It Is What I Believe It is
Day 3. Another good sleep. I still feel stressed, but it's not gripping me the same way. These have also been easier days, and I know that a less challenging schedule is helping too.
Yesterday I went home and tried to take some time to relax before I got Ivy. The anxiety went way up. I'm trying to write down what is happening when I feel it the worst. Yesterday I was doing nothing. Watching tv. The house was a mess. We were leaving for the lake today and I didn't want to come back to that mess. I just wanted some downtime before tackling it, I felt so tired.
After I picked up Ivy, I cleaned for a couple of hours and it felt better. I felt sad though. Not a deep, painful sadness, but a dull, boring sadness.
I was feeling discouraged to still feel sad, despite the changes I have made. To still feel the tightness in my chest. I sort of thought that it would be some kind of magic solution that would instantly make everything better. I thought that because exercise has been so successful in elevating my mood and lowering stress in the past. Today, as I was on the treadmill, I realized that I'm not trying to get out of a bad mood. I'm trying to deal with depression and some pretty gripping anxiety. It's going to take more than 2 or 3 days on the treadmill to make a significant dent in it.
The positive thing is, it is better. It's just not gone. But I am grateful for days that are for sure easier. I am loving no wine in the evenings. Tea feels like a treat. It feels like I am treating myself well. And the relaxation I get from it has no guilt attached.
My revelation today has been that my estrangement from my mom is what I believe it is. It is my belief about it that is crushing me. It will be very difficult to change my belief about it, but it needs to change. I believe I have inflicted pain on someone I am supposed to take care of. It feels the way it might feel to abandon your child. No matter how difficult of a child you had, it would annihilate you to abandon them.
I need to re-wire my brain to believe that I got away from someone who had been hurting me. Who was going to keep hurting me. Who had hurt my child and would continue to hurt her more and more as she gets older. As I write that, a voice inside tells me that I can't know that that would happen. I need to be able to have a knowing inside that the risk is high enough that it is right to protect her. I need to be able to use the past to predict the future. Even the present predicts the same outcome.
If I can believe that she created this, I can quit owning it for her. That voice inside of me says, it's not her, it's her illness. You abandoned your sick mother. I'm silenced.
I guess I need to find a way to reconcile that it's okay to leave the mentally ill if they hurt you enough. If they hurt your family. If they threaten your own mental health. I wish I could do something for her. Help her from afar. But I don't know what I can do. She wants me, she wants Ivy. That is not the kind of currency I can use to help her. There is nothing else she wants from me.
The truth is, it is heartbreaking. That is just what it is. Giving up on someone you love. Walking away from someone you love, who is in pain, to save yourself. The truth is, I haven't been capable of really walking away. I don't see her, but she still affects me every day.
I have reconciled my own losses, enough to get by. It's her losses that haunt me. It's her losses I need to free myself from. If I could believe I wasn't responsible for her pain, I could quit feeling like I deserve to be punished.
So, if I am to really save myself in order to walk a different path with my own daughter, I need to free myself. It is all my belief. If I could believe that this is right, then things would feel more right in my reality. My reality is still stuck in a toxic relationship.
I wish that someone could cut into me and unplug the wires that have me programmed to feel responsible for her.
Yesterday I went home and tried to take some time to relax before I got Ivy. The anxiety went way up. I'm trying to write down what is happening when I feel it the worst. Yesterday I was doing nothing. Watching tv. The house was a mess. We were leaving for the lake today and I didn't want to come back to that mess. I just wanted some downtime before tackling it, I felt so tired.
After I picked up Ivy, I cleaned for a couple of hours and it felt better. I felt sad though. Not a deep, painful sadness, but a dull, boring sadness.
I was feeling discouraged to still feel sad, despite the changes I have made. To still feel the tightness in my chest. I sort of thought that it would be some kind of magic solution that would instantly make everything better. I thought that because exercise has been so successful in elevating my mood and lowering stress in the past. Today, as I was on the treadmill, I realized that I'm not trying to get out of a bad mood. I'm trying to deal with depression and some pretty gripping anxiety. It's going to take more than 2 or 3 days on the treadmill to make a significant dent in it.
The positive thing is, it is better. It's just not gone. But I am grateful for days that are for sure easier. I am loving no wine in the evenings. Tea feels like a treat. It feels like I am treating myself well. And the relaxation I get from it has no guilt attached.
My revelation today has been that my estrangement from my mom is what I believe it is. It is my belief about it that is crushing me. It will be very difficult to change my belief about it, but it needs to change. I believe I have inflicted pain on someone I am supposed to take care of. It feels the way it might feel to abandon your child. No matter how difficult of a child you had, it would annihilate you to abandon them.
I need to re-wire my brain to believe that I got away from someone who had been hurting me. Who was going to keep hurting me. Who had hurt my child and would continue to hurt her more and more as she gets older. As I write that, a voice inside tells me that I can't know that that would happen. I need to be able to have a knowing inside that the risk is high enough that it is right to protect her. I need to be able to use the past to predict the future. Even the present predicts the same outcome.
If I can believe that she created this, I can quit owning it for her. That voice inside of me says, it's not her, it's her illness. You abandoned your sick mother. I'm silenced.
I guess I need to find a way to reconcile that it's okay to leave the mentally ill if they hurt you enough. If they hurt your family. If they threaten your own mental health. I wish I could do something for her. Help her from afar. But I don't know what I can do. She wants me, she wants Ivy. That is not the kind of currency I can use to help her. There is nothing else she wants from me.
The truth is, it is heartbreaking. That is just what it is. Giving up on someone you love. Walking away from someone you love, who is in pain, to save yourself. The truth is, I haven't been capable of really walking away. I don't see her, but she still affects me every day.
I have reconciled my own losses, enough to get by. It's her losses that haunt me. It's her losses I need to free myself from. If I could believe I wasn't responsible for her pain, I could quit feeling like I deserve to be punished.
So, if I am to really save myself in order to walk a different path with my own daughter, I need to free myself. It is all my belief. If I could believe that this is right, then things would feel more right in my reality. My reality is still stuck in a toxic relationship.
I wish that someone could cut into me and unplug the wires that have me programmed to feel responsible for her.
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