Instructions

I met with Dr. S today and broke down.  He is trying to make it simple for me, but at first he was missing what I needed.  I don’t need to be convinced that my mom will never change.  I understand that, finally.  What I struggle with, or at least what I think I am struggling with, is the pain of coming to terms with it.  With never having the mom I so badly wish I had, and with never being the daughter I always wanted to be.  I feel like I should be over it, but I’m not.  I stopped getting any counselling after that meeting with my mom.  I didn’t deal with the pain of what that meeting told me.  That it won’t change.  Everyone else can see that, and I knew too, but I still had hope, if even only a little bit.    Going from a little bit of hope to no hope was a transition I underestimated.

I asked Dr. S how I get through the pain.  He said; 1. Don’t try to tackle it head on.  2.  Distract yourself from it.  Then he said that I need to create positive experiences to distance myself from it.  He said it will get better.  And he told me to exercise.  

When I told him that I am struggling with accepting myself for not being able to make her happy or fill the role I felt I had as her daughter, he said that I am learning my limits.  

He told me to write it down.  I am glad he did because I think it was one of the most beneficial meetings I have had.  I keep getting stuck back in the same place and it’s time to move forward.  At first, I was trying to figure out how to accept losing her when I closed the door.  And then as I worked through it, I began to grieve.  And then that got stopped short from the stalking and some kind of immediate need to make it stop.  And then I rested in homefree position and tried not to deal with any of it, and it was nice.  Trying to re-open the door with that meeting gave me my first real acceptance that it can never, ever be different.  I can be different, but I can’t expect anything different from her.  And now, I open the door, hopeless for a real relationship.  There is a primal, intense pain that went away by opening the door.  But it has been replaced with this weird aftermath.  It’s over.  And nothing changed.  

I know that isn’t true.  I have learned so much, but I am also so worn out from it all.  Just because that primal, intense pain stopped, doesn’t mean that it dissolved.  I need to know how to metabolize it, get through it so that I am not walking around with it.  Dr. S was right.  I need to create positive experiences, dilute the pain with happiness and peace.  I need to live my life.  I need to have Chris step in when she gets out of hand.  I need to wash my hands of it, with her in my life.  I need to learn to not hurt over it any more.  And I need to accept myself for my limits.