Memos to mom

[Armee]

It's too overwhelming to think about writing a letter to my mom but there's so much in here. I haven't grieved yet. I haven't really felt the truth of what happened. And it's complex and my brain gets confused easily. Partially the gaslighting. Partially the lack of my own solid memories. Partially knowing that her behaviors were driven by mental illness and so I'm always looking at the flip side...trying to be honest. So I'm just going to start with a series of short memos and see what happens. I don't know what i need to say.

[Armee]

Trigger Warnings

September 16, 2021

Dear Mom.

Period. No comma.

You died 3 weeks ago, yesterday. I cried while you died. But I also just felt enormous relief after. And that feels so bad. I'm a kind, empathetic, caring person. How did you make me feel that way? Relieved. Do you know how bad it must have been that I would feel that way?

My neck and head feel swollen and my vision is blurry. Not from tears.

I spent most of my life trying to keep you safe, alive. The reason I'm relieved is because I don't have to bear that responsibility anymore. I know. You didn't ask for me to take that on. But you did force it on me. What you did. From the time I was just a kid. N's age. Up until you died. No wonder I feel relief. Like a huge boulder has been taken off my shoulders and I can finally look around and see that everything is ok.

I'm not done. This is just the beginning. I don't need to worry about hurting you anymore with my words or emotions. I had to hide my emotions so you wouldn't see any of them. It's safe now, for me to feel them and show them.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Armee,

My heart is with yours right now. I know that feeling of writer's block so well. For decades I wanted to write so bad, but because of the years of gaslighting, guilt, loving someone I should have hated, etc., I was stricken with perpetual writer's block. It seemed to have been made up of a concoction of confusion, feeling invalidated, feeling too stupid to know the truth, and feeling ashamed of inditing other people, plus FEAR! HORRIFIC FEAR that my narcissistic sister, or my flying monkey tattle-tale older brother, or my jealous, manipulative mom, or shellshocked, pity-party dad would somehow find out what I'd written and would confront me to make my problems with shame and confusion even worse.

One trick that helped me sort things out was: I created some fictional characters, who just happened to reflect myself and others from my real life. I started writing a series of very short stories about these fictional characters. I made up a fictional town. Some stories were so short they barely filled a page. I was able to write the truth about my characters' feelings and about their survival and their interactions. Some stories were realistically from my own real life. But a lot of them were stories of interactions that I wish had happened. Sometimes I wrote true beginnings, but different endings that I wished I'd have lived in my own life.

Because it was fiction, the stigma of the reality and all its confusion was absent. It was fiction. For crying out loud if I'd wanted to, I could have had little green aliens land and take me away. That's the beauty of fiction. We write our truths without the limits of reality, but we don't implicate anyone else.

Writing fiction is an art. And arts are encouraged for people who've been through what we've been through. Art allows us to express what we can't seem to express any other way.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Armee

You posted something while I was writing my last post.

I LOVE IT!  That little beginning of a note sent chills down my spine. With few words, you captured the essence of a very difficult situation that lasted for decades. 

It was a beautiful beginning. You have a beautiful heart, which came through clearly in your words. Congratulations on getting it started.

[Armee]

Thank you Papa Coco. I love your encouragement and the idea for writing some stuff as fictional. I can see that would help so much on many levels: getting around the doubt and gaslighting effects, the guilt about villainizing them, and the barrier to feeling emotions. Because I can read stories from people who have gone thru similar and cry and feel so sad md horrified for what they went through but can't feel that for myself. It's a really really good idea.

[Kizzie]

Dear Mom.

Period. No comma.

You died 3 weeks ago, yesterday. I cried while you died. But I also just felt enormous relief after. And that feels so bad. I'm a kind, empathetic, caring person. How did you make me feel that way? Relieved. Do you know how bad it must have been that I would feel that way?

My neck and head feel swollen and my vision is blurry. Not from tears.

I spent most of my life trying to keep you safe, alive. The reason I'm relieved is because I don't have to bear that responsibility anymore. I know. You didn't ask for me to take that on. But you did force it on me. What you did. From the time I was just a kid. N's age. Up until you died. No wonder I feel relief. Like a huge boulder has been taken off my shoulders and I can finally look around and see that everything is ok.

I'm not done. This is just the beginning. I don't need to worry about hurting you anymore with my words or emotions. I had to hide my emotions so you wouldn't see any of them. It's safe now, for me to feel them and show them.

This really resonated with me Armee.  It's something many of us hide from ourselves and the world because it doesn't jibe with how we're supposed to feel when a parent passes away.  My NM has not yet died but I am preparing for it emotionally or trying to at least.  I know I will feel relieved too, that I will not want to go to her funeral, and that I will be glad to be free. I felt little when my F died other than relief and as a compassionate person that does not feel good or right. But it was how I felt and at least I know it's because relational trauma  deeply damages our relationships.

Thank you for being so honest as it helps me and likely others who are facing or will face this situation.   

[Armee]

Trigger Warnings

September 17, 2021
Memo #2

Dear Mom.

Period, no comma, because it's over. The trauma is now solidly in the past. Before it was post-traumatic stress disorder, but the trauma was not past. That's one reason complex PTSD is mis-named. The traumas are ongoing, prolonged, not "one and done" like a car accident. It's not post-trauma.

I got a call this week that your ashes are ready to be picked up. I thought they were shipping you to your sister's house, so that call caught me off guard. I don't like being caught off guard. Blind-sided.

Again I get the feeling that I'm a terrible person. That I can't even pay the respect of collecting your remains without my body going into spasms. I know I have to do it. Next week. But where will I keep you, until we can respectfully scatter you where you should be? As we talked with hospice a week before you died....when your death was in theory still 2-3 months in the future...they asked about your wishes for.your body and you said "you can shove me in the estuary for all I care. I'll be dead." The thought of having you with me, near me...well the muscles in my neck, in my stomach are seared at the thought. Psychosomatic pain. Pain denied a voice...it comes out in other ways.

Did you know that my deadly allergy to the cold (readers: yes, this is a real thing. Cold urticaria) is probably that. Pain without a voice, it comes out in other ways.

[Armee]

Trigger Warnings
Death. Suicide. Domestic Violence. Unkind thoughts. I also use sayings/phrases that denote violence.

September 17, 2021
Memo #3

Dear Mom.

Period, no comma.  But probably an ellipsis...

It's over, but it also continues. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It's a 2 memo kind of day. I picked up your death certificate this week, as soon as it was ready. I did that right away. Like rushing out of the house to make it that day. Another step towwrd closure. I didn't make time to get your ashes yet. (Bad. Feels bad. Bad person. But who was bad really?)

It reminded me of when I ordered my dad's death certificate. For you. So you could have the satisfaction and closure of knowing he was gone. When was that? About a year and a half ago?

When I was a kid and I had school projects I'd ask you about him. You couldn't talk about him. You said "I don't know" to the most basic of biographical questions and I didn't understand because you were married to him for years. You'd also shake a lot of pills into your hand when I asked.

Then as I got older and worried about college costs I'd ask if we could track him down for child support. More pills. "I don't know where he is but he's probably dead or in jail." Oh.

Finally a year and a half ago, 30 years after I stopped asking, you told me about him. You told me about how he was an abusive alcoholic. How he was addicted to drugs. All of them. You told me how you liked him because he was "a bad boy." He was AWOL from the military.

You told me how he pulled a knife on you while you were pregnant with me and how he cut the phone line when you tried to call the police for help. How you shoved my sister out the apartment door to get her out. That was the last you saw of him. He fled with your car and money and baby pictures of my sis. But he'd still call sometimes and threaten to kill you kidnap us.

It's probably true, but also you lie a lot so I don't know.

That must have been really traumatic for sis I conjectured. Nope you said, she was fine. [She was not fine]

I told you I had tried to track him down several years ago but found a death notice instead. You looked happy to hear that. I can relate.

But you wanted to see proof and I ordered the death certificate for you.  It came in the mail and slapped me across the face. Dead of suicide, age 53. I sobbed and sobbed. I couldn't breathe.

I did not want to give the death certificate to you. The fear never left me from when you were suicidal, when you'd flaunt it around like a warning to me and sis along with your arms, a ladder of angry scary red. Be perfect or else. Your fault.

Maybe you would see the death certificate and do the same. My fault. Worse maybe I'd have to have a conversation with you about this and you'd see the pain and fear and anguish and know how much you hurt me, scared me, traumatized me. You'd smile at that. You'd feel loved. Important.

I never told you when my son, your grandson, was suicidal because I couldn't bear to see the sick psychopathic smile. It wouldn't line up with your words and I'd feel confused and sucker punched. I couldn't tell you why this cause of death was so devastating to me, about how scared I was for my kids. 2 grandpas, dead of suicide. Genetic risk. An inheritance. I'm dissociating now.

You texted me while I was in the grocery store about the cause of death after I left the death certificate in your mailbox with a warning that the cause of death might be upsetting. "That's not that bad" you texted. Punch to the gut. You thought it would be worse. Punch to the gut.   Like murder Punch to the gut.   or exposure from homelessness.  Punch to the gut.

You had no empathy. You didn't understand why these things would be upsetting to me, since I didn't know him.

But I was thinking about his death certificate when I picked up yours. And I thought that at least you tried to be a mom. You did a terrible terrible job. But you tried. The best he did was to leave and stay away.

I wish you had done that too. Then i could have been protected from you and I could have hated you for abandoning us instead of pretending I loved you. Bullied by fear.

[Bach]

Armee, I don't know what to say but I wanted you to know that I read this.  It resonates with things I'm thinking and feeling even though my situation is not the same as yours.  Sending lots of love and support my fellow traveller