What's f*cking me up so much about it is that I was more distant from her than usual, often angry (even if I didn't show it) (but especially moments I could have, though I don't know for sure), very depressed, and was trying to make boundaries to make me feel less stressed, but so hard that there were times I deliberately gave her a lot of room so she would ask for help when needed instead of me just jumping in at a second's notice.
Normally I work my ass off. And try to infer what others need. I was specifically not doing that.
That year I was away from my mom, though, I worried about her daily but found myself better able to call her and chat for hours. She liked to chat and I often need time alone. That was the main problem. Even just hearing her name sounds of pain was making me irrationally upset. I'm afraid to look back in this journal about it.
I feel strongly that I was being unfair. and I hope to g-d she didn't notice.
The night before she died, when I looked at her and realized with certainty that she wasn't going to make it, part of my panic I had as I drove to get Nestle ready to stay a night at a friend's was that I somehow had no good memories of her. Like she was just some abuser I loved and it was all toxic. I felt immediately guilty and ashamed and grief stricken, a lot of complex shit.
So I searched my brain heavily for one good memory with her, and realized calmly that it didn't need to be a dramatic memory. Just a comforting one. Like her comforting me as a child even though she was exhausted and scared. Any time she showed love, any time she tried to do good things neither of her parents ever did for her. Every time she made me laugh. Which was often.
And I felt my brain shift as it suddenly remembered everything clearly for the first time in years. I realized out of nowhere that I had been delusional AGAIN, thinking she was hurting me and being mean, when in reality SHE was working with ME, she had brain damage that effected her ability to communicate with me, she was in so much pain she couldn't hide it when she spent a lifetime hiding that she ever had nerve damage, etc.
And since that shift and in seeing our relationship clearly, I am more than just devastated at her loss. She not only should have lived way longer, but I fell for stupid delusional shit my brother and my genuinely evil father were dropping.
And I'm so angry at myself for it. I have been so judgemental of her. I view myself as kind and knowledgeable, but apparently she was my exception. I was mean to her for literally no reason.
I didn't realize it but I was experiencing burnout. No one said any words like that to me. No one. No therapists, no professionals of any kind, nobody. Even after I was diagnosed as someone who experienced delusions, no one thought to ask me about it in the slightest.
It was all about how I f*cking "felt," regardless of if it was true or not.
The closest I got to the real problem was a therapist with a disability. I tried to explain a way my mother was stressing me out. She was trying to get on a stepladder, as a person with a serious fall risk, because as always her PTSD-addled brain wanted to be independent as possible and not ask me for anything. Even if I was a few rooms down. Possibly even because she could tell I was stressed out! She wanted to be independent and have no one worry about her. She did NOT want me stressing myself out trying to take care of her. So she grabbed the step ladder and got the thing she needed for herself.
I happened to come out and see it and I freaked out on her. She listened and tried to be chill, just letting me know that she just needed something really quick.
When I told this story, that therapist, who had celebral palsy, told me she understood my mom's side. She felt it made perfect sense that my mom would put herself in danger to grab one singular item.
I'm the moment I felt like she hadn't heard or understood me. She often gave compliments I could tell were fake, and I called her out on and asked her why she thought I needed them in the first place. I changed therapists afterwards and continued being depressed about living in a hoarded house that I was internally blaming her for.
Which, with the clarity I have now, I don't think was her fault. If it was her fault, then it was mine too. I could blame her all day for not getting it done when I was a teenager, but if the problem was that easy, why haven't I, as an adult, done better at cleaning it? Why does some clutter from a disabled person who can't clean it up mean that I need to sit around and not clean it at all?
Now I understand what that therapist was saying, but it's too late. It's been so hard to even think about it, so this is the first time I've really thought about it again since my personal plot twist.
It's like I had AI psychosis before it was even a thing. Trusting non-professionals like my best friend whose only frame of reference was that his mom never supported him, and didn't try, where I knew all along that mine did and was an amazing mother. It's not my mom's fault that she ended up having to raise us while being terrified of her evil husband, my father, and if anything I'm happy I was able to do something that made it so that she was free of him and living in her own house without him around in the end.
In the moment I realized all this, it came crashing down all at once, and the guilt at realizing I'd never be able to say goodbye properly to her or tell her how sorry I am was so powerful that I was hurting myself while driving because of the anger I suddenly had at myself. The immense guilt that has not left me at all, because more than anything I wish I could tell her I appreciate her and that I loved her and she was never a burden to me. It wasn't her fault that things ended up like they did.
I wanted so badly to make her life perfect but it wasn't my responsibility, and she didn't want me to. I'm just so glad she wanted to be friends, because I wanted to be her friend.
I just wish I knew what I had. I feel like an imposter of everything I ever wanted to be. Like I f*cked everything up and never got to apologize.
And like this is the wrong life, or the wrong timeline, or something. She was ALWAYS there for me and I did not take it seriously. I was angry about it. Literally got angry that she wanted to see me in the hospital and ask me if I was okay.
I feel so terrible.
It is slightly better now because before. That first week in July I had no proof of anything after death, based on data or anything else, so largely was agnostic about it. Seeing her ghost along with my siblings and three strangers was extremely comforting because I'm hoping that means she knows I'm devastated and I haven't been able to think of anything else.
It did not help that the DAY after my crazy twin brother's crazy wife was posting publicly that my mother was burning in hell, and calling her a narcissist. Maybe not the last part, according to her, but. Whatever.
It's been non-stop terrible thing after terrible thing. This environment was f*cking me up, in such a way that I was getting delusional, and no one caught it except me at the very last f*cking second.
I spent the night with her that night in the hospital after getting Nestle situated at my best friend's. I'm very glad I did. I knew deep down she wasnt going to make it but I really, really hoped she'd pull through anyway. She survived a heart attack, a stroke, "terminal" breast cancer, why was a stupid UTI killing her heart now?
And by morning she was no longer doing the gasps for air of a dying person just resessitated. However that's spelled. She coded five times and was gasping like a dying person taking their last breaths, so I knew deep down she wasn't going to make it, but I just hoped. And by morning she was barely moving at all. I checked her reflexes myself and didn't find any.
She must have been there a little though because the night before, while I hid my emotions and talked to her like normal so she wouldn't worry, I saw her pupils move once towards something I placed on her chest. And that morning AFTER she wasn't reacting to stimuli/reflex anymore, she still waited over an hour past what doctors thought she could survive until all of her children said it was okay if she needed to go. After the last child said it was okay, her vitals immediately tanked.
We'd talked about that in person, so in a way it was neat to see it in real life.
It's very hard to think about though. I wish she had lived another twenty years. I wish I'd gotten to tell her I appreciate everything and am sorry for every time I took her for granted.
And I'm sorry I misrepresented her so badly that everyone here back then thought she was being unreasonable most of the time.
I'm thankful for every single time I said that 99% of our interactions were fine.
I really miss her. The only comfort is holding on tightly to her ghost throwing a roller from inside the cremation station at us. I wish we'd gotten it on camera. I hope she's able to bowl again. I hope she has every animal and family member she missed with her and I hope Nestle and Kiki and Muffin Sr met her when they passed too. She specifically didn't want to see netsle pass away, nor her cat slinky who is trying to provide comfort right now because I'm crying while posting this obviously
And I hope to G-d she's at peace and free and I'll see her again one day, along with Nestle, and I hope G-d is exactly as perfect and kind as portrayed by Aslan the lion and everyone gets to pet him
