I just reread my post from November 2012. 2012!  And now, here it is almost two years later and I still like I’m wresting with the same thing.  The same feelings of displacement.  It’s like I can’t find a comfy place to be me.  Or, more appropriately, who “me” really is.

I feel haunted by mother.  While her death in January 2013 was a relief (certainly to me and very likely to her) I still feel trapped by the pull of our relationship.  A lifetime enmeshed with a toxic parent who you love and hate.  I have always like to believe that she had little effect on me.  Somehow I had escaped and she had left no mark.  When she died, I initially felt free.  Free from the responsibility.  Free from the regular and increasing demands.  Free from the guilt.  Free from having to think about her…how she is, what she needs, what she thinks.

And that was true to an extent.  But the mind unfolds as we let go.  One thing is cast adrift only to reveal more beneath.  So there she lies in wait.  I know (don’t I?) that I’m not my mother, not that like my mother but what if…  What if I grow old like her?  What if I do the same things I decried in her?  I’ve feared infirmity my whole life because who would take care of ME?  If I wasn’t caring for others, if I had “nothing to offer” then I would be abandoned?

Now I’ve compounded all that by worrying that I’m just going to spend the next 5? 10? 20? 30 years?  still trying to feel okay about myself.  Here’s what I’m going to aspire to:  to be okay doing nothing.  To be okay without the drama.  To be okay without a story.  To feel valued and valuable just for holding my space in the world.

I’m hoping that I won’t be reading this post in two years and still be in the same space.  I will try.