Ok, so its not really morning.. But I wake up late so… 

I’m paying bills.. I have not been paying bills for a while.. not a good thing..

The bad news

1. My father almost lost his health insurance
2. I lost my life insurance.. the one that pays out when I die… 
3. One credit card has been declining.. this one not so much my fault.. haven’t seen a bill.
4. It seems that Comcast is still billing me.. never mind not giving me the check they were supposed to.. I had canceled all my comcast stuff.
5. If I don’t go to the DMV right now.. My license will be revoked for not paying a ticket, and it has grown in expense
6. Guitar Center’s card is screwing me…

I’m not sure what else.. but I am fearful.

I don’t know what my problem is.. save that my mom used to pay the bills.. Its one of those new responsibilities I’ve had since she passed away.. and the problems I’m having paying them seem to be, at least in part, related to morning..

Dreams 

I had a strange dream a week or so ago. In the dream my mom came home.. I grabbed her, gave her a big hug, told her how I missed her.. and then being like “Wait, you died, you can’t come back, you’re not really here.” Somehow by saying that she vanished.. and the dream ended.. only to be followed by another dream with her appearing again.. this time seeming all the more real.. more convincing that she was really there.. and I reacted the same way.. like “wait, no, your not really alive, are you?”

There’s details to the dreams that I can’t quite remember.. I don’t understand the dream, but its one I keep thinking about.. One way I’ve been thinking of it is… that a part of it is about my own denial of her death.. The way it still doesn’t feel totally real to me… Its as if the dream was an expression of this unbelief and my own attempt to confront it.

My mom has been a huge, and complex part of my life.. which I suppose we all could say.. assuming we had moms.. but I think think her roll was huger then the norm perhaps… in.. I guess how close we were, and whatever.. There is the whole.. how she fucked up, was fucking up, my life part of things.. I say this not to blame her so much as to try to understand it all myself.. to kinda move through it.. and of course there’s also the love part of it.

Fucking Up My Life

This seems worth talking about.. or trying to.. that normally I don’t feel very comfortable trying to blog about it.. if for no other reason then that I’m not sure if I’m totally being fair about it…

There was, for a long time.. this idea that my parents were abusive to me. This is what we call in the biz “a very difficult thing to deal with.” The first problem is.. you internalize it… you believe the problem is you.. and that you would accuse them of being the problem.. is more evidence of how fucked up you are. 

We are talking about my collage years here.. and it probably doesn’t help that everyone says there parents fucked up… and that’s the reason they are how they are. There’s a kind of pop psychology to there take on these things.. It often plays a roll of…  ”aren’t we the victim you should feel bad for.” As a result.. when you say “oh, yeah, my parents fucked up, that’s why I am the way I am,” from a superficial reading of it.. it doesn’t really matter what the reality of the situation is.. or the reality of its long term effects.. it can be seen as an expression of..  well looks like someone who’s being stupid.. and blaming there parents for what’s wrong with themselves…  and so.. if you really are dealing with some form of abuse.. you have this prejudice to try and get through.. on top of the actual thing.. and this prejudice is trying to tell you “hey, its you’re fault, get over it.”  

A happy story 

Well, then a ‘fortunate’ thing happened: My mom was diagnosed with cancer, the reality of which exacerbated my father’s alcoholism to such an extent that it was no longer hide-able.. and after being rushed in an ambulance to the hospital.. after he had slipped on his own urine.. not being able to control his bladder.. being so waisted.. crashing his forehead through the bathroom tiles, blood rushing out.. and the doctors talking about his blood alcohol level.. the clear evidence that he was a raging alcoholic.. that he need to go through AAA, see an addiction specialist..  the specialist saying he was lucky to be alive given all the drinking he was doing.. etc etc etc… well, my mom’s denial over the situation finally broke.. and now I had something real I could point to as.. having something to do with my damage..

The story of.. “how my parents fucked up my life,” is more complex then this… And it is something I’m still struggling to wake up to. Since she died I’ve had multiple moments of wishing she was alive so I could strangle her.. for this that or the other thing… wanting to scream “what the fuck is wrong with you that you would have done X?!!!” 

The struggle

The thing is.. that many of the stupidities and mistakes of my parents.. are still things I struggle to understand as being there fault… So this isn’t an easy task.. this is something you have to struggle through.. and it has to be ok to say “They really fucked up, didn’t they.” None of this is to say I don’t love them with all my heart.. Just that love isn’t something that seeks to white wash things…

This is not an uncommon thing at all.. but one of the mistakes of my mom was.. her getting in the way of my own growing up / maturing / adult becoming. Now that she’s died.. its as if I’m forced to go through the process to get to where I need to get to.. at a break neck speed.. or else the sky will no doubt fall.

This is something that is somehow internalized.. something I see as my fault.. for not being where I need to be.. It is something that I have huge levels of shame around… And this is the psychological dimension to my struggles at this point in my life.. The problems that go beyond simply loosing my mom…. which is not an easy thing to deal with on its own..

Paying the bills means walking through the fire of all that.. and that’s why I’m having trouble paying the bills.. 

There are huge mountains ahead of me… that I must climb.. less the sky really falls. In all of this I feel amazingly alone.. and full of fear.. A fear that gnaws at me regularly..  

Latter:

So I think the biggest part of the challenge is really an internal psychological one.

Latter that night:

I suppose this is a good a place as any to end as any. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 12:30 am and is filed under Mom and Stuff, life, psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.