Moving On: The Choice That Doesn’t Feel Like a Choice

After my sister texted me the real estate listing for my mom’s house, I texted back, “Well, at least now I know what Mom’s house looks like.” Mom had lived there for almost two years, but I’d never visited. Exhausted after 40 years of navigating a largely one-sided relationship where I often mothered my mother, I stopped talking to her a few years ago. Frustrated by the dynamics of our relationship and devastated by her inability to connect with her grandkids, I couldn’t do it anymore. Her diagnosis with Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome (WKS), a dementia-like brain disease often caused by poor diet and alcoholism (as it was in her case), just over two years ago solidified my separation from her.

I sound like a horrible daughter, don’t I? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m one of three daughters who don’t talk to or only very rarely talk to my mom. I won’t speak for my sisters, but I have many reasons for hoarding my words and time. As the eldest, and only 18 years younger than my mom, I filled her “best friend” role for most of my life.  As an adult, that role sometimes translated to positive experiences together, but other times, in not-so-healthy ways, like becoming drinking buddies.

When I was a kid, Mom most often called me her best friend when she sobbed in my arms. I remember one time, when I was about 12 or 13 years old, wrapping her in my arms on the kitchen floor. She cried heavy, barking sobs into my chest. As I sat on the floor in the middle of the night, helpless and confused, Mom insisted again that I was her best friend. I’d just wrestled a kitchen knife out of her hands that she’d threatened to stab herself with. (This might explain why I also long struggled in the friendship department–it took me a while to learn what true friendship looks like.)

Now, at only 61 years old, my mom has been put into assisted living. She can’t take care of herself anymore. In my opinion, she never has…taken care of herself, I mean. Despite this, I feel profound grief for her situation. All our situations, really. Because my mom is more than alcoholism, mental illness, and a disease ultimately created through the combination of those things. My mom was also one of the smartest, sharpest, and most tenacious people I’ve ever met. Many of the good things I value in myself wouldn’t have flourished if not for her. In some ways, those things grew in me because she planted and nurtured the seeds in ways she could. In other ways, I thrived just to prove I could, and because I was determined to never need anyone the way she needed me. I didn’t want to drain anyone of their vitality the way I felt stripped of mine.

I’m writing this article because it really pisses me off when people assume that children who cut off parents do so with ease and callousness. There is nothing easy about this. I love my mom. I care about her. I have compassion for her. And…I just can’t do it anymore. As I heal, the emotion that rises to the top again and again and again is grief.  I’ve mourned my mom from many angles, many times, in many ways. I’ve mourned for a childhood where I felt safe and loved without conditions. I mourned for a relationship with my mom where I didn’t have to also calculate the cost of her affection and attention.

I’ve mourned on her behalf for all the things she missed out on because she couldn’t be present in the ways we–and she—deserved. Now I mourn a future she will never have because the chains of the past have permanently bound her.

Like me, Mom grew up in someone else’s nightmare. She never escaped but instead created new scenes. Not all of them were horrific or tragic. Some of them were heroic. She got her GED a few years after dropping out of high school, pregnant with me. In her early twenties, with four kids under the age of seven, she started college. She was the first in her family to earn a college degree. She did it with honors.

In some ways, she set solid examples and, at times, I truly did feel her love in strong and powerful ways. In other moments where I offered consolation and comfort, I felt a profound sadness and the deepest well of hopelessness one can imagine emanating from her. I know my mom did not want these things for herself. Or her kids.

She always said, “I want to do better for you than was done for me.” I think she succeeded and failed because here we are, repeating the same cycle. Throughout most of my childhood, my mom didn’t talk to her mom. When we mentioned Grandma, Mom shut us down and couldn’t conceal her strong negative feelings. Eventually, they reconciled, but Mom rejected her mom throughout most of her adult life. I wish it were not this way, but I feel like the only way I can make sure that this isn’t repeated with my daughter is for me to heal. I can’t heal when I’m locked in caretaker mode. My mom doesn’t know how to see me any other way. The only way to resign from that role was to walk away completely. So, I did.

I’m afraid to watch someone I once saw such tenacity and intelligence in flounder to perform basic daily functions. I don’t want to see her that way, which is interesting because, in some ways, that intelligence and willpower allowed her to manipulate me and situations in ways that crushed me. I don’t know who she is without them in her arsenal. As much as those parts of her hurt me, I’m sad that she lost the things that gave her some sense of control in a chaotic life. I understand why she wielded them; they were self-protective. And…they tended to hurt those in her wake, me included.

My mom’s mental decline happened to coincide with the long-overdue resurrection of myself. I’ve been in therapy for over two years, and sometimes, between individual, couples, and group therapy, I attend up to five hours of therapy a week. I work hard between sessions to practice new coping strategies, assert boundaries, and engage in self-care. It’s working because I’m working so hard to heal. Sometimes it pisses me off that I have to bust my ass to come out the other end of this thing and that I can’t have the kind of relationship with my mom that I longed for.  I’m enraged that I have to work this hard to feel safe, secure, and happy.

This self-restoration has brought piping red, long-submerged anger to the surface, but there’s more than that.  I’m devastated for her. As much as I know it was out of her control–essentially two diseases, alcoholism and mental illness, paved the way to another disease, WKS–I’m so angry that it took her down. I’m furious with her for not fighting harder. I’m pissed at myself for not “saving” her. Sometimes I don’t know where to put all that anger.

I don’t want to fight my mom because it’s not a fair battle. Once again, there’s an unbalanced power dynamic. This time I’m in “power.” I could potentially use it to pulverize the final shreds of her. I don’t want to. Not even a little bit. So, I’m going to keep walking the other way. The anger, for now, keeps me safe.

Beyond the anger, though, I’m so damn sad. I don’t want to see my mom suffer. That young child in me, who soothed her so many times, wishes she could save Mom just one more time. But that little girl in me can’t. I can’t. So, my mom’s house stands vacant and for sale. I never visited. Not once. Now, she lives somewhere where strangers will do the things that I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I just can’t. Not anymore. This choice doesn’t feel like a choice at all, but it’s what I must do for now. I must continue to move on.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

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