More Family Crap

My new therapist, Dr. D has suggested that I try telling my mom what I need. For example, when I see my mom once a week at Jazze.rcise, the conversation usually goes something like, I say "Hi Mom", she says, "Hi Geochick!!!" all excitedly, I continue what I'm doing (changing usually), she starts telling me what she's doing or what her friends are doing, or what distant family members are doing. I roll my eyes and wonder when she's going to ask me how me and my family are.

Every. Single. Week.

At Dr. D's suggestion, I thought about how to tell my mom that I would really like it if she checked in with me and my family before launching into her stories.

At this moment, I can't figure out how to do it. My interactions with her have reached a certain toxicity to where I can't seem to let go of the fuming anger I feel every time I have to talk to her. I feel like I've already tried to get through to her, but she never hears me, and what's the point of asking?

I recently had the opportunity to do just that.  To stop her and say, "You know mom, I would really like it if you checked in with me before telling me what's going on with everyone else".

I didn't do it. Then the typical pattern emerged. After a while, I finally blurted out that we are currently dealing with thousands of dollars worth of damage to our house because of 2 major hailstorms. The roof is trashed, our awnings have holes in them, the fence is damaged. It's covered by insurance, but still, it's a pain. We have a check to get the work started, except that we have to send said check to two different banks (mortgage and home equity loan) to get it endorsed so that we can actually start. Bureaucratic nightmare, IMO. Not to mention that the flooding isn't covered by insurance so we just have to put up with a carpet remnant covering the floor until next year when hopefully we have enough money to do the work. Or maybe it'll be two years from now, who knows.

This is her reaction, "Oh my God, I had no idea!!!!"

No shit. Cause YOU NEVER ASK HOW MY LIFE IS.

And I react sarcastically, "Well, of course not, because you never asked".

And the cycle continues....

I understand now why people break with their parents. I hate this cycle. I hate feeling like a petulant little kid. I hate that she never asks me what I'm up to, that if I didn't say anything in our interactions that it would never occur to her that she doesn't know anything about my life.

I also hate that I'm starting to feel judged by Dr. D. I can't tell if that's because I'm so ashamed that I can't even try to start fixing this relationship to some degree, or if I'm really frustrated that she isn't validating how I feel about things. She still won't agree that my mom is a narcis.sist. I'm pretty damn sure she is. But I guess I'm not the one with a PhD and years of experience, so I must be wrong.

p.s. everytime I wonder if I should go public, I realize that then I would never be able to write like this and feel comfortable. I think I like my anonymous space.

Family of Origin

Mine is f-cked up. In a big way, and things keep happening that point it out to me.

Two of my brothers were in town this summer at separate times. Neither one of them told me. One I had been texting with and I invited him over to our house for dinner. I found out from my mom when he was here and left. 

The other came into town for a wedding and S found out on FB. 

That makes me angry. And sad. I have a connection with one out of three of my brothers. Part of it is age difference, but a part has to be the way we were raised with my mom as the sun around which all communication revolves. L and I have broken that cycle. The other two have no desire to cultivate a relationship with their siblings. 

Every time I falter and wonder if I'm blowing the situation out of proportion, something happens to remind me that this is real dysfunction. It's damaging, and I don't want to continue the cycle. 

You Know When You're Sitting At Work

and come up with a really great post, start composing it in your head and then make yourself stop because, you know, work?

Yeah, that.

For the life of me I can't remember what I was thinking about this afternoon, but I can tell you I had the post half-written in my head. I considered writing it down, but had already spent quite enough time f-cking around during my second day.

Maybe it had something to do with all this family shit that's going down. Probably about how I am struggling so hard right now to recognize that it's them, not me who are blowing things up. Struggling to recognize that my mom screwed me up, I didn't get screwed up all by myself. Wondering if I'm the one who will always cause strife between S and his family after this. Wondering if these new friendships will fail like 2 have failed before. Wondering what's wrong with me that I can't just be a nice person that people like and say "Geochick? Yeah, she's really nice and so easy to get along with".

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I have to remember, and S constantly reminds me, he married me because I'm ME. Because I'm direct, because I let people know what I'm thinking, when I think it. Because I am just *this short* of not having a filter when I open my mouth. I have to remember that being me got me this far in my career, which is well on my way to commanding respect in an industry full of old white guys. I have to remember that being me is what makes me willing to get up in front of contractors and tell them that one of their construction applications did not go well on one of my projects.

Because, as someone who is direct, forthright, and doesn't hold anything back? If you feel like you have to walk on eggshells around me, then that's your problem. I have never been anything but truthful, biting my tongue when needed, and speaking up when I feel I need to.

So, there.

Holiday Blues and Joys and Blues and Joys

I don't know if it's getting older, infertility, adoption, family issues or what, but every year the holidays seem to become more difficult to endure. S and I decided not to go to the one Christmas party we were invited to because the ex-friend who pretends like I no longer exist was going. I was able to endure her a couple months ago at another party, but for some reason, in this season of forgiveness (ha), celebration and togetherness, I couldn't face yet another night of our careful dance around each other.

Barreling down a different path to parenthood punctured by immense grief and tough decisions has changed us. It's a path that was a true test of our willingness to work together, grow together and fight through the sh*t that was thrown our way. There has been an immense amount of sh*t. One of my friends who is facing her own difficulties with parenting a child outside of the norm stated that she feels like she shouldn't be so upset because other people face worse issues. I maintain that the worst thing you've ever been through is the worst thing you've ever been through. We have to give ourselves permission to feel bad, angry and sad over the worst things we've been through. Comparing ourselves to others who have it worse doesn't make us feel better. It makes us feel like we shouldn't be feeling what we're feeling.

Don't get me wrong, I love that I now have two kids to celebrate the holidays with. I love that this family building journey is almost over for us, and that we can start planning for vacations again instead of squirrling away our money to pay for the services associated with adoption. I love that I can take my kids to see San.ta, play in the snow and see X's super excited face on Chri.stmas morning. All of that is joy. Finally, there's joy where there once was indifference.

The joy is tempered by our experiences in getting here. It's also tempered by the reality of parenting two kids. This is my third week on maternity leave and all I feel is that I'm still behind. I thought this would be my holiday season to finally bake just for fun, calories be damned, yet I've barely managed to make sure I have sugar cookie ingredients for San.ta's cookies.

Yet, Chris.tmas is almost here whether I'm ready or not. Whether I've done all the preparations and activities I wanted to do or not. Whether my relationship with my parents is good or not. 

The focus now shifts to letting go of my expectations and just enjoying my family. 

MY. FAMILY.

I can do that.

A Gift in an Ugly Package

I wrote this several months ago, and didn't publish it for some reason. It gives some insight into how I've been dealing with the family stuff.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For two years straight I attended therapy.  Once a week or every two weeks, occasionally once a month.  I didn't think it was going to take two years when I walked into Therapist's office as  a new mom struggling to figure out why everything was so hard a year into parenting.  I figured that I just was having trouble with the adjustment into parenthood having gotten past the first year of survival mode and major transitions.  Settling down into the routine of parenting X, instead of feeling calming, made me crazy.  Vacations weren't that fun.  My brother's wedding was not fun.  A weekend away with S at my friend's wedding wasn't fun.  I started getting irritated and short with people at work, to the point of actually getting in trouble over one incident because the much older guy was so offended by my putting him in his place that he threatened to lodge a formal complaint against me to the Civil Rights/EEO office.  Things would either briefly ok,  then I would sink into a funk blaming myself for everything that was going wrong.  A friendship imploded prior to walking through that door, and I struggled to recognize that it wasn't my fault.  The only constant positive influences in my life were S and X.  S tried to be there for me as I raged and sunk lower, and was happy when I managed to get my head above water for brief periods of time.  I was drowning.

Part 1:  Figuring Out it's Clinical Depression
While Therapist is not a psychiatrist, and I didn't see a psychiatrist, she is gifted in ferreting out the root of the problem.  Four or five visits with her turned into a suggestion that I go on medication.  It was a suggestion with a little push.  I demurred for a couple weeks, then realized that I wanted to get this all sorted out more than I wanted to avoid medication.  Since then I've been on a half dose of cele.xa, and whether it's placebo effect, homoeopathic effects, or literally the amount I need, I've noticed my mood swings have dramatically smoothed out.  I get low, and G-d knows I've been through the wringer over the last year emotionally, but I haven't bottomed out like I used to.

Part 2:  Rebuild My Ego Strength
I had some self-esteem, that's how I was able to manage to make myself successful.  I had enough self-esteem to recognize one long-term boyfriend was a cad, and maybe that guy I didn't think was too exciting at first should be given a chance (good thing, because that was S).  There was enough there that I made good choices and could stand up for myself when needed.  But not all the time.  I never saw myself as a kind/good/successful person.  I saw myself as constantly failing to live up to my so-called potential.  I'm not a workaholic by any means.  I treasure my play-time/down-time/bad tv watching time way more than I want to climb the ladder.  But, I constantly beat myself up over not being engaged enough at my job.  What I had to realize during this part of my therapy was that I am engaged enough at my job.  Despite the kerfuffle with one person in my office, I've done nothing but get better performance reviews throughout the last several years and managed to get myself promoted in the middle of the sh*tstorm that is building my family.  All while being depressed and fighting through some serious emotional issues.  The one area I didn't feel shaky in was parenting.  It really seems odd if you think about it, because not being able to juggle all the facets of my life was what drove me to therapy.  It was really everything surrounding parenting, not the actual parenting that was becoming magnified. 

This part of my therapy dragged on a bit longer than it probably needed to because while I was working through all this stuff several setbacks occurred.  My therapist got pregnant and took maternity leave.  It wasn't long, but I had several weeks without an appointment.  I could've seen someone else, but I didn't really want to discuss my issues with someone who didn't know me, and I did pretty good during that time anyway.  My relationship with my parents tanked.  I had several fights with my parents that seemingly came out of nowhere and learned that I can't rely on my own mother to take my side or be empathetic when I'm going through a tough time.  The match with Baby A failed and we had to turn him over to cradle care three days after taking him home.  Despite all these setbacks, I finally got the point where I was ready to address the root of all my emotional problems.

Part 3:  No, Really?  My mom isn't a narcissist, is she? 
She is.  Being in any emotionally abusive relationship carries a special burden, and this one is mine.  I danced around this issue from the first month that I entered therapy.  The first major fight with my parents led to the revelation that my parents were having trouble with one of my brothers.  He apparently accused my mom of being a narcissist and the first thing I did was defend her.  How could she be a narcissist when she does a), b), c) for everyone around her? Ultimately, I attributed the fact that my dad yelled at me at the top of his lungs in front of my child, to the stress my brother had put on my parents with some of his more dramatic declarations.  It still wasn't ok that it happened, and I was beyond furious with being treated like a little kid.  But, I found a way to explain it away so that it wasn't them, it was something else.

Imagine my chagrin when I finally realized that my brother is right.   Once I admitted that this must be what has been wrong for 39 years, I was able to start healing.  I think I've grieved the loss of a mother my entire life, because she never was there for me emotionally.  There is some more to work through, and some disbelief that this is really my relationship with my mother before I can move to learning how to limit interactions in order to keep my now-healthy ego intact.

Here's the thing about narcissists, they are so fragile on the inside that they can only feel good about themselves when they get external validation.  They take and they take and they take, they're are excessively needy.  For example, I get random texts that obviously are fishing for compliments.  These days, I ignore them.  Almost every weekend, I'll get a text asking if they can drop by, or watch X while I run errands.  Seemingly innocent texts, but they are incessant, even when I reply that I'll let her know when I need babysitting.  I never get a simple "I love you".  I get "I love you so much, you know that?  Or, "I love you too much to have this conversation right now", or "You and S are the best parents ever, X is so lucky to have you".  None of those are unconditional.  It's always conditional. 

It is not up to me to fill my mother's emotional cup at the expense of draining mine.  

It's really hard to undo 39 years of learned behavior.  Especially because Therapist identified me as very likely the so-called golden child of the narcissist.  I look awesome on paper.  She can brag about me non-stop to everyone around her and they tell her she's an awesome mom.  Ironically,  I accomplished all this in spite of my mom.  Now, the thing that has really brought all this to bear at this precise moment in time is my infertility and adoption journey.  All of the sudden, I am not her perfect child.  I hurt, and she can't take it because it makes me less than perfect.  I'm open about adoption, and she buried mine.  

Three books are helping to identify what's been going down my entire life:  Will I Ever Be Good Enough? , Disarming the Narcissist  and Toxic Parents.

I am an Imposter.  That's my main identifier as the daughter of a narcissist, and likely the Golden Child since I look amazing on paper and I'm bragged about to everyone who will listen.

Consider:

• I was in the top 10% of my high school graduating class, but felt it wasn't good enough.
• I graduated from one of the most difficult engineering schools in the country. But my GPA fell just short of 3.0.  I must not be a good engineer.
•  I got my master's degree while working full time.  I was pissed that I didn't get straight A's and I "only" worked 40-50 hours per week.  I must not be a good engineer or student.
•  I have never read the final copy of my master's thesis.  I'm embarrassed by it.
• It took me 4 tries to pass the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam.  I felt like an abject failure after each one.  There was relief when I finally passed, but it wasn't much.
• I passed the Professional Engineering Exam on the first try.  In my mind, that meant it must have been "easy".  Forget the months of studying and review classes I took.
•  I live in constant fear of my supervisor figuring out how much I've been slacking lately.  Except that I'm actively moving projects forward and generally doing a good job.  It's OK to not be on my A game right now.  But, I don't give myself that kind of leeway.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wrote this part while waiting for Baby Z's arrival

August 10, 2014
My parents have plans to go see my brother's white coat ceremony for Pharmacy school, and to see my other brother in Oregon at the end of the month.  Because the baby is due at the end of August, Mom is willing to cancel all plans "just to be here" because "I want to, it's important to me".  Except, it's more important to me that she not leave L hanging with a 3 week single parenting stint, especially because he asked for them to come out months and months ago knowing that his wife would have a residency rotation out of town in August.  They've been blowing him off ever since.  Now, she's going to blow him off because the baby's due date is Aug. 31.  I'm not pregnant, I have nothing to recover from, the baby will likely come early, and even if my parents aren't here, we can figure out something for X for one or two nights while we are in the hospital.  S's parents aren't changing their vacation plans, and they shouldn't.  This isn't a typical pregnancy timeline, this is adoption timeline.  It can happen at anytime.  For us, it could have happened at any time for months.  In fact, we spent 5 days in the hospital with another baby who wasn't ours and my parents didn't know about it until after everything fell apart.  We can handle it just fine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since my initial post, which was right after I was discharged from therapy, there's been setbacks because of Baby Z. Since he has arrived, my mom has been laying it on thick with the "helping", and I've been keeping her at arms length. The problem is that she's figuring that out and now she's pushing even harder. I recognize now that it's given me a bit of setback as evidenced by my need to rant on my blog about the sh*t she's pulled lately. 

She seems to be reaching for straws with this news about having pictures of my bio-dad and some contact information. When I asked her straight up for the pictures, she got really mad at my brother, L, for telling me about them (triangulation). She stood there with tears in her eyes insisting that she's always on my side and re-writing history in her head. The conversation got heated, but I didn't lose it, so that's positive. I didn't even feel much of anything after it was done except that it felt like talking to a brick wall. She finally e-mailed the information to us including the scanned pictures, along with a long letter of self-pity and prostration. In the letter, I see a lot of shame. She says she didn't think that anyone needed to know her history, so what was the big deal. The big deal was that she didn't even want us to know our own story. She was ashamed of her perceived failure and still is not matter how much she insists it's ok that we search for family if we want to. Of course it's ok, because it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with us.

I've increased my cele.xa dose to the prescribed dose and so far am keeping reflux under control with pri.losec. That seems to be the worst side-effect I get besides this apparent weight gain that appeared over the last several months that isn't coming off despite the renewed dedication to MFP. Since I increased it just over a week ago, I'm not sure how much it's helping at this point, but I hope that it'll help me get through the holiday season and then I may consider finding another therapist. My therapist moved out of the country, but she chose one for me based on my family dynamic, so hopefully it's a good match. 

S asked how we are going to deal with this and is it going to get better. I don't think it is, and that's a hard truth to face. Unless my parents start to really own up to how they interact with me, it will never get better.  Funny, one of the things my dad falsely accused me of 2 years ago was threatening to keep my kids away from my parents. At that time, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind, and I don't know why he brought it up. I've done my best not to do that, but now, I wonder. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why is all of this a gift? Well, I guess it's because I've become more self-actualized and sought help to become a better version of myself. I know what I don't want for my own family, and I know what I don't want for myself.  

Dealing with Family

These past few weeks, especially the last two have been rife with stress, anxiety and worry.  You would think that having my family nearby would be a blessing, with their support during this emotionally difficult time.

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

I have a few words of wisdom to impart to anyone who has a loved one going through a situation similar to ours that I would like to share:

1. This is about the prospective adoptive parents, not you
2. When you ask how's it going, and your daughter says "Not good", the appropriate response is something along the lines of "I'm so sorry you have to go through this.  It must be really hard."  Not, "Hey X said the funniest thing when we went out to dinner with you on Sunday!".   Why thanks Dad, I now feel invalidated.  And gee, thanks Mom for that "I can't imagine" mumbled before prattling off some unimportant piece of information.
3. Call, don't text.  And for God's sake, don't send a text that says "Call me when you get a chance".  Especially when it's about coordinating care for your loved ones dog/cat/older child when the phone call to drop everything and get to the hospital eventually comes.
4. When a prospective adoptive parent shares the news of a match and tells you to keep it quiet because who knows if it'll actually be successful.  Keep. it. quiet.  Now, I know no harm, no foul when my mom told one of my brothers who already knew about the match, but she did it thinking she would be the one to break the news to him.  Because she likes to control the communication within the family.  
5. Don't get all sanctimonious when the prospective adoptive parents insist that they will be the ones to share whatever news (good or bad) comes of the match.  If someone feels they need to tell you multiple times to keep your mouth shut, then maybe you need to take a look at your own past behavior that may have prompted multiple prompts.  Even if you haven't done anything wrong in the past, if the prospective adoptive parents ask you to keep it quiet multiple times...well...see No. 1.
6. Informing your daughter in her time of highest stress (ever) that you need to talk, and we never talk anymore is not going to get you anywhere.  Besides, see No. 2.

Let's File This One Under

Stupid sh*t people say.

To me:  Did you ever have an hour long ultrasound when you were....oh, oh sorry. 

Me:  Were you going to say when I was pregnant?

To me:  Yes, sorry, I don't know why I asked. 

My mother, ladies and gentlemen.

The Hardest Part About Therapy

is learning that I can't fix a family relationship.  A close family member at that.  Now, it's all about limited and appropriate contact and what that means to preserve myself in order to improve what's there now.

It's really sad.

It was inevitable.

It sucks.

It was made worse by my infertility and adoption journey.  What that brought out in the relationship was the stark contrast of personalities.  One fiercely independent, the other codependent.  One willing to get down and dirty in the muck of shitty feelings in order to healthfully move through the shit, another who has swept everything under the rug for years.  One willing to attempt to share the journey and personal feelings about infertility and adoption, and another who can't handle the pain.  One who endured being treated like a child because the other just. can't. handle. it.

It's broken and it will never be fixed.  I hurt so bad.

My Adoption Backstory and the Epiphany

In my haste to write the last post I forgot that I haven't really told my backstory much, except in a book tour, and possibly alluded to it now and then in other posts. 

So, to clear up all confusion, here it is.

My mother was married to a man before my Dad and he is my father.  I was very young when they divorced, and brother1 was a baby.  We moved  to another state with my mom's then boyfriend, and the man I grew up calling "Dad".  While my parents acknowledged that brother1 and I were not the product of the two of them, they insisted on never discussing the situation.  I always called my dad, Dad, and the fuzzy memories I have of bio-dad are just that, fuzzy.  I remember that he was around, yet I have no idea what he looks like since my mom destroyed all evidence of him.   Apparently, he showed no interest in us once we moved away.

Growing up, my parents acted like brother1 and I were biologically theirs, and squashed all my attempts at conversation.  The questioning became even more intense when my parents had children who do not look like me and my brother.  It's completely obvious that we don't share the same genetic makeup, but that was not discussed and we continued our charade.  In fact, bringing up the fact that me and brother1 look like my dad was done quite frequently.  I remember feeling proud of that fact when I was young, a little confused by it when I got older, and then downright annoyed by the time I was in college. 

When I was a teenager, my dad adopted us by reason of abandonment by our bio-dad.  It was treated like every other day, except we made a quick trip to the courthouse to go through the formality, and we were given very little notice of this event.  Honestly, I really didn't grasp the monumental step that this was, as I was always trying to please and so did everything my parents told me to without question.

By the time I reached adulthood, I just took it all and stuffed it into a neat little box after several attempts to express my discomfort at the charade.  I wasn't allowed to talk about how I felt about the situation, and in general felt like it was my fault that my parents would get mad at me for bringing it up.  What was the point in pursuing something that so obviously upset both of my parents?  Especially since it didn't matter (or wasn't supposed to matter?).  Forming lasting and trusting relationships has always been difficult for me, and was something I thought was either my fault or the other person being a class A jerk.

In the process of adopting a child myself, I've been forced to face the feelings I've had all my life.  Reading "The Primal Wound" by Nancy Verrier, started to gently shake the foundation upon I've lived as I identified with way too many of the characteristics she describes.  Reading adoptee memoirs has shaken the foundation just a bit more, creating hairline cracks, and with it, friction with my parents.  Facing the reality of being an adoptive mother and how we are treating our child's story further widened the cracks.  A year of therapy began to chisel away at the relationships I've developed in my life, forcing me to see them in a new light and to figure out how to navigate them.  All of these little steps have served to fracture my psyche, my perception of my childhood, my perception of myself.

...and then brother1 made two statements,"I don't even know if I look like him", and, "What if we have brothers and sisters?"  During our conversation, when he expressed an interest in searching, I made a snap decision.  If he wants to do it, we should both do it.  Even though I've spent a long time convincing myself that I don't need to, I should be there to support him, should he desire to take that journey.

On the long drive to the airport, as I mulled over the conversation, navigating the two lane highway, it hit me full force.  I'm staring at the opportunity to help myself become whole by acknowledging this other person, this half of my genetic makeup.  I'm 39 years old and have no idea if I look like my bio-dad.

My world broke open.

Cracked

I saw my brother (brother1) and his family this weekend.

We had a needed deep and uncomfortable conversation about our parents. 

We may be searching for our bio father/father's family in the near future. 

This is the first time in my life that I have identified as an adoptee. 

My first step is to try to get my original birth certificate. 

My second is to ask my mother for the information I know she has, but has not shared with us. 

I'm scared.