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  • The Daughter of a Mentally Ill Mother

    The Daughter of a Mentally Ill Mother

    For as long as I can remember I was at least somewhat peripherally aware that something was wrong with my mom. Even as a kid I knew, you upset dad and he gets angry, but you upset mom and she gets manipulative, and as much as I hate being yelled at I knew which one was worse.

    As I’ve gotten older I’m able to understand this whole situation on a deeper level. I can now confidently say that I grew up with a toxic mother, a mother that has serious mental health issues but never received help for them. A mother that doesn’t seem to want to get better.

    My siblings and I would be left to our own devices day after day while Dad worked long hours to be the sole provider for our family, and Mom would spend her days locked in her room depressed. As kids we just had to do what we could to get through the day.

    Maybe I don’t give my Mother enough credit, after all I was the 5th of 7 children and I’ve been told that my pregnancy was the one that changed everything. Mom was increasingly more and more sick the closer it got to my due date, and a short 4 days after giving birth to me she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

    I don’t remember the before, but I’m told that this diagnosis changed everything. Mom was going through Chemo and Dad was still working long hours so they had to rely on friends and family to help take care of us kids. Luckily Mom recovered, but it seems that things were never quite the same.

    I’ve been told stories of a Mother who cared, who took the kids on field trips and planned birthday parties, a Mom who made life better. Unfortunately, I never got to meet this Mom. I only got the Mom that came After.

    The Mom I know had her ups and downs, it wasn’t always all bad. There were moments that were good, but as it turns out the moments I remember best are the bad ones, the ones that I needed to remember as a guide for what not to do going forward. When she was good, things were okay, but when she was bad, no one was safe.

    One thing I attribute to my Mom that I still carry with me, is my sensitivity to other peoples emotions. As much as this can be helpful at times, I would actually call it a curse. I can never get away from it, and it’s exhausting to always be so aware of the emotions of the people around you.

    I can be having a fabulous day, but if someone close to me is in a bad mood my mood is immediately ruined. I get stuck in their bad mood, even though nothing actually happened to me. I’m not just aware of others feelings, I feel their feelings, and it takes over my own feelings if I’m not careful.

    I’ve gotten better about this as I’ve grown, it’s been hard but it’s something that I’ve put a lot of effort into. It still takes a lot of effort, but I’m finally able to focus on my own feelings instead of everyone else’s. Even though I’m making progress, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s always my second nature to pay close attention to others emotions, it was a survival technique for so long I don’t know that I’ll ever fully stop.

    With a Mom as unstable as mine has been, knowing her emotions is the only thing that got me through some of the harder days. Things could change at the drop of a hat, and if I wasn’t aware and ready for those changes, things would only be worse for me. I had to make myself small enough not to be noticed, or drop everything that I was doing to cater to her. Even as a young child I knew that the secret to life was making sure I never upset mom, instead I had to do everything I could to keep her happy as she rocked the boat.

    Recently things have gotten worse again. Mom has been really struggling, and now that I’m older I’m let in on more of the family secrets. I’m more aware of how bad it is, and I almost wish I wasn’t. It’s not easy feeling like you have to be on suicide watch for your own mother, to be 22 and calling your Mom’s therapist leaving a message that she was writing her farewells, or to be out of town for soccer when you get a text at midnight saying “Mom is missing,” I wouldn’t wish any of that on my worst enemy, but I guess it’s going to be a part of my story.

    Even though Mom say’s she’s getting help, and she is going through all the motions, it’s hard to feel like she’s actually trying. If she actually cared about getting better, why has it taken her 30+ years to get help? I try not to be a pessimist about the situation, but personally I think that she’s too comfortable in her misery, so she doesn’t actually want things to change.

    As someone who has struggled with their own mental health problems but has made great strides and is doing so much better, I know that it’s possible and I know that it’s hard, but I also know what the whole process is like, and I don’t see that in Mom. It frustrates me when I feel like she uses my own experiences with depression to explain her behavior. The amount of times that she’s used the excuse “Oh you know what it’s like” to explain why she isn’t making progress kills me.

    Yes, I know what it’s like, but I also know that I was able to get help and get better and that means that you can too. I know what it’s like to be that deep in the depression, but the difference between her and I is that I actually put in the effort to get better. I actually tried. That’s not something Mom does very often though, so I shouldn’t be surprised anymore.

    Mom is getting more treatment and help, and it seems like there may be a chance things could be getting better. But it still doesn’t seem like she really wants them to be better. She’s going through the motions, and yet she still makes herself the victim in every situation. She always finds the worst and makes things harder for herself than they need to be. The hardest part is that she’s dragging us all down with her.

    It would be one thing if she was depressed locked in her room all day, but her current version of struggling takes over the whole house. No one is safe from her right now. I don’t think she fully realizes what she’s doing, but there’s no escaping it. Her mood controls the atmosphere, and if Mom is upset the house is upset.

    The problem is, all it takes to upset Mom is the wind blowing the wrong direction. The amount of times that I’ve been wrongfully blamed for something I have no control over is simply too much. Not only that, but she likes to tempt fate. In theory it’s nice to have her around more, but in actuality every conversation ends with her making me being the bad guy, and there’s only so much of that that I can handle.

    We all try our best to support her and keep things from blowing up, but like always Mom loves to set the traps. She does things like ask for feedback on if we think she’s getting better, but I know that no matter what I say she’ll use it against me later. There’s simply no right answer, so I just don’t respond. I want to be able to give her this feedback, but I know that it’ll just come back to bite me later on.

    Truly I don’t think that these experiences will ever leave me. I think that spending so much of my time around someone this toxic will always affect me. I already see so many ways that I carry these moments into other aspects of life. Being raised with a toxic mother is something that I will never live down, so instead I’ll do my best to adjust and work past the issues she gave me.

    I already have made a lot of progress on some of these things, but I still have a lot of room to keep growing. I am no longer as dependent on other’s emotions, I’m doing better finding my voice and speaking up for myself, and I’m even setting more boundaries than I ever thought.

    Although this is all great progress, I still have a list to work on of course. Right now my main focus is what I suspect may be abandonment issues. I can’t say for certain that’s what it is, but boy do I see some signs of it in myself. I’ve recently realized that my close friends consist of my siblings, and my one friend that I’ve grown up with. I’ve made a few good friends over the years, but nothing that has lasted too terribly long. I think this is because I might have a tendency to self-sabotage.

    I’m convinced that I’m cursed to always care more about others than they care about me. I will always be the one chasing them through the airport, never the one getting chased. Of course this idea alone is somewhat problematic, because self-fulfilling prophecies are a very real thing and if I believe it to be true, it’s just that much more likely to be the case.

    On top of that though, I have noticed that whenever I start to care about someone too much I find a way to ruin it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a friendship or romantic, the moment I start to care about someone too deeply I find a reason to end things there, I never let it get further. Whether I find a reason not to like them anymore, convince myself that they’re lying and don’t actually care about me, or whatever other way I go with that time, the outcome is always the same.

    I’m realizing just how problematic this is, and it’s something that I drastically want to change. I love creating relationships with people, and I want to be able to healthy and let them grow. I’m done being scared of caring more than others, if things go south on their own then they go south, but I’ll never know if I keep cutting people off before they even get the chance to prove me wrong.

    There are many other stories I could share about Mom. Many other bad habits and tendencies that she instilled in me, things that I will continue to work on changing. While these stories may help to understand my past, they don’t need to be at the forefront of my future. The past is the past for a reason, and I think it’s time I leave it in there.

    I refuse to let my Mom define me. I won’t let these bad habits she taught me control my life. I am going to do everything in my power to make this story mine, to take back control of my life and make it what I want it to be. I may still live with her, but it’ll just make me stronger. My story belongs to me, and while I’ll always be the daughter of a mentally ill mother, I will never become her.

  • Just Another Casual Knight

    Just Another Casual Knight

    I have to admit, sometimes I hate being a girl. Not just cause of reasons like bleeding every month, but more so because of the emotional ups and downs that come with womanhood. What I wouldn’t give to just take a break from being so in tune with my emotions.

    Being totally honest though, I do think I’m more in tune with my emotions than some other women, so I think it’s more of a me problem than just a generalization. But society has decided that women are more emotional, so I tell myself that’s it. It’s easier that way.

    There are plenty of times that being so in touch with my emotions is really beneficial, but unfortunately there’s also times like today where it ruins a perfectly good thing. I think it’s time for a story.

    There’s this person, let’s call them Alex. Alex and I have known each other for a good few years now. If I were to share our story in it’s entirety that would likely take too long, so instead I’ll break it up into separate parts.

    Alex and I went through a few different stages in our relationship, and there was a period in which we didn’t talk for about a year. Until around this time last year when I reached out to them. Don’t ask me why, but I just felt like I should, so I did. To my surprise, they responded, and even pretty quickly at that. We were both about to go our separate ways for school again, but agreed that maybe next time we were both home we would hang out again.

    We talked a handful of times over the months, and then suddenly it was summer and we were both home again. Alex wasn’t convinced about the hanging out idea at first, but they came around to it and next thing I knew we were going to a concert together.

    I would say that the concert was the start of us being friends again, and I will admit I was a little hesitant at first and I had every reason to be. With the history we had, it almost would have been more worrisome if I hadn’t been at all hesitant.

    But here’s the thing you need to know about Alex, I swear they are my weakness. I couldn’t tell you what it is about them, but no matter how hard I tried, the hesitancy didn’t last long. Something about them always convinces me that everything is fine, that I don’t need to worry. There’s no judgement with them. There’s no concern about saying the wrong thing. Once I get a reminder of what it’s like to spend time with Alex, I never want to stop.

    Back to the concert, that was the first time we had seen in other in probably 2 years? Something like that. But we spent about 9 hours together that day, and yet I still wasn’t ready to go home at the end. It was like that every time I saw them, I was never ready for it to be over. Spending time with them was too much fun, I don’t think I could ever get tired of their company.

    This proved to be problematic though. See with the history that we had already, there was some hesitations about what it was we were looking for. Alex made it very clear that they didn’t want this to be anything more than friends, and I agreed. Or so I thought I did.

    I had every intention of only being friends. I convinced myself that I was okay with that. I truly thought I was. I had enough going on in my life at the time anyways, it wouldn’t make sense to be anything more than friends with anyone anyways. So I told them we could just be friends, and that that would work for me.

    So, we kept hanging out. We would chat every now and again, and would hang out every so often. It wasn’t anything terribly often, but somehow it was enough. I slowly started realizing that I didn’t think I was going to be okay with the friends thing. There was a part of me that had always wanted Alex to be my knight in shining armor, and I couldn’t keep ignoring that.

    I was mad at myself more than anything. Here was someone who’s company I genuinely truly enjoyed, more so than a lot of people I’ve met over the years. Why did my silly emotions have to come in and ruin what we had going? Why, why couldn’t I be okay just being friends? I wanted to be okay with it, and I really did try. But the longer things went on, the more I knew that I couldn’t just ignore it anymore.

    In the past I might have chosen to ignore the feelings and told myself it would be better that way cause then at least I could still see Alex. But that’s the thing about growth, somewhere in growing up I realized that I’m no longer okay with that. I knew that continuing down this path was only going to make things harder for me, and also it wasn’t fair to either of us.

    Alex was straightforward with me about what they wanted, I owed it to them, and to myself, to be straightforward with what I was feeling. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of us to keep hanging out, when I knew that thing’s weren’t going to change and I was going to keep getting disappointed when they didn’t. So I had to do something.

    It’s not easy when what you want and what you feel will be best for you are two completely different things. Especially in this situation. I made the decision to tell Alex how I was feeling, and they confirmed that they had not changed their stance on the matter. So we agreed to stop hanging out. Really, Alex asked how I wanted to move forward, and I decided that not seeing them was what I needed to do. By no means do I want to stop spending time with them, it’s one of the last things I would ever want for myself, but I think it’s what needed to happen.

    It almost made it worse that they were so understanding and respectful in letting me take the lead going forward. A part of me wanted to be mad at them, cause it would be easier to deal with that way, but there was no way I could be. They hadn’t done anything wrong, they dealt with it wonderfully actually. There was no room for me to mask my emotions with anger towards them.

    I struggled with the decision for a while, both before and after speaking with Alex about it. Because if it really is the right decision then why does it make me so sad to think about? But alas, the right decision isn’t always the one that makes you happier in the moment. It will likely take some time before I see any benefits of this decision, but I’m trusting that it will all work out.

    Saying goodbye to Alex in that moment is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do lately. Part of me will never forgive myself for this decision, a part of me will always wish I hadn’t done it, because if I hadn’t done it at least I could’ve kept spending time with them. I wouldn’t feel so miserable right now had I just left things alone.

    I don’t think I’ll ever be able to really put it in to words, but Alex will always hold a special spot in my story. I really don’t know why, but saying goodbye to them almost feels like losing a part of myself. I know it sounds cheesy, and I don’t know why it feels that way, but all I know is that it does.

    I’ve always been confused why I’ve felt so drawn to Alex. I don’t think I’ll ever really know, but something about them just feels right to me. This has always annoyed me, it never felt reasonable to care about them as much as I do, but here we are. It doesn’t make logical sense, and I don’t like things that don’t make logical sense. Hardly anything makes logical sense when it comes to Alex though, and boy it’s caused me some sleepless nights.

    I never would have expected myself to care so much about someone after the story we’ve had. Hell, I cared enough that after saying goodbye to them I had to go throw up. It feels like one of those dramatic moments that only happens cause I’m an emotional girl. But lately I’ve been giving myself more credit. It was a hard enough decision that my body had a physical response. and that’s okay. That’s not something to be ashamed of. That’s not just me being dramatic. I need to let myself have those moments and feel those things. I mean how else will I get them out of my system?

    Even though Alex doesn’t seem to be my knight in shining armor right now, there will always be a part of me (probably a large part) that will hope that we cross paths again later in life. I just think that for the time being, I’m putting myself first even if it means I’ll be unhappy for a little while. After the amount of tears I’ve shed because of Alex over the years, this had better not be a final goodbye. I can’t imagine a world in which I never speak to them again, and I really don’t want to try. For now, I’ll let myself keep crying cause the best way forward is through, through the emotions and missing this person. I just have to keep moving and I’ll be okay.

  • Navigating a College Closure

    Navigating a College Closure

    I remember exactly where I was when I got the news. It was a Monday afternoon, January 13th. I was at work just chipping away at the day when the email came, my college program was closing. I wasn’t going to graduate in time, I was going to have to make new plans yet again.

    What does one even do when your college closes? Well, this isn’t the first time it happened to me so I should know right? Somehow though, I have less of a plan than I did the first time, I felt even more lost when getting the news. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

    It’s been a few weeks since I got this news, and it still rings true that this second time is harder for me to cope with, and I think I know why. To understand I think we need to back up and look at my college experience from the start.

    I was getting close to graduating college, and I had finally figured out what I wanted to do afterwards. I made plans to move to Texas with a family I had been nannying for, I would follow the mom and kids there and continue working for them while attending a local college there. I was finally excited for graduation and everything that was coming next, I was looking forward to life for the first time in a long time. Then I got the call. My plans were ruined. The mom of the family I was going to live with changed her mind, I would no longer have a job there. I no longer knew what I was doing and graduation just kept inching closer.

    I had to pivot and make new plans quick, I was running out of time. So, I applied to Portland Community College. It was better than nothing and I had no other real goals to lead me at the time. So that’s what I did. At first I was just going to go and get my associates degree, but then I learned that PCC had a women’s soccer team, and being an athlete I decided to do what I could to get a spot on the team, and it worked! I felt good about my situation again, I would get to continue playing soccer and it wouldn’t be a terribly hard transition.

    My first year at PCC went well enough, nothing too notable. My second year there is the one I really remember though. When I look back at my life, that’s the year that I most often want to re-live. In simplest words, I was the main character that year and I loved it. The soccer team had a new coach that I liked better than the last, I loved the classes I was taking, and it was that year that I met the professor that has claimed the title of my absolute favorite teacher ever (I still go visit him sometimes, I am so grateful for him and his classes.)

    Once again it was getting close to time to take the next step, and I felt lost. I knew what I wanted to major in, and this time I at least had soccer to help guide me too, but it was still a hard decision to have to face. After considering a few different schools, I ended up deciding to move to the Boston area and attend a school out there. I would be able to play soccer, they had my major, and I liked the idea of going somewhere new.

    So many people told me how crazy I was for moving across the country by myself when I had never even visited the school, but my mind was made. I was making this happen. So I did, and I absolutely loved the experience. I felt like I had finally found my own place, with my own group of people and everything. This is something that was always hard growing up in such a big family, so I loved the freedom and the ability to really be me instead of just another Hoffman. But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

    I came home for the summer, ready to see my family and enjoy the west coast again before going back and starting my senior year. A senior year that I was finally excited for. I was never great in school growing up, so being excited for senior year felt like kind of a big thing for me.

    About halfway through the summer my family was all together on vacation, we were staying in a beach house for a week. It was supposed to be a good week for me, but the world had other plans. I was texting with one of my friends back east when I first heard the news. She knew someone on the board at the school, and there had been a vote. Our school was closing. I didn’t really believe it at first, I really didn’t want to.

    It wasn’t until about a week later that we all got the official email. I couldn’t avoid it anymore, it was real. My plans were gone, I didn’t get to go back my school. That was the end of that. I would love to say that I coped well with it, but the truth is I didn’t really cope at all.

    Instead of ever being upset about the fact that all my plans were ruined, I just threw myself into making new plans. I never took the time to feel all the emotions that would come with this change, I just ignored them cause I simply didn’t have time. I just needed to move forward cause that was the only option, so I planned.

    It didn’t take me long to set up new plans, I still knew one of the coaches from one of the other schools I had considered, so I reached out to him and decided to go there. It was a local school so it would be easy to just stay home and finish up my last year there. That was the plan. Everything was working out just fine, I had avoided the crisis. It was okay that I never took the time to be upset, because now I had this new thing to look forward to instead.

    Turns out, I should’ve done more research. This new experience I told myself to be excited for was not at all what I had been hoping for. My classes were all online, I ended up hating the head coach of my soccer team to the extent that I was just counting down the days until my senior season was over, and on top of that they wouldn’t accept all of my credits so I wasn’t going to be able to graduate on time anymore. I was not happy.

    This brings us pretty much to now. I finished up my semester online and the soccer season ended. I came to peace with the fact that I would be graduating this fall instead of this spring. I got a new job that I love, I felt like things were going to turn out okay. It finally felt like I was getting my footing again. Of course that’s when the news came. This school was closing too.

    This one hit a lot harder. I never fully processed the first school closure so how was I supposed to take another one? Once again my plans were thrown away without me having any say in it. I definitely think that I would have been more capable of dealing with this news had I let myself process things the first time around. But of course I hadn’t, so now I was dealing with what felt like double the emotions.

    Of course since I was at work when I got the news, I started to feel all the emotions right then and there, but couldn’t. I once again found myself in a spot where I simply didn’t have the time to be upset about it, I just ignored the feelings. Once I pushed them down to make it through work, I realized I didn’t want to bring them back. I was simply going to avoid them again, it would be easier that way.

    That only worked for a few days though. I ended up talking to one of my friends about the situation, and they happened to say something that dug up all of those locked up emotions. “You’ve got resilience.” Apparently that was all it took to open up the waterworks. This friend didn’t know that they opened up the scab that came from two schools closing, but I will be forever grateful that they did. This started the process of me finally being able to move forward again, it was just what I needed.

    This time is different than the first in a few ways, first off I don’t have any other schools to fall back on. I also don’t have soccer to take me somewhere new. I have to try to find a school to take me for one semester. I stand firm that I don’t want to push back my graduation date, but who knows how realistic that is or not. I guess I’ll get to find out.

    I got the news two weeks ago now, and I’m still trying to figure out my next step. Everyone has their own opinions on how I should go forward. Part of me wants to just let one of them choose for me. But alas I can’t do that. I need to make the move myself, no matter how much I don’t want to. There’s a lot of things I’m trying to consider as I make this decision, and even though I’ve done this before I still feel overwhelmed at the thought of figuring it all out for myself.

    I still have a hard time believing this all really happened to me, what even are the odds? There have been plenty of moments where I couldn’t help but feel I should have done something different at some point, but it’s too late to worry about that now. I’ve decided that I can still be sad for what I’ve lost, and I don’t think that I’ll just recover from this in a week or two, but it’s time to move forward.

    Now I get to play the game again, where do I want life to take me? At first this scared me, I didn’t want to make that call yet. But now I’m choosing to think of it as exciting. Not many people get to try something new for their last semester of college year. This is a very unique situation, and I’m going to make it an exciting one. I’m looking forward to the fact that I get to control where my future goes. It may not always feel like it but I am in control of my story and it looks like it’s time to start a new chapter, one that I can’t help but look forward to.