I’m contiuning my week-long posts about Taiji and how it’s benefited me. In the last post, however, I veered into talking about my mental health. Let me be clear. Taiji has helped my mental health tremendously. I would say it’s probably the thing that has helped the most. Therapy helped the last time I did it (which was over a decade ago), but my time with that therapist came to a natural conclusion.
I have been thinking of finding a therapist ever since my medical crisis. not to deal with the medical crisis, ironically, but to deal with the family dysfunction that burst forward during it. It was always there, mind, but since my parents live in Taiwan, I did not have to deal with it on a daily basis–or even monthly. I mean, I had to talk to them on the phone once every three weeks or so, but that was all.
I have always had difficulty with my parents, but this showed a very ugly side to my mother that I had not seen before.
Side note: It’s really strange. I have had issues with my father all my life, but I’m actually less upset in dealing with him now than I am with my mother. There are a few reasons for it. One, my father’s pronounced dementia now makes it easier to say that he doesn’t know what he’s saying (because he doesn’t). Two, I talk to him for two or three minutes, up to five minutes once a month or so. Three, I have compassion for him that I didn’t have thirty years ago.
Dementia SUCKS. It’s terrible, and I would not wish it on anybody. I am watching it make a zombie of my father and tearing my mother from the inside out. So why is it harder for me to have compassion for my mother?
Let me say that I do have basic compassion for her. Again, it’s a terrible situation to be in.She is 81 years old and does the bulk of the caretaking. The vast majority. She has a helper, but from what my mother says, the helper does the bare minimum. I don’t know what that entails, exactly, because my mother is not the most reliable of narrators.
There are three options that are equally possible. 1. My mother is holding the helper to too high a standard so the worker has ‘quiet quit’ in trying to help. 2. The worker is doing the bare minimum and knows that it’s hard to replace her. 3. The helper is doing amazing and my mother is not happy about it.
My guess would be that the helper has given up trying to do things to my mother’s standards and is doing the bare minimum. My mother is never happy with anything–that it her whole M.O. She will always find the cloud surrounding the silver lining, and she will always question whatever decision she makes.
I am the same, though I keep a lot of the turmoil to myself. I learned it from her, much to my dismay. When K and I used to talk about our upbringing, we joked about how different our mothers were. She said she was awed when she took me to the airport once and I was rattling off all the things I had packed. That included stamps (for postcards) and a roll of quarters (for, ah, laundry? I’m not sure any longer). I said it was because of my mother worrying about every little thing that could happen under the sun. It didn’t matter what the circumstance was; she could come up with at least five different things that could go wrong.
K recounted when she was young, her mother had to really cut it close to the bone in order to take care of her two kids after her ignominious divorce from K’s father. It was messy and dramatic, and he pretty much disappeared for the next decade.
K would recount how her mother would send a check (yes, we’re old!) for the electric company to the phone company and vice-versa to buy herself some time. I thought that was very clever and resourceful of her. But how stressful that must have been sa well.
When K separated from her husband for a year, her mother said that she would be fine either way. If she went back to her hubby, she’d be fine. If she divorced him, she would be fine as well. I laughed beacuse if it were my mother, she would have found the negative in both options.
K remarked that there were pros and cons to both our mothers’ philosophies. In her mother’s case, she expected the best and didn’t worry about things unduly. However, if things did not work out, then she was caught flat-footed. On my mother’s side, she was more prepared for something unexpected to happen. On the negative side, however, it was a lot of stress and anxiety.
I know that my mental health has suffered in the last three months isnce the traumatic event. I still feel small happinesses here and there, but for the most part, I’m numb. Underneath the numbness, however, there is a messy stew of depression, anxiety, and anger. And grief. And sadness.
I know that I’m depressed. I know that my brain is doing the thing it does when it can’t cope. Oh, I have to add that daylight savings didn’t help, either. That was a little over two months ago, and it hit me hard. I hate the changing of the time in general, but I’m fairly used to it by now. For whatever reason, this last one came out of nowhere and slammed me in the face. I was actually awake when the change happened, which means my sleep was already fucked up by then, and now it’s all over the map.
Before my medical crisis, I was trying to get my sleep schedule to have a semblance of normality. It wasn’t working great, but I was getting to bed by four or so. Ever since daylight savings, I have been blowing past four and not going to bed until five or six. Yes, that’s in the morning.
I’m not happy with it, but my brain is stubbornly refusing to go to bed earlier than that. I know that’s the depression as well. Also, if I start playing a video game past midnight, I’m going to be playing it for several hours. Midnight to four is when I’m at my best, and if I don’t curb it, then I’m up for several hours.
It’s two in the morning. I’m going to try to go to bed. I’ll write more tomorrow.