Responsible Me

What a wallop I took when I went north to revisit my mom's house in April. Imagine the desolation of being inside the house you grew up in without the main components: the people who lived there, too. A house without its family is a very empty space.

Add to this the insult of seeing the house my parents cared about trashed by a freeloader who wouldn't go until I forced them, six months after mom's death, after they lived there against even her final wishes and broke her house rules entirely. Yeah.

Imagine the anger that consumed me due to the outright lack of respect for my mom. Toss in some lies about my personal character (generated by utter shit the freeloader said to anyone who would listen to their gossip.)

Pour in the unshakeable feeling of helplessness. Stick the pot on a stove til the unattended mixture comes to a boil. Check to see if burned. Call the recipe "I hate my family," then feel sorry for yourself, ostracize yourself from them (as much as possible) and drop away from working toward your private achievements for the next few months. Mope. Fuss. Cry. Hate. Flair up. Soothe yourself with boredom and neglect.

But, eventually, you're going to be twenty pounds heavier and the stuff you worked for will start to feel impossible to attain. And then you're going to come to the most uncomfortable conclusion ever: You're responsible for all your shit. Your mood, your life, your schedule, your body, your attitude, your home, your surroundings, your love. The single saving grace in the hell of realizing you are completely alone in the darkest of times is that it ends with a flourish.

I am a month and a day away from having to say, "My mother died last year."  Every day that closes in on June 24th brings that pang of "she's not here" that cannot be conveyed to anyone who hasn't felt a loss of this magnitude.

I've had so many emotions and pity parties and bounce-backs and moments of determination - really been all over the spectrum of high highs and low lows - just trying to get back to good. I was doing SO good in just everything and my love for my family was strong, vibrant, unbreakable I thought.

Today I struggle to forgive. I wish to forget. Yet God made me one of those realistic honest-to-a-fault people who can't pretend everything is well when it isn't. I ache to let go of responsibility that doesn't belong to me - stuff I keep obsessing over like my mom's house and belongings and what's going to happen and why isn't anyone helping and how can I save it and on and on and on. I'm not responsible for any of it.

I'm barely responsible for -me- because I spend so much energy trying to be responsible for my mom, my cousins, my uncles, my not-siblings, the bank, the government... when I'm not supposed to be. The past few months have been a hard lesson in learning what really is for me to do:

Take care of myself.
Raise my daughter.
Honor my mom however I can.
Respect my family members.
Take care of my home.
Enjoy my life.
Be still.

I am happy to share that I'm coming out of the long funk with better focus and understanding. I am still sad. I still feel so much pain when I think of "home," but I've gained knowledge that I can only be grateful for and try to keep in mind from this time onward: I matter. I matter to me. Fuck. all. else.

To "Me"...or not to "Me"

If you follow my sporadic blog postings then you know my mom is very ill. I have wrestled with my feelings about her decline in health. A few months ago, I came to the uninspiring conclusion that I have to lower my expectations of my mom. Her ability to change her situation still has a small window; however, she controls her life, not me. And while I'm busy fretting over her life, I am forgetting mine...and how quickly and easily I could be in assisted living if I don't change my own situation.

It's a lot easier to support someone I love than it is to support myself. Why? Because I don't have to do the work. I can be all the great things I like about myself: smart, caring, thoughtful, full of ideas, fun, helpful, a good listener, ready with a shoulder rub or a back rub or a pep talk on those not-so-great days...and I still don't have to do any of the actual work.  All the reward, none of the honest-to-God effort.

Do I want to gyp myself? To do so will mean a hospital bed and three people helping me get out of it just to use the commode. Or worse: staying in bed to soil it because I don't have the energy to push the call button let alone get up.

This is a reality, a probability. The proof is my own mom. I am not so far from being where she is, really. The difference between where she is and where I am is only a matter of years.

I've wanted her to change that for herself so much I was willing to do it FOR her. So what's my deal? Can I micromanage serious life change for my mom...but not for me?

The more I listen to my mom talk about her new world of assisted living, the more urgently I want to care about myself. That's why I am in counseling. That's why I pay attention to my habits. That's why I keep equipping myself with ways to change what I'm doing and how I'm being and feeling and align myself with people who make health their own priority and others whose example or presence makes me want to be even more accountable. 

I am micromanaging serious life change for myself now. I can't do my mom's work, and that breaks my heart, but I can do mine....and that could very well save it.

Internal Reboot

I don't care what anybody says, changing my diet has been a tremendous event - and a tumultuous one! One week I am up, the next I am down... and in some weeks I am up and down emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually - ALL OF IT!

This week has been one of those mixed varieties where I feel good about having sought relationships with the people who are knowledgeable and can support my weight loss and my changes in a positive way and I feel bad about eating poorly: not really eating on time, skipping meals, eating high calorie foods in a hurry to replenish me because I've skipped eating too much....and not really exercising.

To be fair, I've had some really emotional weeks of changing my life around: finding help for mom, taking care of my home, my family, realizing the impact of how spread out I am and how much it affects how I feel about myself...and that when I do that, I am disappointing others who depend on me. I have come to realize my way of doing too many things really bites it.

So, I've been paring back here and there to narrow my focus on what I feel I am supposed to do most: to minister with love and humility to a wider audience than I am currently keeping. I hope that I do so via radio, but I've yet to see how it will come to pass. What I know is that I have to set my path on that ministry goal and be ON it - and I have to set my mind on spending REAL time with my family doing the things we've been saying we'll do and never getting around to it.

I have had to ask myself, "Who is this Wendy of incompleteness and why is she in my life?" Because I'm a lot better than that. Thanks to my coaches in nutrition, physical exercise and mental balance, I've got a clearer picture of the Wendy I need to be. She has been lost...or maybe she has not even had the chance to be in existence.... but it's time she was.

I'm sure I will have good days and bad days, up and down weeks, and all kinds of distraction to keep me thinking, but I hope to remember that I've taken a stand for humility and that is why I'm here.

So, I've let go of things I can't commit to properly and I am humbly carrying on toward my goals of health, family and ministry - even though it makes me cry and is hard to accept.

I have to get the weight off.

Phew!

That was one heck of a week - and it was only a half week of work! As you know, I came to terms inside regarding my mother...realizing there isn't anything I can do to make her choose positive, health-beneficial foods and activities (whatever she can do) even if I go up to her house and start ruling the roost.

I have a loving friend who shared her own experience of watching her father fall apart before her eyes and was able to tell that to me, with more detail, and also what she learned in that time about his care and her own self-care. Without breaking confidence, I can tell you that she understood me in just the way I needed last week and through her experience I was able to acknowledge just how much I can't let myself be so optimally responsible for my mother. As much as it kills me to watch her disappear, I can't be the who or what that changes her life. Only she can. And when she's ready, she has the help right there in her house: the cousin to cook, the friends to keep her company, family to visit, nurses to watch her health, a physical therapist to get her moving and a dietitian to lord over her menu...and on Friday, I put the word out to my spiritual community at school that I would like to hire someone else.

My mom's pastor has moved out of state and, while I can't be my mom's pastor, I do have friends who can counsel very lovingly and whose mission it is to help older adults in her position. They have patience where I do not. They have the ability to maintain boundaries, which I obviously have to work on. They're also working to become ordained and would not necessarily charge a fee, but I said I would contribute via donation in thanks for the help.

So, four people have responded and if all goes well, I will have given my mom a gift of someone to talk to who won't pressure her the way I do and who might be a good listener and be encouraging - all things I can do for my friends, but not for my mother.

I love laughing with my mom and just shooting the breeze, but when it comes to her inner and outer turmoil, I take on her stress and I do not respond well. Maybe it's due to having lived in an explosive family together that I act this way?

But, the boundary thing... I am working on the boundary thing. I met with Barb, my trainer, on Friday (I'm down two pounds!) and spent the hour we could have been using the treadmill and nautilus equipment and free weights just talking in her office...shedding tears about my mom and my anger and listening to Barb's observation that I have a problem setting boundaries and doing for me what I do for other people. She told me I need to be more self-FULL (not to be confused with selfISH) and...while I have to figure out how to BE that, I can see there is value to it in the things she's said and what my friend said also.

Centering on self. I've often tried to do that and then gotten sidetracked...and I don't realize how not centered on myself I am until I'm stressed like I was the other day from being soooooo absorbed in other people's problems.

I have to figure out how to balance caring about my things while I'm busy caring about theirs.

On a fun note: By doing this low carbs thing I am reminded of how much I like to cook. I really, really like to cook. I get a kick out of this and I'm making such good recipes. And I am going to host a dinner party soon. Watch!

P.S. Thank you, my unconditional friend, for your wisdom and the peek into your world's window last week. I am better for having experienced that.