I've been a really moody bitch all week, and despite myself, I have set parts of my life on fire and salted the earth. It was an extreme reaction from me, and I realized my bipolar is flaring up right now. Despite the meds. Lots of stressors are pulling at me to help with the flares I am having physically and mentally, and when I saw what tomorrow was going to be, my mood the last few days has made perfect sense.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of my mother's suicide. And I am wondering which part of me is deciding this year it's going to hurt. I mean, I always remember the day they found her, not the day they buried her. I sometimes even get the months mixed up. Some years I pretend nothing happened, others I flip out and lock myself away. I'm so messed up I can't even grieve about my mother like a stable person.
But I do grieve. And I always will.
You never get over a suicide. Especially since she was one of my main abusers growing up. Growing up with her taught me you had to scream to be heard, you had to fight to make the pain stop, and you can't trust anyone. Family is a comforting delusion other people get to have. No one will take care of you but yourself. And if I stayed in her house for too long, I'd become an addict and a monster too.
My mother was 41 when she died. She had enough drugs in her to kill an elephant when they found her dead in her hotel room. She did it in a place I had fond memories of before the incident, Niagara Falls. I used to love watching the rushing water. Forces of nature are amazing to me. I recall Houdini went over the Falls in a barrel once. I try to focus on that now.
I have speculated why she did it several times, but I honestly will never get that answer. It's just another mystery, like so many things in my life, that most people don't have to deal with. And the thing that really makes grief about my mother hard is that there are no real good times to fall back on. I have a memory here or there, but I can tell you they would fit on less than 5 fingers if we counted them. Which is a sad, horrible state of affairs. My mother was not a happy person, was untreated for all sorts of mental disorders, and was usually on more drugs than she needed. I'm sure she was probably trying to self medicate, because there was shit wrong inside her body as well as her mind. When they did the autopsy on her, they found growth on her bones. She used to try to scare me and tell me, "One day Kweeny, your body will betray you too. You'll get sick like I am. And your life will be all pain."
She wasn't right often, but when she was...
When I broke my tailbone it felt like my mother's curse had come full circle. Like I couldn't escape a life of pain and madness. And when I went into the hospital this year, it shattered me. I have had a hard time returning to my core self since. I wake up in drug hazes, I go to sleep in drug hazes. I have cold sweats and nightmares. I wake up in horrible pain that makes me grit my teeth every morning. I am a pariah to some, to others, just a moment in time. I still have bipolar swings, and I am not happy with how I am coping.
So I am not okay this year.
A friend suggested I draw, but my pain about my mom might make that actually physically too much for me to bear. My mother never supported my creative pursuits. I told her I wanted to be in a band, she laughed at me and told me I was too ugly. When I drew things for her, she would only point out their flaws and tell me to quit trying...
Sometimes she literally beat the dreams out of me.
But I am going to try finishing my painting I started the other night. Even if the voices are really loud tonight and my pain is really intense. I will see how far I can get before I just cant do it anymore. The painting is emotionally relevant to what I am dealing with right now.
