Terminus Est

[smokingboot]

Maybe a big post, maybe not. Angsty though, and very heavy, but this is a marker and I need to write it down.

So. My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic, untreated, with many years of the illness behind her and a delusional world more real to her than this one. Occasionally she had what seemed to be psychotic episodes. Now, she is entirely gone. Gone physically too, she left the country and her flat, and the housing association wanted it back. They were told (presumably by a neighbour) that she wasn't there anymore, so they told housing benefit who stopped her rent. But the housing association wanted her/me to pay the rent anyway. How? They knew she wasn't their tenant anymore, that's why they told the benefits people!

My mother knows nothing of this of course. She sends panic stricken postcards from Europe begging me to empty the flat or 'everything must be lost.' Gritting my teeth, I spent months trying to get a copy of the keys - housing association didn't have one, little brother did but first couldn't find it and then couldn't get over his Asperger's Syndrome/nervous breakdown/lazy arse crapness to post them to me. I got to her flat only to find his keys wouldn't have helped- British Gas had broken in and changed the locks. A gentleman from British Gas came and broke in again for me. And there I was.

Every paper ever, meticulously filed, my degrees, her pension details, premium bonds, divorce papers, NVQ details...letters to Tony Blair and the Queen about how the watcher was destroying her, placards about the torment - that word three times in one paragraph - the man who made her put her head in the microwave, who introduced various diseases into her system, who injected her with isotopes, babblebabblebabble coherently written by a screaming mind. Were it not for the powerful love and friendship of larians who took a day off and travelled 200 miles to help me, I would have got nowhere.

Little house trying not to be tragic, tiny things, a mother of pearl spoon she loved,serving spoons shaped like geese, pictures of flowers, pretty little things, perfume bottles, a scrupulously clean place, the place of a neat dead person. Plastic sheets covering the lights, so the watcher could not beam things into her mind. Gaffa tape round the corners of the room. So many photographs. Why bother? The past is not our friend.

Things bagged, things done, I said goodbye to the house and thanked it for trying for all those years. I will burn those papers that have no use, and if she doesn't want her lladro porcelains I'll sell them on Ebay. I recall shaking the hand of the housing association representative and apologising to her for all the trouble. I joked, saying that if things went well, she would never see me again. 'Oh,' she said wistfully, 'You looked just like your mother when you said that.'

Comments

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Bless you, what a thing to go through. Parents with mental health problems = horrific. My grandmother was bi-polar, my dad is very scarred from years of dealing with her. I spent most of my youth terrifying myself that I would end up like her - because people said I looked like her. Have exorcised that now, but it's never easy.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the above.

My mother's sickness made childhood terrifying. I have never written that down before! A gift that keeps on giving:-( Often I feel this is where I get my impatience with those who have mental/emotional problems and won't treat them; of all types of sickness, this seems to be the one that renders people utterly manipulative and selfish, incapable of seeing how their disintegration destroys others.

Still perhaps clearing all this horrible stuff has its healing aspect, not least because our mental habits are so dissimilar - I am a total slob and the sheer neatness of the place freaked me out. Guess she and I aren't exactly mental twins!

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

It's a circular thing often, the person can't see how much they're affecting other people and because they have such a fragmented sense of self, they can't equate it to anything either, so they have no incentive to help themselves, and by proxy others.

Differentiation is very important. Despite what Oscar Wilde says (what did he know anyway!) we do not all have to follow our parents, and willingness to look at ourselves is the clearest route to avoiding that, in my experience.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Got that right I feel! I think when it started to become apparent my mother must have had some notion - she was a psychiatric nurse and dealt with this kind of thing on a daily basis. But she couldn't bear to look at it. It is that moment of turning away I find hard to forgive.

Yes, there was great stigma, yes the drugs were very nasty, and the total power my father would have had over her, over all of us, had she self-committed, would have destroyed the family. He is not a good man. But she could just have divorced him and then dealt with it. She wouldn't look, couldn't deal with anything, and we were destroyed anyway.

I think we are a luckier generation, and yes, I believe honesty and self observation is the key. If someone tells me they have a mental illness, my kneejerk response is to say take a look at the people who love you, and then take the bloody medicine!

I respect people who do what you do, and know I would be very bad at it myself - or at least, with respect to this particular issue.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

I find the turning away very difficult too, I struggle to forgive it in anyone, luckily people who come to see me are mostly trying not to, hard though it can be.

One thing I will say, which is that if your mum worked in mental health she would have seen how appallingly many people are treated, and I can sympathise with her to the extent that conventional psychiatric treatment can be very unwelcoming. Like you though, I don't think it's a good enough reason to do nothing. You're right, not looking at things is usually worse than the outcomes of looking at them.

I meant to say as well that when I imagine you as a scared little girl trying to deal with your mum, I feel very sad. It's a hard and horrible thing.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

It is kind of you to acknowledge that little girl - she doesn't get much of an outing. I expect her to be tougher than she is. But then I kind of expect that from my mum too!

Thanks for seeing her.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

I think you had to be pretty tough to get through your childhood. Maybe now things are different and you can be kinder to her.
I have a radar for little girls who are being treated unfairly.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

It's much needed. Too many hurt little girls out there...little boys too, but I think the pressures are different.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

[lucyas.livejournal.com]

Poor you. That sounds very difficult. It is really tough having to be the adult to a parent who no longer has the mind of one, isn't it?

At least you got all the stuff out of the flat though.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Well, the furniture has been left apart from one big pine chest in which we've put all her china. It's crazy though - when I moved out of Lambeth, if you left your furniture, the council would just distribute it to people in need, but the Housing Association wouldn't do that. Apparently it costs too much. But then it costs to take the stuff to the dump and have it destroyed. And there's people in horrible squats all over London who need beds and sofas etc!

As for being a parent, it's not hard to see why we never took that route isn't it? As job choices go, it sucks!

[lucyas.livejournal.com]

Housing associations are the scum of the earth.

BTW - have you used Freecycle? I got rid of loads of stuff on freecycling when I was moving flat, decluttering my parents place and getting rid of dad's stuff after he died. It is really good to see stuff go to someone who wants it and at the same time avoid the expense and effort of going to the tip.

Thanks!

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Ooh, no, never thought! I will phone the Housing Association tomorrow and suggest it to them, they were bitching so much about the cost of destroying stuff!

[littlemiscowboy.livejournal.com]

Huge hugz honey. Not much else I can say.
xxxx

Thank you my dear

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Ah well, the hugs are enough especially when you say it and the boys in the icon demonstrate it. Feels like I'm getting a hug from the whole family!

[mitchy.livejournal.com]

*hugs tightly* Poor Boot. I'm sorry hon.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Me too. But thanks for hugging so tightly *hugs back*

[sixtine.livejournal.com]

Very difficult. Virtual hugs.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Ah well, difficulty fading after a weekend of pretending to be a sentient cactus in another world! Hugs still appreciated with thanks though *hugs back*

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

*hug*

That sucks. Deep down I think we all want/need to have parents that fit an ideal, but of course we rarely if ever get it. Sorting through the detritus of their/our lives can end up being such an odd experience- the finding of things that evokes memories for good or bad.

I hope you have found some things that have positive memories attached to them to keep hold of. The past is not always our friend-but it is still a part of us, of who we are today, and sometimes there are anchors to the good parts of the past as well as to the bad. Parents do tend to hang onto bits of our own stuff as well (like your degree certs)-I am currently doing a bit of a rescue job of a lot of my own stuff (and my brothers) from my dad (my own parent problem right now), and keep finding all sorts of stuff I should have had in the first place.

Its good that you have someone like Larians to help.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Interesting what you say...I don't know, I never needed an ideal - just parents like everyone else's. She was not an evil woman, just tremendously ill and weak, but I'm afraid I certainly reached the point of believing that orphans were much luckier than they realised. Very few positive memories and not one of them without alloy.

As for a part of who I am, well only the screaming mental raging part of me! I seriously don't believe all this rubbish made me stronger, it nearly killed me. And if I am strong, it was in spite of all this muck rather than because of it. You are so right about having someone like Larians to help. But then I have been very lucky in lovers and friends, here and in everyday life:-)

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

The problem is that often those 'parents just like everyone elses' turn out to be well short of what one imagines they would be.

I know most of my friends probably reckoned I had an enviable home life with great parents (my mum was so great she ended up being a mum to almost everyone she met and I still meet people locally devastated by her death more than two years after it)-but I can see the problems a mile high (a father who is absent not only physically, but increasingly demonstrating that he is more than a bit absent emotionally and I just never noticed because he was hardly ever around and a mother who, while lovely, spent more time being a good mother to everyone outside the family than she did in the family).

Im lucky not to have had parents with any mental problems, or abusive ones-but I have come to wonder how many parents actually fit the mental picture we often have of other peoples 'good' parents (or even 'normal' parents). I think in the end its more a case of the degree of dysfunction. In a way I would have preferred more obviously dysfunctional parents, as mine operated well enough to enable me to live a lie for most of my life that seriously held me back-I actually rather envy people who mentally and emotionally moved on from their parents in their teens and just got on with their lives without them. Instead I spent years in the shadow of a 'saint' and trying to find out who my father was when there was nothing actually worthwhile or of substance to find.

I think thats why I wondered about an 'ideal'-I think having parents just like everyone elses probably is just that-an ideal-a construct-a myth. Damn Im getting cynical....

In the end we just have to get on with dealing with the mess other people leave for us.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

People are just people with their flaws and mistakes and there is no such thing as the perfect parent any more than there is the perfect person. As you say, it's a question of degree. As to living a lie, I am very sorry you went through that - but you came out of the delusion somehow, and you live your life for you and the people and principles you love, and that something few aspire to. I hope you are proud of it:-)

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

hmm...I guess Im just feeling a bit let down right now and jaded over parents myself.
One of the reasons I have not being doing much art lately has been that we are both trying to cope with a sudden influx of stuff from my dads place as he moves to London soon-its been a scramble to rescue things we value or need from the loft before he gives or throws them away (we have already lost some of our stuff that way). A lot has been going on emotionally regarding him as well-tons of stress and worry because he is acting very irrationally (even to the point of being a bit dangerous, as well as financially crazy). We have just got to a point where we really don't care about him much any more and just want to rescue what we can.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Sometimes rescuing what you can is all there is left. But every act of creation takes the past through a process of alchemy, turns it into something unique and new. Strange to think of yourself as a wizard of such ability. Love art!

Hugs to both of you, sounds like it's been harsh.

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

You are so right about the alchemy-one of the reasons (along with keeping some for my brother, doing some genealogy research and holding onto memories) I am rescuing all the old family photos is because I want to use them in art (once scanned).

A few family relics of no value other than sentimental may become assemblages- I have some old pipes of my Grandfathers (who died before I was born, but who I am apparently very like) that I want to make into some art. They were another thing I rescued. I remember using them as props when I was playing/little and handling (and smelling) them brings back some good childhood memories I want to enshrine and preserve.

It IS a form of magic :)
Thats the flip side of what has been a rotten last few months (and will probably continue that way for a while alas, at least until my dad actually moves/gets married etc). I have access now to the family past in a way I didn't before (it made it not only easier, but logical, to virtually raid the old family home for things).

How are you managing with things now? Has the act of sorting your mums places left a bad taste overall, or have you some good points?

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Not so bad thank you...there are some reminders of my travels in Nepal, Egypt etc, a white and pink soapstone chess set from Africa, two brass carriages drawn by elephants and horses from Nepal, and most especially a statuette of Ganesh, the Elephant god of India, beautiful and intricate, carved in wood. Other things too, little reminders of the things I accomplished by myself. She had looked after everything, wrapped every chess piece in plastic and paper with patient care, nothing chipped, nothing lost. I am a terribly careless sloven in comparison. It was a tender reminder of the care she took in all things.

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

Late to the party, but have a *hug* anyway. Drop me a line if you need to vent a bit.

Thanks

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Hugs are never too late:-D

Today is a better day. Saw your photos, where have you been?

Re: Thanks

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

To Rome! It was every bit as good as I was hoping it would be...

Re: Thanks

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

It has been a long time since I saw Rome, city of chic brides with sunglasses on Vespas!

Glad you had a fab time:-)

[evilwillow.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

In all the madness of the weekend I forgot to say how sorry I was you had to go through this.

See you tonight!

Love,

Wends
xx

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

It was lovely to see you last night - and let's face it, a weekend that can push all this into the background is a pretty fine weekend! Thanks for your advice re starflower. I hope that next time we're together I'm better company:-)

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

That must have been so hard, and you have my sympathies.

In the interest of trying to find the silver lining in the sad cloud, I know how long that's been hanging over you, and now it's done. You don't need to do it again. Try to think of it as a weight lifted, a chore done well. Something you don't have to worry about anymore. Something you cannot be pressured into being responsible for. And remember - you don't have to be strong all the time.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Thank you, you are very kind. I don't have much choice about the strength - tried to go through the photographs and separate those for burning and just couldn't do it. No emotion, my body just went faint and dizzy and the room span. I haven't had that since being colossally drunk in the Athenaeum Road hourse years ago! So I put them all back, considerably more jumbled than they were before. Now all we have to do is get this rubbish to Spain.

Can't wait to hear about New York!