Last trip I practiced just "being in the moment," which went okay for a couple days til I totally OD'd on "the moment" and went into a coma.
I'm practicing again, but now I've added the mantra.
As soon as I'm in the same space with my mother, I start getting angry. Up to now, this has always quickly translated into little bitchy comments, incessant squabbling, and general crankiness.
Last trip, with the whole "in the moment" thing, I was like, "Ok, I'm having a feeling. What is this feeling? Ah, I'm angry. I'm so angry. Soooooo angry. God, am I angry. OK I can't take this anymore I have to go shopping."
This trip I'm trying the next step. "OK, so why am I angry?" My response to myself: "Because I really want Mom to... [summary: be different]."
(there's always something more specific. I want her to...stop bugging dad, stop swerving all over the road, stop pointing at the people on the other side of the restaurant, calm down, make up her mind, finish her sentence. But it all boils down to the idea that I just really really want her to be different).
So for a while today it was, acknowledge the feeling, put words to it, and then the reality check: "Grrrrrrrr.... I really want her to be different.... But she's never gonna be any different, so get over it."
I realized I recognize this feeling. It's this incredible frustration of hurling yourself again and again at a brick wall, always with the delusion that somehow this time you'll make a dent, you'll change the brick wall into something nice and it will give you a hug and make you feel safe and loved and happy. I want... I want... I want it so much and I can't have it.
As the day wore on, this continuing conversation with myself started to get kinder and gentler, like I was talking to a sad friend instead of a stupid irritating person.
"I really want her to be different."
"I know. But she isn't going to be."
"I know. But I just want it."
"That's okay, sweetie, it's all okay." *
So what is it about her that I want to change?
Well, my therapist also helped me figure that out. We think my mom actually has Asperger's Syndrome. What that means is that she can't read faces, she can't empathize, she can't connect to others. The page linked above mentions that people with AS can learn social skills "as if they were learning to play the piano," which explains why (1) she genuinely wants to be a good person and (2) sometimes she really does helpful or supportive things but (3) other times she's way way way off and (4) even when she's helpful or supportive, there's no connection or emotion outside herself; it's like she's going through a routine she's filed under the heading "how to be a good person." Like playing the piano, but like a robot playing the piano. A robot that sometimes smiles which is just all the more confusing. 
I also compared it to someone with leprosy. Apparently the main problem with leprosy is that you lose sensation in your extremities, so you can harm yourself without realizing it; part of the management of the disease is to continually check your body for damage so that you can treat problems as soon as they arise (I imagine it as something like, "right foot okay, left foot okay, right hand okay, left hand...aw, shit, how'd that happen? I *know* I still had my index finger when I got on the subway... Dammit, now I have to retrace my steps.") (I know, I know, it's sick, but the post was getting too heavy). Anyway, the way a leper cares for his/her appendages is the way Mom cares for other people in her life, including me. She knows what things are Good and Bad to do to other people and she tries to do the Good things as much as possible. But she no more has feelings of connection with anyone else than the leper does with her toes.
In a way this is a relief. When you actually realize that it's a brick wall, a real honest-to-goodness brick wall and its hardness and wall-ness have nothing whatever to do with you, you can stop hurling yourself at it and just deal with your own feelings about it, and hope that eventually, you can just say, "ah, there's that good ol' brick wall, we sure have some great memories," but not expect it to be anything other than a brick wall.
Which is yet another thing Loopy has been telling me for years.
*This approach--where you create an "adult" in yourself and build that into "the parent I never had," and take care of yourself and give yourself what your parents could not—turns out it actually has a name, transactional analysis. Which is funny because a lot of it I just came up with on my own, after some discussions with my therapist about the "adult executive voice" that I would need to be authoritative as a teacher. Funny eh.
No comments:
Post a Comment