Hi Candybear-

Like you, I was always looking for the pony, until it finally occurred to me that I might actually be kicking dead horses. A lesson I haven't entirely learned, but...

You might give some serious thought to, if not 'divorcing' your family, separating from them. It needn't be permanent. It made a world of difference with my mom-- eventually.

I had severe Mom problems: her drinking, her rage, her lifetime declaration of open season on my self esteem. She was scary as hell. Did I mention her rage?

Here's what I ended up (kind of inadvertantly) doing about it. My coming to terms with her started waaaaaay back in the 70s. Her drinking and acting out had become so severe that I called child protective services on behalf of my littlest brother who was still at home and not yet an independant teenager. I could defend him even if I couldn't defend myself. (Why does it work that way?). I asked for anonymity but the worker who went to the house didn't deal with it that way and I got the screaming, ranting phone call from hell. Did I mention she was a really, really aggressively angry person?

I knew, despite her rage and defensiveness, that my brother was in a bad situation and it occured to me that she was using the 'best defense is a good offense tactic' (ding! illumination!) and no matter what she said to me and no matter what she tried to lay on me, she was flat wrong. So--I resigned from the family. (Not from my siblings, who I kept close tabs on). I didn't hang out with her, didn't respond to her, didn't call, (and this was before the era of the answering machine) didn't make it to command performances other than Christmas. I'd had it. When I moved, I didn't let her have my new phone #, or even the info that I had moved.

After a year or so, she was more respectful. I started going to Thanksgiving as well as Christmas. Then, when she moved in with her barfly boyfriend, my little brother came to spend the weekend and just stayed. (He had been sleeping on the sofa cushions on the living room floor of the new place. Mom and her BF were mostly drunk and loud and my brother was a miserable 13 yo.) So in my mid-twenties I became the erstwhile parent of a teenager. Which was fine, he was good company and I knew he was safe.

Ironically, it was this that started to really heal the relationship with my mother. I got the feeling she was relieved to get off the mom bus. She actually started to be a little less whacked out, a little less crazed with rage, looking a little more human.

A while after that, I finally truly 'got' mom. I was looking at some family pictures with my 6 yo niece and came across one of me and my mother in the back yard. I was 15 in the picture and was stunned to notice that my mother was hardly older than I was right then. I realized that she had me when she was 17-18 (she fibbed about her age so I'm still not sure) and in quick order had 5 more kids. She had basically been a mother since before she grew up. I couldn't imagine having 6 kids by the age of 31. It was kind of revelatory and started me seeing her more as a person.

The part of me that was so angry and always at her mercy slowly fell away. Over the next years, she behaved better and better. (Even quit drinking!) I don't mean to be a Pollyanna, it was by no means perfect. She still could be snide and mean, but the improvement was 100 %. Weirdly, she became much more of a mom in the traditional sense than she ever had been during all the time my siblings and I were kids. And much to my amusement, she recast her past. In her new version we were the children of June Cleaver. I knew better, and underneath it I'm sure she knew better, but I didn't care. If her pride demanded it (and it did), it really wasn't any skin off my teeth. It didn't change the past, but it didn't matter that much because I was more interested in the present and the future.

By the last several years of her life, she was one of my best friends. It was a long time getting there but so worth it. The thing too, was that I was eventually able to see her own depression, and how funny and smart she was, and to understand that her anger and other antics, while destructive, were the tools that got her through her own difficult childhood and life. A double edged sword kind of thing: her greatest strength was also her greatest failing. In a lot of ways she was someone who was too big for the life she ended up having. I think a lot of women who came of age in the 40s and 50s when the only dream women were supposed to have was marrige and a family were in the same position, even if they didn't go all destructo. (Which is a whole other rant)

Ironically, her sudden death a few years ago was the proverbial straw that pushed me over the edge into the depressive quagmire I now call my life. Despite that, I am ever grateful that I finally knew her as a person and had a mostly healed relationship with her. It would never have happened if I hadn't absented myself from the path of her destruction for the time I did.

There's no guarantee that your mother is going to reform, of course, but when I cut my mom off, I didn't expect it either. I just didn't want any more of it. How it turned out was unexpected and took years and years before it worked out. Of course I still have issues regarding her, but nothing like it was before.

I just refreshed this thread and saw that Ozzie said the same thing (in a much more succinct and clear way) I tend to go on and on when I write, sorry.

Best to you Candybear.
<div class="foot">(Edited by tuneyluna on 09/07/04 02:58 AM.)</div>