Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

Last time I was here I was in a right state – I don’t think much has changed where that’s concerned tbh! My life stress has notched up several gears with BIG shit happening and I am basically surviving my current day-to-day on a cocktail of junk food and dissociation – oh and terminal doom scrolling on my phone. None of these are really ideal, but it is what it is right now, and I just need to accept I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances…and the circumstances are fucking rubbish!

It’s a shame. Earlier this year I was doing amazingly well with physical ‘self-care’. I had made a conscious effort to try and give myself a solid base to hold the crap that I was struggling with in the aftermath of all things Anita and doing pretty well. I felt like I had a reasonable handle on things even if there was a shit load to process. I kicked out the crutch of junk food from my diet. I am pretty sure I have been sugar addicted for most of my life and had been propping myself up on chocolate and coke to get by so this was a HUGE deal. And I felt so good for it.

In addition to the diet shift, I had been carving out daily space for myself that didn’t revolve around work or chores. I would take a long walk in nature every day to create more of a balance in my day. I felt healthy-ish! The emotional stuff was there, of course, but the routine of getting out alone, listening to podcasts, taking photos, and escaping the demands of life seemed to be really helpful. It felt like I opened up space to be with myself to sit (walk!) with all of what is inside…and there is a lot.

There were days where I would walk beside the river and just sob the whole time. As someone who doesn’t readily cry this felt HUGE…and cathartic. I have been struggling massively with anxiety (my whole life!) – since Anita and I ended, and it’s been really physically debilitating at times, but I think the new routine helped a bit to lessen that too. Sometimes I would be really aware of the young parts of me and allow them space to talk to me… This is all great, isn’t it? Well done RB!

As a result of the better diet and steady exercise I shifted nearly a stone in weight that had crept on over the last 18 months of what would I call it? Self-neglect? Laziness? Freeze? Importantly, none of this shift in my behaviours with food and exercise came from a negative reaction to the emotional pain.

What do I mean by that?

Well, in the past I might have gone down a similar road but the cutting out junk food would instead be ALL food… it is so easy for me to switch into restriction and basically ignite anorexia in a few short days and then I am done for. Food becomes the enemy and exercise is a weapon to punish myself with rather than something to enjoy. This is why I no longer wear a Fitbit and deleted the Strava app from my phone. Once I get data, I just beat myself with it: go further, faster, hit that target… So, it’s best not to track in the first place. But there was none of this this time. And that is AMAZING after all these years.

I am so aware of my inner processes now and so I have been conscious of managing myself. If there was even a hint of that critical voice starting up (it never fully goes away), I would just not walk that day or be very mindful about putting some extra cheese on my plate when it was saying to do just vegetables or skip a meal because I am determined never to go back to that god awful place of an eating disorder.

These days, I listen in to that critical voice just as much as the young parts and ask what it is worried about. It is so desperate to have control when life feels out of control –  it is a massive protector part – but I have been able to tell it that I’ve got this now, and we don’t need to start punishing ourselves to cope with difficult emotions and situations. I’ve put that in fucking bold because this was ‘then’ and right now feels a little different and so I need the reminder!

Needless to say, this last couple of months I have fallen off the healthy self-care wagon in a big way as the level of out of control in my life has ramped up massively. Sod the wholemeal pitta, hummus and carrot sticks and epic levels of water –  fuck it – give me the Big Macs, coke, chocolate…ALL OF IT!!! And please wrap me up in my duvet – I don’t want to fucking walk right now or use the outdoor gym!

The impact of this is – weight has gone back on, I feel sluggish and lethargic, and generally in a bad slump. It’s a bit grim tbh. But I am trying to not get down on myself because lately I’ve been frozen a lot of the time so even getting off the bed has been a challenge. I’m too strung out to go want to go out into public spaces. I even find walking the five minutes across town to see Elle each week difficult. Of course I want to see her, so I walk the route with the minimum amount of people, put my headphones on and listen to something loud so I can switch away from the hustle and bustle of people. It still takes me about twenty minutes to relax after that though which is why I am glad Elle and I do a ninety minute session. I’d be totally fucked otherwise.

Anyone that’s read this blog for a while will know that my life is basically a rolling disaster but, fuck me, this has been one hell of a month… there’s been so many times when I have wanted to write and process some of the shit that’s been happening but instead, I just sit for sometimes hours at time in a complete freeze state. I either stare at the blank laptop screen beside me on my bed…or more often than not, can’t even open the laptop and switch it on in the first place!

At the moment it’s like there’s a concrete wall between my thoughts and my ability to get anything down on the page in a coherent way. I’ve been struggling with this for a long while now – certainly since Christmas. I think it’s something to do with being so overwhelmed that I can’t sift through the sheer volume of shit enough to know where to begin – or where to go with it and so I do nothing at all.

Like today, I think there are probably four separate posts I need to write but this could end up just being one long ramble of nothing (already at 1200 words!)…because knowing how I’ve been lately I should make hay while the sun shines. Ha, well, not hay…maybe clear the decks…or walk the fucking plank!

I can’t remember if I have mentioned it here in the last few posts but one of my children has been really sick since May. We’ve been in and out of the GP and hospital trying to get answers and FINALLY a couple of weeks ago after a long slog and being ‘that’ parent who won’t go away and pushing for tests, we got an answer. Only it’s not an answer any parent wants.

My child has been diagnosed with a chronic lifelong condition and so we are currently in the thick of testing before we can begin treatment. Honestly, this summer has nearly sent me over the edge. The only saving grace is that it has been summer holidays, and I haven’t been working and so been completely free to be able to do all the hospital visits without stressing about money. Being self-employed means if I don’t work, I don’t get paid but as school is out that isn’t a problem as I don’t teach now. I have no idea how I am going to pick up all my pieces in a couple of weeks for work, though. I am so barely hanging it together as it is.

We spent yesterday in the specialist Children’s Hospital and today we have all basically crashed and burned. Why am I mentioning this? Well, it has triggered a lot of pain. Feeling powerless when your child is sick is just hideous…and scary…but it also highlights aspects of your life that might usually sit just out of sight.

Cut to the chase RB and stop being so cryptic!…let’s put it this way…the last few weeks has triggered the mother wound in a massive way and I am not really ok – it’s complicated.

I am usually so independent and self-sufficient (through necessity, not want!), but right now I really need some support…from family…and there simply isn’t any forthcoming. My mum and I no longer have a relationship which has been made painfully apparent this year. Most of the time I can cope with my absent mother – let’s be real, she has been either physically or emotionally absent (or both) my whole fucking life so there’s no change there but right now, I really need a mum (just not necessarily my mum)!

I am very aware that the mother I have is not and has never been capable of offering the kind of mothering, love, and care that I need. So, it’s not as though I have lost some significant nurturing and holding relationship with her and am now left with the gaping hole. It’s not like at all. (But that is exactly what I have been left with after Anita…fuck me this is double-whammy of mother wound pain!)

So far as the relationship with my mum goes, I am not sitting with the grief of a significant heartbreaking loss at all – instead I am having to really grieve what never was and what absolutely should have been. This has always been the work – I mean it is absolutely the foundation of all the work I do in therapy if I’m honest – but right now I am plunged face first into the pain of never really being loved and FUCK ME I could so do without it right now- I’ve got enough going on already and don’t need to be staring directly at the sun! I just need a fucking hug and someone to pick up some of the pieces but alas, because that’s not happening, I guess I am going to have to navigate this deep wounding alongside the hard life stuff in the here and now.

My relationship with my mum has only ever made me feel like I am inadequate and unlovable, or unlikeable, or too much, or not enough or…basically just like utter shit… “I wish you’d never been born!” rings so clearly in my mind – but how could it not? There have been so so many occasions where I have needed to be truly seen and loved and supported for exactly who I am and honestly – I can’t think of a time where this has happened, or that I have felt connected or loved by my mum. Even when I had cancer and she would come to my chemo appointments it felt like she was doing it to be seen by others. Maybe that’s unfair. I guess, at this point there’ve just been so many occasions that I have felt let down it’s hard to see any good.

Any of my achievements seem to have been filtered through the lens of competition – either she’s done as well or better than me, or if not that, then my achievements are used to make her look good in the eyes of others whose opinions should not matter at all. I might be a disappointing lesbian (don’t let’s ever talk about that) but I am at least academic and that gives a degree of bragging rights – to this end I am a useful extension of her. I am pretty sure no one has ever cared about my top GCSE, A Level, Degree or Masters grades…! I have never once thought “Oh wow, my friend’s kid has got A grades- that makes my friend look good” because that’s idiotic!

I have jumped through so many hoops over the years and as much as I thought I was chasing the grades and degrees because I wanted that – part of me thinks I have always been just desperately trying to be noticed and good enough for my mum. The thing is (and it’s taken a good deal of time!) I realise now that no matter what I do or don’t do in my life I can never be enough for her.

I don’t need that constant reminder in my life. I don’t need every interaction to leave me feeling exhausted and drained and generally shit about myself and that’s exactly what happens every time I see her. The familiar sense of anxiety and treading on eggshells is so real. My young parts are terrified of her. I can never be authentically myself and it exhausts me trying to perform just to please someone who can never be pleased. I’ve shoved down all the times she’s hurt me and tried to build a relationship as an adult – try and give space to the idea that people make mistakes, parenting isn’t easy, and people can change.

Only I don’t think narcissists ever really do change. Why would they? Their personality type serves them so well. They are never at fault. It’s everyone else that is the problem. I am too boring and uninteresting – I don’t add value… but there’s always a conveyor belt of new people/faces who are impressed by the show and are entertaining enough– until they’re not, or they too see behind the veil. I have stopped playing the game and so I’ve been discarded – like so many other people in her life over the years.

When I got pregnant with my daughter, I was so incredibly excited. My wife and I had gone through several failed rounds of IVF and given up on the hopes of ever having a child. Then the UK laws around donor conceived children changed and a year later we met our sperm donor, and I fell pregnant straight away. I invited my mother and her husband over for lunch to announce the news. I handed her an early scan picture we’d had done, and she said absolutely nothing. Still face. Literal silence. No “congratulations” no smiles or hugs… but after a few minutes of awkward silence she said a simple, “I’m not old enough to be a grandmother”. Reader, I was twenty nine years old!…It’s not my fault she had me in her early twenties! She didn’t even stay for lunch. She then didn’t speak to me at all for the next three months of my pregnancy.

Who does that?

I mean really, who does that?

This is just one many many interactions that have been commonplace and normalised in my relationship but from the outside … well it’s completely fucking mental isn’t it?

Anyway, back to now. It’s been almost two years since I last saw my mum in person or spoke to her. There was no significant argument to make this break happen. It was just years and years and years of steady attrition where I had got so ground down by how much energy it would take to maintain any kind of relationship with her that I decided to step back and see what happened.

I stopped making all the effort to engage her. Stopped inviting her for dinner. Stopped suggesting get-togethers. Stopped sending photos and information about the kids and keeping her up to date with our lives. Basically, I stopped holding the whole relationship up from my side and waited to see what would come from her.

The answer is nothing.

Christmas 2022 we were totally skint. I had text my mum to say we wouldn’t be doing presents for anyone but the kids that year because of this…but I did send her a £50 box of Hotel Chocolat chocolates for her and her husband – because my mum is huge on receiving gifts and makes a massive deal of it all. She always knows exactly what she wants to be given…but she’s the queen of regifting stuff she doesn’t want…

Anyway, you might think that as someone who is pretty well-off the adult child not doing loads of gifts wouldn’t be a problem and you’d carry on as normal… I mean surely we don’t give only to receive?! Wrong. That year she didn’t even send my kids a present. Imagine your grandma totally ignoring you like that when you are primary school age. She didn’t even acknowledge the chocolates I sent and in the end I ended up texting to ask if she’d even received them.

Then birthdays rolled around…ignore mine and my wife’s, sure – but the kids???

This time last year my son fell off his bike and ended up in resus at hospital. Lots of time had passed but this was a massive deal and I text my mum because you know, it’s life and death! My wife and I were in hospital with him and my daughter, who was only eleven was at home. Her reply? “Oh no. Hope he feels better soon”…

…

…

No, “Oh my god, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. What do you need me to do? Is daughter ok? Do you need me to go to her?”

But that’s EXACTLY what my friends did.

I am still in a bit of shock about it, actually. Like…what the actual fuck?

Christmas came and went again. I sent another small gift this year-  nothing came back this way, not even a text.

And so it’s been quiet.

Then out the blue a birthday card for my daughter…so I text and thanked her for it.

Then in August a card for my son…so I text and thanked her for that. But of course, my son is actually really ill and has been in and out of hospital since May. So, I briefly outlined what’s been going on and how the poor boy got his provisional diagnosis on his birthday in hospital, would have to have an MRI the next day and then up to the Children’s Hospital yesterday.

I don’t know why I imagined that she’d care. I don’t know why I thought she might, just for once, see beyond the end of her own fucking nose and care about her grandkids or me. I don’t know why I imagined, she might at the very least text to ask how he is or perhaps even ask if we needed any support/help for our daughter whilst away in another city with a sick kid…or maybe ask how I am coping… I guess because if I was furnished with that kind of information, I couldn’t help but want to help in any way that I could. I cannot imagine a world where I wouldn’t want to support my kids or grandkids. If anything, I’d be the annoying mother who was being told to back off!!

Instead, and as usual, it is my friends that have rallied around us and supported us and taken care of my daughter. I am lucky to have an amazing set of close friends – chosen family… but it doesn’t change how much this hurts. As I have said, I am not stupid and I know my mum is incapable of being anything close to the kind of parent I need…but it just feels especially wounding when she won’t even do the bare minimum when there’s a real crisis.

Still, this last couple of years has told me all I need to know and shown me what I need to do to protect myself from being hurt further. I didn’t ever imagine I’d go no contact with a parent – especially as I only have one left. But I can’t continue on like this. Being reminded of how low my kids and I feature on her list of priorities is hard. Especially when I learn from other people that she is fixated on a friend’s wedding at the moment…

Anyway, there’s loads and loads I can say about that – and how a lifetime of this kind of thing has affected me – but you’ve read this blog. You know. When it all goes wrong at a young age with your primary caregiver and that persists throughout childhood and adolescence…you’re basically fucked.

And I am.

However, as much as there is a tonne of damage done and the fear of abandonment and rejection, my hypervigilance, my attachment issues, perfectionism, dissociation…*all the things* need a load of attention and working through in therapy what I will say now is that I am no longer prepared to put myself in situations that hurt me. I am drawing boundaries around what I deem acceptable treatment, and I’d sooner walk away than give any more time to someone that clearly doesn’t give a shit.

This is also true for Anita. I know it’s different. She is not my mother – but my god, we rode close to line on that in our therapy. It was active reparenting…until it wasn’t. Anita knew everything about my history and was closer to me than anyone has ever been and yet, when it came down to it, she walked away without so much as a backward glance. She’s hurt me deeply in a way I can hardly describe. I am grieving what actually ‘was’ and the hole she’s left. I miss her care. I miss her love. But actually, you know what? It can’t have been worth all that much if this is where we are now.

I’ve spent the last 15 months trying to navigate what’s happened without completely collapsing – and that has been hard. More recently I’ve been trying to figure out how to meet and end and get my stuff returned now that she’s finally communicating with me. The thing is – after all the heartache and stress with my son what I am really aware of is that Anita isn’t there (not that she has any idea about what’s happening) and actually I am both sad and angry about that. She promised me she was here for the entire journey and instead she cut and ran, choosing ‘easy’ clients.

As I have said so many times before, I could have got my head around her giving up being a therapist altogether and stopping client work…but choosing to end with me and keep working with others feels like such a betrayal and such a complete disregard for what our relationship was.

So now, I think, I am in a place where I don’t want to meet. I don’t want to see her only to be massively disappointed and hurt. I don’t want to play the game where I go and wander around a fucking garden for a walk and talk and pretend everything is fine so that she feels like she’s absolved herself from any responsibility for what she’s done. Because it isn’t fine. It isn’t fine at all.

I need to protect myself and my system now from being hurt – because frankly there’s been just a bit too much abandonment and rejection to swallow.

This has, as suspected, just become a long ramble of shite – so … sorry about that. Hopefully Monty and I will find our flow properly soon. We’ve just had a therapy break with Elle – and you can probably imagine the fun that caused inside with so much shit hitting the fan already – so there’s certainly some words on that somewhere! It feels like an impossibly long time until Tuesday’s session right now. Ugh…

x