So the past few nights I have been tyring to go to sleep without taking melatonin, or an anti-anxiety med...b/c lemme tell ya, my anxiety is through the roof. Why is that exactly? One would think it wouldn't be right, I mean I'm not working as of yet, I am not watching a parent slowly die daily, (although the memory is still there) so why am I so tense? What is it going to take for me to be still? It is the stillness that I can't seem to grasp. Take for example my panic hike Tuesday. It was more like a run and something that I wanted to be a tool to clear my head ended up making things worse. How do I learn to slow down and quiet the mental chatter? While I am sure I don't, sometimes I compare what I have been through in the past 2 years to a series of events that would lead me to have PTSD(Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I mean why not? I'm not therapist I almost got done with school to be one but decided I wanted to be a mommy more than that, so here is my arm chair daily deduction of myself. I think in a way I do have a smidgen of that... with a side of typical Keleigh who lives life at Warp Speed, talks fast, walks fast, cooks fast, (I was actually trying to see if I could cut me 30 min morning yoga routine down to 15 to save time and get all the moves in.....redic!) just always all the time go go gO GO....and then pray to actually sleep. I keep on the move for several reasons one big one is not slowing down and getting lazy. Lazy is something that scares me. I think all this going and doing is burning calories so that's good.... but I don't feel better. The whole PTSD thing... well watching 2 parents die in one year and being an active care taker and dealing with the fall out is pretty darned traumatic. I wasn't dodging bullets over seas but I feel shell shocked.
One would think that with all of this free time I would be an idiot not to take it to learn how to slllooooooowwwwww down. Sadly, I really don't know how. Mom was the exact same way... daddy was at the other end of the spectrum, now I want to figure out how to bring those two extremes together. I think I keep my brain on ludicrous speed (Space Balls) to not allow the troubles I have gone through in. It's really hard to think about it. I was getting one of my free massages yesterday and all I could do was lay there and think about all of this chaos in my head. It's literally like a bunch of midgets MMA fighting in my head.
One of the midgets is my mom and all of the unresolved problems she and I had. Just for future reference to mom's friends who made read my blog... I mean no disrespect to her or her memory however you hold it. I imagine it is a good loving memory... I wish I had more of those. Sometimes its just as hard to be a daughter as it is to be a mother. Sometimes when how you were raised controls how you wanted to be raised parents say things and do things to the ones closest to them that hurt. I loved my mom dearly I gave up everything she wanted me to so I could care for her. Mom had even admitted many times she was not a care taker. To her friends she was. I can think of a time where they would call and she would leave the hospital with daddy on life support to go be there for them. Even before daddy had his surgery it was the same, she came to the hospital the day I had my son and never came back b/c she had a close friend going through an emotional time. I sat there for 5 days alone b/c my husband wanted to work and not take off, my mom would have rather had been with a friend, my mother-in-law was taking care of her dying husband at the time, and my dad needed a ride. He at least called me every day.
But I think about stuff like that. As a mom, I would talk to my friend on the phone when I had finished with my family. Family comes first! Then friends.... it was never like that for me. When my mom died I was left feeling like I was never good enough for her. Although, I tried my best to make her proud I think maybe I was too much like daddy and being as soft hearted as I am it hurts to feel like this. I want to feel loved. Don't we all want to feel loved? My first husband never showed me a true love. I was of no importance to him aside from breeding. Mom just thought he hung the moon. Even after he raped me she said I need to do what I can to fix it for the kids. This is where I am different. I would have been in jail for attempted butt kicking with a aluminum bat to the head if a man did that to my girl. He raped me 3 times before I made him move into another part of the house. Mom wouldn't let daddy say a word. He wanted to kill him, but mom wanted to keep the peace. A part of me felt like she want to see me in pain. Why would she not try to help? Why would she not let daddy? I was ashamed and embarrassed and the reaction I got put a wall around my heart that I wish I never allowed to be built.
So that is just scratching the surface of my mom's midget... another one is basic stress from what I have gone through and grief. In case I haven't said it a million times... I miss my daddy so bad. I don't know what part of grief I am in b/c its been put off then dumped back on me so much I feel a real confusion. Then there is the midget that guilt's me and makes me second guess everything that would prob. be good for me. Then there is Speedy Gonzales that will just not get off the hamster wheel. Just typing this makes me feel pent up. I think I am going to go scream into a pillow. I remember mom would get mad or stressed when I was a kid and she would go into a room and scream into pillows. Chris and I would actually laugh b/c it sounded funny... but maybe I should try that. In the meantime I just want a good nights sleep, I don't want to take something to get me there, I want to talk about it all to get me there and get it out of my head.
Even though I am left with regret.... I still love my mom, and I miss her. She was an example of a loving friend and helping others. We had a couple of amazing months together where it was just she and I, there was no one to take my place, no one to leave me to go help... just us. We could talk, she would call me having panic attacks and I would talk her down... it's strange to become the parent of your parent. I remember her talking me down after my first panic attack, and taking me to the hospital when I had my second miscarriage and only 3 years ago holding my hair when I puked from food poisoning while trying to get me admitted to the ER b/c I was a severely sick, single mom with no one to help me. So when I talk of my regrets... it wasn't all bad. Sometimes the bad was just really bad and hurt b/c it was my momma... and I loved her so much her approval was what I wanted. It's hard to be a mom, but it's also hard to be a daughter sometimes.
I think with my mom, I was such a momma's girl for so long. I think she liked the fact that I was attached at the hip. Then I got older and started to become who I am now. I became independent and self sufficient and I no longer was attached at the hip, I wanted to grow up and be me. Daddy always said God made me special, and I wasn't even supposed to be created so however I am know it's for a reason that only God knows and one day I will figure out. So it sounded good to me, but somewhere along the way I think it hurt mom to not feel needed anymore. She was raised by a mother that didn't want her and I think me becoming independent put her back into an environment where maybe she felt abandoned. Maybe I was punished for it. It is however, how I view it... I could be wrong. I get it though, the older Sophie gets the less she needs me and its tough to not be needed. It's hard to let go of our daughters and sons when we love them so much and miss those days where they unconditionally loved and needed you. I can see how it would hurt her after how she was raised. I just wish she would have talked to me and we could have figured it out. Then the little midget that makes me blame myself for everything that goes wrong would sit down and shut it. IT's only been a month my logic says it's going to take time but my speedy emotions wants to move on now. I just have to continue to find some peace with it all.
I will end this post with this, last night I sat outside and watched a pretty awesome storm roll in. I thought about how when I was little mom would get me to sit outside with her and watch the storms roll in. We would watch the lightening and count until it thundered. She is where I got my love of storms and even as I grew up she encouraged my fascination with them. In that moment I felt better about her and I missed her. I wished she was there to watch it with me. My song today is Float on by Modest Mouse... no matter what life throws in our path we have to learn to float on and not speed through. I want to be whole again, I want to float on to sleep at night. Maybe tonight I will.
http://youtu.be/CTAud5O7Qqk?list=RDTPhnOKmhbBw
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