facts.  Which is what makes the attached note and its tone of exasperation slightly amusing. 

I'm so glad my mother doesn't have my current phone number or know what state I live in.  Dante said she's been trying to call me, looking for the next check ever since the check for $30k went through, but the phone number she has is from two apartments ago.  -- C

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Rossetti <stargazer23401@aol.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:37 PM
Subject: Fwd:
To: Christina R. Martin <christina.r.martin@gmail.com>

Here's the note. By the way, She's calling Dante on a daily basis now. Looks like she's trying that with my lawyer. I'm damn glad she doesn't have my number or address. Dante also said that when she tried to cash the $30k check, the bank would only give her $100 until it cleared because of its size. She then took that $100, borrowed another $100 from grandpa, took a cab, and went to WalMart, and bought twinkies and other junk food. She's also off one of her meds, which explains her behavior, I think.

Love, Dad...

July 7.          Annie Rossetti attempted to call me at 11:20am and at noon. Both times I refused to talk with her with explanation through my secretary that she has a lawyer and I am not permitted to talk with her. She clearly is having mental health problems right now again. That may be worse than they have been. She states that her personal property is to be turned over to her by July 31^st and that she took a cab and went by the house in Cincinnati recently and the locks were changed and she could not get in.  She threatens to file a contempt of court. She said she has tried to talk to her own lawyer and her own lawyer will not talk with her anymore. All of this was in a long winded voice mail to me. She claims she will file a contempt of court against client.

            I am not going to talk to Annie Rossetti and even when I get a voice mail from now on I am just going to ignore it rather then take the time and record it in the file and pass it on to client. Unless Paul instructs me by email to do so I will be ignoring any messages from her.

Consolation Prizes

I've mentioned here before that, as a child and teen, I had a habit of looking for "consolation prizes" when bad things happened to me.  Some people call them "silver linings."  Sometimes they were good things that might not have otherwise happened; sometimes they were simply lessons I'd learned.  I liked to believe everything happens for a reason because it makes everything life doles out so much easier to swallow.  I fell out of that habit though.  I want to get back into it.  Here are some consolation prizes for which I'm thankful.  They might get a little weird.

1) I'm thankful my mother is as low functioning as she is.  It's terrible for her, and of course I would prefer she be her best self and happy, but if she has to be cruel and work against me, being severely mentally ill and low functioning to the point that strangers can tell is a good thing for me.  It made her easier to cut from my life.  When I told people the truth about things she had said and done, no one seemed to doubt me.  I still have relationships with some of my extended family (the ones I like best) and do not feel like I have to fear what she says about me to them or to strangers anymore because I appear sane and trustworthy and she does not.  She also does not have the stick-to-it-tiveness to hire a hitman or steal my identity (fingers crossed) or anything else she might dream up against me in her darkest hours.

There are a lot of people with parents who have personality disorders and the like who aren't quite so lucky.  A high functioning parent who has a tendency towards cruelty and viciousness is a terrible thing.  It can make people call you a liar and treat you poorly.  It can make you doubt your own sanity.  My mother's spiral into darker depths saved me from that.  I did go through the self-doubt as so many of us do, but I know it was easier than it could have been, and for that I am thankful.

2) I'm thankful the dad I grew up with isn't biologically related to me.  Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, and maybe his health problems are mostly related to his paraplegia rather than genetics, but I don't see any way being related to him would have made my life better.  He's not so nice, and I'm pretty sure I got at least a few extra IQ points from my hyper-educated biological father.  I'm 99% sure my parents would agree with that too -- no matter how mad they got at me, they never seemed to stop believing I was significantly smarter than them.  Plus, now that I know who my biological father is, I have siblings with whom I'm on speaking terms.  Even if we never become close, just being their sister is something I treasure.

3) I'm thankful for the parts of my parents that wanted me to excel.  They had the same high expectations of me that I had for myself, and they were willing to put money into my education.

4) I'm thankful for the parts of my parents that wanted me to shut up and leave them alone.  Had they been exclusively helicopter parents who overprotected and coddled me, I might not have become self-sufficient as easily, but when they were sick of me, I had to figure out how to handle things myself.  I learned how to stick up for myself, physically and financially and (sort of) emotionally.  Perhaps I could have learned these skills via good parenting instead, but from what I've read, only about 50% of people have fully functional parents anyway, and I got what I needed, so for that I am thankful.

5) I am thankful I am hypersensitive and couldn't take anybody's shit even as a child.  Most of the things I have always hated most about myself can be traced back to being hypersensitive -- crying easily, getting upset easily, even fainting easily -- but I know there are ways this quality has actually served me well.  I think Dante would have abused me in worse ways had he not known I would scream and tell our parents.  My complaints and tears were a great source of irritation for my parents, but at no point did I just shut up and accept what was dished out, even when it would have been easier for all involved.  I hated that about myself -- the tears and complaints felt like more of a compulsion than a choice -- but in hindsight I think it was actually an effective defense mechanism in that house.  I have worked to change gears as an adult, especially since I have control over my own situation now and can usually just get myself what I need rather than complain about it, but I think being willing to complain is still useful.  When I can't take matters into my own hands and the most reasonable thing to do is file a formal complaint or call the police, I can do that, and that's a useful thing to know.

6) I am thankful for my childhood perfectionism and terror of doing anything wrong.  This is another quality I have spent a lot of time hating about myself.  It took me until my twenties to realize I was going to get yelled at just about the same regardless of what I did, so I spent my entire childhood and college years trying to be perfect.  I wasted a lot of time I could have been having fun feeling completely stressed instead.  If I did things just so, my parents would be happy and no one would yell at me, I thought erroneously.  However, as stressed as it made me, I did get good grades, and those helped me get out.  I stayed out of trouble and -- because I tried so hard to be perfect  -- when that still wasn't enough, I was eventually able to see that it wasn't my fault.  Accepting that your parents' bad behavior isn't all your own fault can be really hard, especially when they can point to things you might have done to provoke it (I'm going to let you in on a secret -- it still isn't your fault).

From what I've read, there are two routes children of unpredictable parents tend to take:  attempted perfection and rebellion.  I attempted perfection while Dante rebelled.  While I believe rebellion would have been more fun and I might still have turned out fine, attempted perfection has landed me in an okay place, so I'm making peace with the route I took.  Besides, I'm really glad I didn't turn out like Dante.  He still lives in that house.

6) I am thankful I was slightly fat as a child.  I honestly think I might have been in better health my entire life had I been raised by parents who fed me reasonably and occasionally took me to the park, but since I wasn't and I did spend all of my childhood slightly fat and miserable about it, I learned about nutrition and exercise myself, which has served me well.  Had I been as thin as Dante, I might never have forced myself to learn these skills and might thus have worse health now as an adult, as I know Dante does because he posts about it in online forums under a username I'm sure he thinks is anonymous. 

7) I am thankful my parents didn't allow me to go to therapy.  Maybe I would have recovered more quickly if I'd had professional help earlier, but I've also heard of people who learned not to trust therapists at all because of how their parents used their mental health against them.  The parents accused them of being crazy and painted fantastic pictures for their therapists of what terrible, troubled children they were.  I can only imagine how that would have broken me down.  Because my parents didn't allow me to go to therapy, it was something I reached out for on my own when I got out, and it has been gloriously helpful.  In my opinion, therapy is the #1 life hack of all time.

My Own Most Shameful Secrets

I don't really know if these count as secrets since they are things my husband and best friend seem to know about me, whether I want them to or not (I'd prefer no one knew them, honestly), but they are things I hate about myself.  I feel like I should document these so I don't just sound like I'm exclusively complaining about my family all the time and think that I'm perfect.  I am not perfect.

1) I have trouble with emotional dysregulation.  Feeling normal and grounded is like walking a tightrope, and any little upset -- things most people either bounce back from or scarcely even notice -- can plunge me into panic or hopelessness and despair.  I don't like this about myself.  My mother is the same way.  Therapy coupled with reading as much as I possibly can about mental illness and mood disorders taught me that this is a normal side effect of growing up with two parents who have the same problem.  It's one of my worst "maladaptive behaviors."  I also learned from a book that one of the best ways to combat emotional dysregulation is to keep practicing staying calm, which seems idiotically simple but does seem to help.  It's kind of like weight training or training your body for anything else -- keep trying and, little by little, it gets more doable.  I feel stupid for not knowing this before my thirties.  I mean, multiple episodes of "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" focus on how to be a calm, emotionally mature human being, and I'm learning this same stuff at the same time as my preschooler.  I'm afraid if I don't master it fast enough, she'll turn out as emotionally messed up as me.  I think I hide this problem pretty well most of the time, but I'm also afraid I don't.

2) I don't like having emotions and I wish I could make them stop.  Some are fine, but the majority of emotional reactions I feel are sadness or despair or worry, and I'd rather have no emotions at all than keep dealing with these ones.  I brought this problem to my therapist as one of the things I wanted to change about myself, and she said I can't change this.  She said it's normal human being stuff and I'm like this permanently.  I don't know what other people do to make having emotions bearable.  I feel like people who don't have life-long mood disorders or mentally ill parents won't even fully grasp what I'm talking about on this one.  I'm afraid someone who doesn't get it will tell me, "Everyone has emotions.  What makes you think you're special?  Stop complaining so much."

3) I'm deeply ashamed of my home.  I think this might be a "children of hoarders" thing.  I don't like having people inside or even seeing the outside because, in spite of paying professional landscapers to take care of the mowing and edging, there are still weeds to fight back and I still don't know what I'm doing in terms of gardening.  It's a nice house.  People visit and say nice things because it gives a good first impression.  I do let people visit because I want to have friends and family and don't want to become someone who caves in to fear, but I wish it could all be invisible.  It's not visitor-ready at a moment's notice, and I don't even know how close to "normal" it is.  All I have to go on is the mess I grew up in and what other people's houses look like when they are expecting me.

I can't walk down the street without analyzing other homes' landscaping and comparing them to my own and feeling disgusting.  This is why I don't like going outside anymore.  I can't focus on anything else when I walk my dog and my daughter.  Even when other yards are weedier than my own and I don't judge them for that because honestly who cares, I still can't seem to stop judging my own for being visibly imperfect.  People used to call the city on my parents for letting their lawn grow wild and leaving a totaled car parked in the driveway with a poster board sign on it.  I know my home is nothing like that, but I don't know where the line stands between "normal" and "my parents."  I want to feel I'm beyond reproach, whether I'm thinking of my house or my body or pretty much anything else mine.  I don't like worrying what people will say about me or my home or how disgusting I am as a human being because there is a huge weedy bush that keeps growing back in my backyard where a better homekeeper would have flowering plants and a thicker layer of mulch.  I want it all to be invisible.  I find the longer I live somewhere, the more disgusted I feel by my home and the more I worry about people seeing it.  Familiarity seems to breed contempt when it comes to things I own.  Things look so much nicer when they aren't mine to feel self-conscious about. 

I've been working on building habits for keeping my home clean and maintained for the last decade, but I feel like it will take me until retirement age to reach a level of competence that other people achieve by their mid-twenties.  I also think I stress over my home more than "normal" people, which is even more obnoxious because it isn't even contingent upon my continued incompetence at housekeeping.  Anxiety is a whole separate beast.  I don't like having anxiety, especially when I don't have any idea how to fix it. 

4) Sometimes I think everyone I know would be better off if I'd died a long time ago.  No one needed me a long time ago.  My husband would probably have a better wife if I hadn't come along, my daughter wouldn't even exist so nothing would be worse for her, my best friend has tons of other friends anyway, and my existence doesn't really affect other people.  My mother would probably even be happier, or would at least have been happy temporarily because of the pity she would have received from having a dead child (I'm not the first person to say my mother seems like someone who would have gotten off on my death, so please consider that this might not just be my callousness or hyperbole), which is the one reason I'm really glad I didn't die young.  Because fuck that.  Neither my life nor my death will be devoted to trying to make her happy.  One of the feelings that has kept me alive is spite.

When my daughter was a baby, I thought about dying a lot.  I wouldn't call it postpartum depression because it wasn't the worst depression I've felt by a long shot and I felt like it was primarily brought on by extreme sleep deprivation, but I wanted to be dead.  I thought, If I were dead, people would line up to help my husband and baby, because I was having trouble getting things done and, while I don't give the best first impression, they are very cheerful, likable people.  He would have a better wife, my baby would have a better mother, and my life insurance policies are worth significantly more than anything else I can offer them. 

Later I realized that no one would actually line up to help my family.  As likable as my husband is, he's not the best at asking for help, and people seem to prefer to do nothing anyway.  I'm also all my daughter has, and I don't know how long she could survive without me.  I don't feel like I'm worth more than I did back then, but I do feel like things would be worse for my family if they had to hire help to replace me.  My death would cause a lot of inconvenience, probably for years.  The thing that is really hard is knowing that I increase my daughter's ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) score by being depressed but would also increase it by being dead.  I feel like it's impossible for me to be good enough not to cause her harm.  That's why I wish I'd died a long time ago.  I couldn't make her life worse if I hadn't forced her into existence in the first place.

In a lot of ways, my life has improved year by year for my entire life, partly because of increased independence, partly because of increased distance from my parents, and partly from self-education about mental health and -- if I do say so myself -- sheer force of will.  I keep trying.  But I'm not sure I will ever be able to try enough to make things all better, and for that I feel weak and disgusting.  I don't want to be broken like my mother.  I believe that everyone is good at their core, even if that core is so covered in the residue of pain and anger and fear that it can't be seen by other people.  I don't feel "not good enough" so much as I fear other people will never think I'm good enough.  I don't know what I'm afraid of.  I am a grown adult of independent means, but I'm still somehow afraid that if people feel I'm as useless my parents seem to think I am that I will somehow be voted out of here.  I don't know what "here" means in this instance or how the voting would happen, but I feel like I constantly need to prove my worth.

I don't think all the time about the feelings noted above.  I don't walk around sobbing and telling my daughter how much everything is terrible.  I generally confine these writings to naptime and after she goes to bed at night.  I try everyday to be my best, but my "best" isn't always that impressive.  I wanted to mention these feelings because they've never really gone away completely and they sometimes feel like little weights tied all over my body.  I really want my daughter to build good cleaning and self-care and mental health habits all her life so that she doesn't have to expend this much brain power on just maintaining her living space and feeling okay, but what if I can't be good enough at it myself to teach her properly?  It feels like my heart is being squeezed by a vice grip when I think of the likelihood I won't "break the cycle" of these disorders and she will have to battle the same personal problems as me.  She is wonderful.  She deserves better.

Wanting To Be Sick

When I was little, I used to fantasize about being hospitalized for a nervous breakdown.  I knew nothing about what went on in mental hospitals; no one in my family had been hospitalized for mental reasons at that point, and I was also very young.  I remember my mother talking about specific teenage girls from our church who were straight A students and on the dance team and preparing for college and how they would be hospitalized because of the stress of being so amazing at everything, and also anorexia.  I wanted to be like that.  I wanted to be so amazing that I had to be hospitalized for it.  I envisioned my mother and doctors and nurses stroking my forehead and telling me to rest, that I shouldn't work so hard.

Mental illness wasn't acknowledged in our house or in our extended family, in spite of my uncle's suicide and almost all my mother's siblings eventually being diagnosed with one thing or another.  The only illnesses that were valued and treated (and faked) were physical.  Stress counted as physical though.  Only the best, hardest working, most put upon martyrs felt stress, so my mother was in a fairly constant competition to be the most stressed out person she knew.  I think this is part of why I wanted to be hospitalized.  I wanted the attention, and I wanted someone to acknowledge that the stress I felt was real too.  I wanted a reaction that wasn't, "Why is that little bitch crying again?" or "Stop being so sensitive."

One of the best side effects of my mother going off the deep end was that she stopped responding positively to my ailments, including the ulcerative colitis I developed in college.  I learned that I had to care for myself and no one else would do it for me.  I could ask close friends for specific help, and they usually came through, and hired help is an option for almost everything if you have enough money, but I was responsible for making sure I had what I needed.  No one else.  No one would decide I was too sick or under too much stress and tell me to take a rest.  If I let myself hit rock bottom, no one was going to come to my rescue.  It is a little depressing to grow up wanting so much for someone to stroke your hair and take care of you and tell you not to stress yourself, and then to realize that will never happen, but it was an important lesson to learn, and it was a better situation than the one my mother had. 

My mother's parents took care of her until they died.  She lived within walking distance of their house up until they moved to the next town over in their 70s.  I remember watching her mother cook for her, and her father giving her money when she needed it, despite her income via my dad's disability payments being several times that of my grandparents.  She moved in with them after the divorce, when she refused to bathe or feed herself or find anywhere else to live.  She always had a human safety net.  Until she didn't.

Shortly after my grandparents died, my mother took a bunch of pills, called herself an ambulance, and ended up in the psych ward of the local hospital.  Based on what I've heard as an adult, I imagine the psych ward wasn't as soothing or nurturing as I'd fantasized as a child.  No friends or family came to her rescue that time, and they ultimately discharged her to a low-end assisted living home where she was required to see a psychiatrist.  He was the one who diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. 

I don't know where she is now or how/whether she takes care of herself.  I heard she left the assisted living home after awhile.  My dad said they wanted her to pay something to keep living there, but I don't know if she got evicted or if she left because she wanted to go.  She had tried to reach out to me via Facebook from that assisted living home to say my brother, my husband, and I were all the support system she had left in the world and she wanted me back in her life.  It had been some three years since I'd heard from her at that point.  I never replied.  After she left assisted living, she talked about suing my dad for more monthly spousal support and wanting to pick up the things she'd left at the house after the divorce, including some major appliances, but nothing ever came of it and then she disappeared again. 

The Time I Told My Mother the Truth About Everything

This is an excerpt from an email I sent my best friend on the day I told my mother "The Truth As I See It."  It happened a couple years before my wedding, on the day my mother received divorce papers from my dad.  I count that phone call as one of the most important conversations of my life and one of the few times I was honest with my mother about her behavior and refused to back down when challenged.  I believe this conversation was at least part of the reason my mother has reached out to me to reconnect but has never once asked me why I stopped talking to her.  I said what she needed to know (if she heard it).

I mention unofficially diagnosing my mother as bipolar in this email, which in hindsight I kind of wish I hadn't done, though I thoroughly believed it to be true and that proper treatment -- especially a prescription mood stabilizer, which was one of the few things she didn't already seem to be taking -- could make her better.  She did receive a formal diagnosis of bipolar disorder a couple years after this phone call took place, but I no longer believe it to be accurate.  More on all that another time.

Dear Jerry,

My mom was served the divorce papers today.  She called me sobbing and, when I answered, said, "I just called to say I love you."  I acted sympathetic and didn't say much until she started in on my dad, at which point the invisible string that my voice had been hung up on just broke and I announced loudly, "You sold ALL OF HIS STUFF," and basically told her the truth on just about everything.  I didn't yell, but when saying things I'd wanted to tell her for a long time, I announced them loudly like an orator.  I was still gentle through a lot of it though, particularly when talking about mental illness, and she was the only one who cried.  I told her she is bi-polar.  I told her she should be on meds for it and not on meds for EVERYTHING else.  I told her she appears to have Munchausen's syndrome and her car wrecks seem to be on purpose ("You think I rolled the car ON PURPOSE?!"  "Yes.").  I told her maxing out someone else's credit card is NOT OKAY, regardless of her defense that it was "only $500."  When she complained that no one speaks to her, I told her it's because she acts crazy now.  When she asked why I didn't call her at Christmas, I told her I didn't want to get yelled at.  When she acted shocked and asked, "What?" I repeated myself, only more loudly and enunciating better.  I did this every time she acted shocked at something I said.  I asked her if she didn't remember yelling at me and leaving voice mails in which she called me a selfish little bitch, or if she really believed it didn't hurt me.  She said she only remembered calling me that when I didn't send cards to my grandmothers.  I don't really remember how she said it, but it came out that she thinks I am bad for that, and I can't really remember that part through the haze of anger... 

When she said my father took the money away from her and that she would have to live without lights and heat, I explained that, if the bank account is empty, it's because she empties it every month.  Several thousand dollars every month.  I explained that I am handling their money now.  I explained that it comes to me so that I can pay the house payments that she would not.  I explained I had been instructed to put the rest back into their joint account each month, leaving my dad with nothing, so that the automatic withdrawal bills could be paid and she could blow through the rest the way she always does ("Blow through?"  "Yes."  "You think I BLOW THROUGH money?!"  "Yes.").  She said she spends money but (or because?  I can't remember) she has no other vices.  She said she doesn't own furs or diamonds; she pays bills and sometimes buys things for other people.  She said that nothing will make people happy.  We weren't happy when she was spending no money, lying on the couch all day refusing to move, eat, or bathe, and that we aren't happy now that she is out spending money.  What do we want from her?  I said, "We want you to act like a normal human being." 

She cried a lot.  She said we used to be best friends.  I told her she used to be the center of my world.  I told her she used to be my entire support system and that she dropped me in college, or in high school really, and I was forced to get over it.  She claimed it was the menopause.  I told her she should have admitted to it then rather than just yelling at me and accusing me of changing.  I told her she is bi-polar.  Again.  She said she might as well take all of the pills she has and end it all.  I confessed that I had thought about suicide in the last few months too, and then she cut me off to tell me about her problems some more.  Honestly, it's what I expected to happen.  It was more of a test than a confession.  But a normal person would have at least acknowledged the fact that the other person had spoken.  I realize it's hypocritical, but I hated her for not caring even a little bit.  I told her that, kill her or not, most pills don't just put you to sleep, they make you sick and kill you painfully (it's true -- I've read it in books).  I told her to think that over before making any rash decisions.  

She told me what a good mother she was, and how she made me independent.  I'm VERY independent, I told her.  Still, I confessed things I maybe shouldn't have told her, like how much it matters to me what she says to me and the fact that she doesn't seem to care about me.  I told her how fucked up it makes me when she calls and yells at me.  I told her that being told I'm a bad person doesn't make me a better one.  And I announced over her complaints, perhaps a little callously, that I know that's all I'm good for -- being her punching bag and something to bitch at -- to which she replied "no" and then returned to bemoaning her own sufferings, interspersed with bitching about how I don't send people greeting cards.

I guess that's why it doesn't matter how much I told her.  She doesn't care enough to hear it.  Ever.  I know it was a bad day.  I know it only makes sense that she would be upset about being sued for divorce and be focused on her own pain.  I know today might not have been the best day, after years of mostly silence, to announce The Truth As I See It.  And when she wasn't criticizing me or saying horrible things about my dad, and I had a chance to relate to her, I felt bad for her.  But she couldn't leave it alone for long, and I couldn't feel bad WITH her, because it wasn't just today.  It's her.  This will sound ridiculous, but I can't think of a better way to say it:  there is a quote that Christmas isn't a day but a state of mind.  So is the worst day of your life.  And she keeps that day alive in her heart all year round, and it makes sense to be focused on your own misfortunes on the worst day of your life, so maybe it makes sense to her to act this way.  Or maybe I'm trying to make it make sense to me and I'm giving her too much credit.  It's been a long time since she showed an interest in another human being, so it's hard to tell.

I don't envy her situation, but I don't pity her either.  She makes her own choices.  Her life hasn't been happy, but it has been in her control.   If you are unhappy, you have to decide whether or not to do something about it.  Doing nothing is still your choice.  It's just a stupid one.  I asked her to do something about it.  I asked her to see a different psychiatrist and be evaluated for bi-polar disorder so that she can get better.  She asked why she should bother.  I told her, because it isn't all about her, and if she cares about her mother as much as she claims to, she will do it to make her happy.  We'll see.

The "Wanted" Child

Goodness of Fit

When I got pregnant with my daughter, I wondered what she would be like.  I wondered what she would look like, what she would be best at, what she would enjoy.  I had no preconceived notions about who she might be.  I was so different from my own parents that I knew she could be anyone.

People in the parenting realm often cite "goodness of fit" when discussing how well a parent and child get along.  The idea is that you might unintentionally favor one of your children over the other because you have the same temperament or the same hobbies, while the other might function as a sort of stranger in your home.  I don't know how well my adoptive brother, Dante, and I fit with our parents.  It didn't seem like any of us fit well, but my mother and I bonded more than the others.  Even when she favored Dante over me, it seemed more like a strategic alliance than a familial bond.

Aside from her vast volunteer duties and some persistent personality issues, my mother almost seemed like a blank slate.  She knew what foods she liked -- steak, shrimp, lots salt, nothing green -- but she didn't otherwise seem to know what she liked.  Who she was could vary wildly.  On the plus side, this meant she fully embraced my hobbies, including buying us season tickets to nearly every live theater in our area when I showed a passion for it.  She said I made her feel "cultured." 

My dad and I had little in common.  He knew what he liked -- jazz, stargazing, bad '80s movies -- but his hobbies seldom overlapped with my own.  He introduced me to the television show "Ghost Hunters" around the time I was trying to divorce him from my increasingly mentally ill mother, and that gave us something to talk about on our phone calls until I changed cable providers and no longer got the right channel.  He liked what he liked.  He was unwilling or unable to feign interest in topics simply because they mattered to me.

I took music lessons from a young age, but I didn't enjoy them, only the attention gleaned from performing.  I dreaded the actual live performances, but people would hug and praise me afterwards, and I lived for that.  I liked museums and art galleries, though I only got to see them when a friend's parents or a school field trip would take me there.  I loved reading.  My mother read me stacks of books until I took over the job myself at the age of four.  I don't think either of my parents has read a book cover to cover since that day.  I'm also good at baking and enjoy eating elaborate vegetarian meals.  I love spicy international cuisine, despite my mother's insistence that we don't like onions or most vegetables and that everything should be served "plain" and "mild."

My daughter was born and soon gained a reputation as a smart, funny child with a sunny disposition.  She's still very young and will undoubtedly grow and change, but she fits in well with both my husband and myself.  My mother used to say, "I hope you have a child just like you someday," when she got angry, like it was a curse or a threat.  I battled depression from a very young age (maybe four?), but I tried hard to be good at things and to be kind and to overcome my many fears.  My thought was that if I had a child like myself -- kind, funny, hardworking, smart -- but happy, that would be great.  Why would anyone not want that? I thought. 

Something that I haven't heard much about "goodness of fit" in parenting is that, if a child is raised by her biological parents and they don't hate each other, it should come fairly naturally.  My daughter inherited half her genes from me and the other half from one of my closest friends.  My husband and I have lived together easily for many years, and while we have a variety of hobbies and interests between us, we have the same sense of humor and priorities.  We get along.  We are raising our daughter together in our home, so theoretically, whether you believe nature or nurture is the greater factor, we were always going to have a certain goodness of fit.  That didn't occur to me until well after she was born. 

I don't think I have the same sense of humor as the parents who raised me.  To be honest, it's hard to remember what made them laugh or made them seem happy, but I remember us all favoring different movies.  I don't know if I got my gallows humor from genetics or from my life experiences, but my mother didn't approve of it.  I had to pretend not to laugh at the things I found amusing for fear of being scolded or told I'm a bad person.  My half-brother, Hans, has that same dark sense of humor.  He's says its one of our German qualities.

My biological father reads and enjoys history and science.  My half-siblings do too.  My sister likes baking as much as I do.  These might all just be coincidences.  They're all common hobbies after all.  But I didn't share them with the parents who raised me.  I'm the most educated person in my family, but tied for least educated in my father's family.  Can a person really be more academically inclined -- and I don't mean smart, which I think a lot of my family was in spite of what they thought themselves, but loving of school and learning -- simply because she descended genetically from someone who was?  There are other potential explanations, after all. 

I'm sure I must've had more in common with my mother than I can remember now.  Surely I didn't just inherit similar hair and some maladaptive behaviors.  She liked crafts when I was little, like I did.  We only did them if there were other children around, like visiting cousins or a Girl Scout troop, but she liked doing crafts.  We did jigsaw puzzles together.  We both liked going out to dinner and a movie.  She liked making things beautiful, which was hard because her hoarding tendencies meant she could only beautify our home through shopping and filling it with more things.  I don't remember my mother very well, especially how she used to be before she went off the deep end.  I have a hard time remembering why I used to love her so much.  I'm not sure if that sounds more mean or sad, but it's true.  It is what it is, I guess.

When my daughter started developing a personality of her own, I was surprised.  She wasn't a stranger.  Nothing about her seemed to be pulled from the ether.  She was so much like me.  Sometimes when I saw her from certain angles, she looked like my childhood self.  She cocked her eyebrows and made mischief faces like me.  She mirrored my reactions and behaviors -- if I wanted her to be calm and happy, there was little I had to do beyond modeling good behavior and giving her "cuddles and kisses," as she likes to say.  She is young.  She still has a lot of growing and changing ahead of her, and she will make friends and have experiences outside my home and outside my control, but none of this parenting stuff has been as impossible or even as illogical as I was led to believe it would be.

I don't know what I'm trying to say.  I don't think living with your two biological parents solves all your problems, or even ensures goodness of fit.  If I'd had more in common with my dad, we might have enjoyed each other's company more, but I still don't think it would have been a great relationship because I think he'd still only value in me what he already values.  Having more in common with my mother would have solved nothing.  I'm confident that her self-loathing would have only caused her to hate me more, the more I resembled her.  I don't think my half-siblings get along particularly well with their parents either, though I do know they have more functional relationships than I do with any of mine.  We're all very different people though.  I blame the mental illness more than anything for our lack of good fit.  I believe the parts of my mother that weren't fundamentally broken were fundamentally good.  Maybe.  I guess I think the worst situation would be like Dante's -- being raised by two people whose love is conditional when it's present at all, who aren't related to you, who are not mentally healthy and cannot see far enough past their own pain to consistently give a fuck about you.  It does make me wonder what kind of relationship Dante might have had with his biological parents though.  Or with anyone else really.