So today's her birthday. She would have been 79 today. Right on time, this morning her sister sent me a text with nothing but a heart emoji in it. That's what my relationship with her has been reduced to: no actual communication, no substance, just emojis.
Not to be out or underdone by my aunt, my siblings don't reach out to me on the birth and death anniversaries of our parents. I don't know why, but I suspect it might be because our parents did nothing outwardly to memorialize our grandparents on their birth and death days. The last time I recall going to one of our family cemetery plots was in the mid-1990s with dad. We planted some daffodils and tidied up the grave and snapped photos. And then, that was it. No more trips to the cemetery. My family moved to the shore in the mid-1970s, and it was well over an hour or so to get to the cemetery, and as my folks got older and life got in the way, the cemetery trips became less and less.
As I've blogged elsewhere, among the cruel things mom said to me over the course of my life was "I hope this happens to you" as she was struggling to climb the 15 stairs to get into my condo to attend my housewarming party 22 years ago--the solitary time she ever came to my home. Mind you, blogging about it loses all tone of voice and facial countenance, just envision Livia Soprano saying it along the lines of her quotable quote, "Oh poor you!"
If I thought there were any therapeutic value in doing so, I'd inventory every hateful word she said. Sure as shit, there was an abundance of words than loving words--so much so, when mom did say something remotely loving, the words would go in one ear and out the other, and roll away like water rolling off a duck's ass, because why would I believe anything loving, when the bulk of what she used to say was so hateful. When you're programmed that way, no matter how much loving shit she'd pour out would just drain right through the emotional cups she provided us, cups with holes in them, ensuring that the cups would never be full, and we'd never be contented. But this is the legacy she left me with, a raging case of C-PTSD.
Lately, I have been on a quest of sorts to find someone to lift the curse (or
curses) with which mom cursed me. Though I haven't found someone to do
the traditional Italian ritual to lift the malocchio, my therapist
highly recommended an energy healer out on Long Island, and my appointment is set for 3/28/24, and who knows, perhaps she'll have the key to unlock this trap I have been stuck in for so long.
I am not sure what I hope to evolve from the meeting with the healer. I need to focus my intent for that appointment. Right now, I am hoping to achieve some nebulous goal of the healer unblocking whatever it is that has me stuck in this cycle of suffering and grief and everything that is triggering my C-PTSD symptoms.
Mom
has been dead four years now, and I want her emotionally
destructive programming expunged from my psyche so I can move forward
with my life. She died at age 75 never attempting to extricate herself from the abusive trap her own parents set for her. I don't want that to be part of my journey anymore. And it's very hard work to try to fight against the learned helplessness she (and dad) ingrained in me, the "why should I bother trying, nothing works."
I made so much progress in 10-15 years before COVID, and in one fell swoop, like a tsunami, the pandemic, mom dying, my friend Susan dying, the constant state of stress from assessing my risks for EVERYTHING--it wiped out the life I had.
I am tired of many things. I am tired carrying around this sadness and loneliness and feeling that I am worthless and a failure, all ideas or concepts planted by and designed by my mother--that I'll never be enough. I am tired of just existing or surviving; I want to resume THRIVING.
I have come to the conclusion that the purpose for my suffering is to possibly help others NOT to suffer as much. In this moment, I'm trying to help myself. It's a process. I vacillate between working hard and then allowing myself moments to just BE and coalesce before resuming more work, and just keep TRYING. Trying and failing beats the alternative of doing nothing. Sure, there's misery AND I guess comfort in doing nothing; and there's misery in trying and failing. But the hope with the trying is, I'm trying so many things, eventually I'll stumble upon the key to unlock all of this. Rather than fixating on the end result, I'll just try to focus on doing my due diligence, doing my work and abandoning attachment to the results, because if the results don't come, then I suffer more. Just do the work. Do my duty to myself.
