Those who have known me for any length of time through these forums know that my mom is, at best, unique, and at worse, totally freaking nuts.
I went to see her yesterday, specifically. I didn't want to, I am honest enough to admit that. It's been years since I actually wanted to see my mother, but I see her on a regular basis anyway. I do it mostly for my Dad. Because if Mummy dear has someone to snipe at besides him for six or 8 houurs a week, then she usually goes easier on him the next few days.
But yesterday. Damn.
I knew we were in trouble the moment we walked in. She obviously hadn't showered again in days. She's afraid to get in the tub. She's afraid to wash her hair. She's afraid to walk to the mailbox. She hasn't been to the grocery store in five years; eating only what is brought to her by my father, by us, or by the local frozen food delivery franchise. She brags about this.
It just makes me sadder.
She had to leave the house twice in the past six months, for legal and monetary reasons. Money is the only thing that motivates Mom to do anything in life, something I find ironic for a woman who has never gone without anything she needed or wanted. Even when that wanting included selling perfectly beautiful, structurally sound masterpiece dream houses for dilapidated 'works in progress' that cost my father hundreds of thousands of dollars that he worked with his hands and back for, every single day. Rain or shine, wind or cold.
I'm listening to Josh Groban sing "You Raise Me Up." right now. And I'm crying. Why am I crying? Because I wish, as the date of my 35th birthday comes within striking distance of mere hours, that I could count on my mother. For anything.
That's not right, I guess. I can count on her to be insane.
Back to yesterday. She was wearing my dead grandmother's clothing. This is disturbing on a couple levels. She finds it upsetting, so I wish she'd just take them outside and set them on fire, donate them to goodwill, anything but wear them and slowly die in them from just their contact with her skin.
She flittered around the kitchen, the room in which she lives her entire life, even though she has been starving herself slowly to death for the past 25 years. She loves and hates food, just like she loves and hates simultaneously her life, her spouse, her children, and her God.
She is a picture perfect example of what believing the WTS line of bull**** can get you. She was "never supposed to get old, let alone watch her children get old." Her youngest is barreling toward 30 with great speed but no motivation to make anything of himself. He lives like a hermit; with no desire to move out of the house; he is in fact still being supported by my aging, and now finantially limited parents. But that's another post entirely.
My mother has always been terrified by, and obsessed with demons.
In the usual JW tradition, she feared Smurfs and rock music and all the things that could "allow a place for Satan" in our house. I say house because wherever we lived it never felt like home. My grandparent's house, now that was home.
Whenever my mother is angry at someone, they "have demons" or "are possessed". She has for years claimed hearing things, seeing things move, and all other manner of hallucinationatory activity that surely could be helped somehow with medical intervention. But she won't go to doctors, because they're evil.
According to the great Gospel of the Apostle Mom, I am stupid because I go to doctors. I am evil. And yes, at many points in my life, she has informed me that I too, have demons.
That pretty much makes everybody in her life.
I have watched her mental health deteriorate all my life. She simply makes no sense at all. My husband, who is the most universally patient and understanding human I have ever known, looked at me last night and said "honey, she's completely, totally lost her mind." I know she has. I see all my siblings heading at breakneck speed down the same road into little worlds of their own that make sense to no one and mean nothing outside their own skulls. Am I doomed to follow? Or will my father's DNA, which at many points my mother has screamed at me dominate my genetic make-up, win out over hers? She declares that I'm "Just like your (my) father." with all the love and endearment of the Bible declaring the local religious leaders as being "From their father the Devil." Can you believe it? I've blocked the Bible so nearly completely from my consciousness that I can't even remember if it was Jesus who said that. And what's more, I don't really care.
Yesterday, my mother's eyes were wild with terror and anger at the same time when she looked at me and said "They are playing little games with me."
They, Mom? Who are they?
"The mischief makers. The demons. Yesterday they tried to set the kitchen on fire."
How did they do that, Mom?
She claims that she saw a plastic lid fly across the room and land right on the stove burner. That things keep falling off shelves on their own (nevermind that her shelves are crammed full of crap to the point of ridiculousness) I thought, as my husband also observed later, that if dark forces really were going to try to burn your house down, why would they do it in front of you, wouldn't they be more secretive about it?
Instead of stating that to her, though, I took the same tack I always do when she says these things.
"Mom, if the name of Jehovah is a strong tower into which the righteous run and are given protection," I say slowly, and gently, "Then why do you worry? Why are you afraid?"
This is when I knew she'd completely and utterly lost it.
"I don't know what more to do. I already wrote YHWH on the doorway of every room in the house."
Then she said the thing that almost made me vomit.
"I even wrote it on my arm, I was so desperate."
Holy freaking sh*t. I know what comes next once someone gets to that point. Next, they are scoring it into their flesh with razorblades. That was the first thing my husband said when he heard she'd done that (he had been out of the room as she told me the story).
So there you have it, folks. My mother's faith in God has done nothing for her but make her sad, make her desperate and fuel the fire of her long-standing mental illness.
What do you do the day you realize, after years of thinking that your parent was just being difficult, that they are in fact, actually insane?
What do I do?
If I still believed in God, I guess I'd probably pray that the male chromosomal contribution to my chemistry does win out, after all.
In the meantime, I told my husband, if I ever start hearing voices, or claiming malevolent spirit forces in my daily life...get me to a psych ward for a 3 day eval whether I want to go...or not.
When most people fear turning into their mother...they have no real idea how horrifying a thought that can really be when your mother is mentally ill and refuses all help and treatment.
thanks for listening.
essie