Category: Personal
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Opening the second missing persons report for my mother
Some things are easier the second time around. Opening a missing persons report turned out to be one of those things for me. Not easy, but easier. Opening the first missing persons report was so traumatic. The officer at the desk was so dismissive, like I didn’t really know my mother was missing. He gave…
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My missing mother: I don’t know a whole lot
I opened an envelope and it all changed. Her bank statement has two deposits, her social security and her pension, and no withdrawals. No withdrawals can mean anything, but nothing good. My first, best, likely option is she is in the hospital or she was in the hospital and then transferred to some longer-term care.…
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Coming back to myself
Here I am, coming back to myself after a long time away. I hardly know where to start. The awkward pauses, shuffling on the porch. Remembering how to meet my own eyes. How to speak and be heard, how to listen with love. All the while wondering. Knowing where I have been, knowing where I…
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I relocated a spider
I relocated a spider this morning before my shower saying, “You do you, just not in the bathtub.” Feeling how life has relocated me. Remembering the many times I’ve ushered flying insects out of the house, waving my hands, creating turbulence in the air. It must have been very confusing until freedom. I was comfortable…
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I’m tired of this
I don’t want to talk with her. If I talk with, I’m reminded of how bad the situation is. I’m reminded of her delusions. I’m reminded of her struggles, her vulnerability. I’m reminded that I can’t help her because she won’t let me. I don’t want to try to find her, because I’m reminded how…
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Compassion and expression
Something is changing the way I express my compassion, how I feel compassion. Something is different and it may look like I’m lacking compassion. One thing I have noticed in caring for my mother is a basic change in my temperament. I have had to learn to tolerate a new level of grief, pain, and…
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An unexpected benefit of self-care
Self-care comes naturally to some people. I am not one of them. Self-care has long been difficult. In the past several years it has become even more challenging. In my support group, we go around the circle at the end of the meeting to talk about what we’re doing to take care of ourselves in…
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A new walk
I was walking through the city today, seeing people wrapped in blankets sleeping on the sidewalk, elders sorting through their belongings, women my mother’s age, women homeless as my mother is. I thought it was the alienation I have been feeling towards this city, how we allow this. It is also the knowledge that these…
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Time capsule
I was clearing out my old files and found my mom’s medical records from the last time she was hospitalized, the first time she disappeared, that I wrote about before. Then I found my notes from that time. Notes on the state of her apartment, the missing persons report, her extravagant shopping bring me back…
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Of mental illness and bus rides
I hear him before I see him, with the louder, faster than usual talking. I am sitting in the window seat, knitting a hat, when he sits down next to me. “I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t protect you.” fades back into unintelligibility. I am thinking about my mother now, how much this is like…
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Don’t want to
It’s Thursday morning and I have lots of work to do. I still haven’t read the writings my mother gave to me and I’m meeting her for lunch. I don’t want to read her writing and I know I have to. I’ve already read the happy ones, the mini-memoirs of the happy events of her…
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An alchemy of mental illness
What good can come out of this? This thing I can hardly talk about, but weighs down my every day. Isn’t that the thing? We want to know that whatever difficulties we’re going through, it’s all worth something. I look at these last couple years since my mom reappeared, at all the time and energy…