Don't know if I'm in the right place

[kayasarin]

I'm 32 my mom is 57. She's dying, though from what no one has determined. I know what she's dying from, her own decision that she has fulfilled her purpose and no longer has a reason to live. She's just chosen this way. I'm not grieving and I won't grieve when she's gone and there is guilt perhaps there because of that. My mother is poison, like crack, she brings you in sweetly, hooks and chains you and then uses you till your dry but she's also my mom and she's dying so shouldn't I be greiving. If nothing else, the loss of my drug. I'm addicted to her, I know that but it isn't in my nature to cut off blood. I'm the one who tries to mend all the fences, bring everyone and hold everyone together so I can't just walk away. Now, I have to face that I'll have to live without her. That I don't mind so much, I mean I've been trying to get off her for years. to do that however, would mean walking away from people who actually need me...something I can't do. 

 

So I'm not grieving and I feel guilty because I feel relief. This woman looked at me and told me how much she wanted to kill me. As a child that was terrifying as an adult I realise that she is just really sick. She abandoned her family to help take care of her mother because that was more improtant than raising her children. In part not her fault, its what she was raised to do, raised to be, but she had a choice, she made hers. I made mine, she tried to raise me the same way, when I didn't conform she left, when I was older I tried to mend the fences and tried to prove to myself that I'd grown beyond my need for her poison and she threatened to steal my child from me. There is no love loss but she is blood, she is family, there should be grief and loss and there is none. Not even the Irish celebrate their life not their death, her life was not one I want to celebrate...I feel I should celebrate her death. As if I can finally see freedom and it is so close I can almost taste it. 

 

SO I don't know if I'm in the right place, I don't know...I just don't know. I feel i'm in the wrong but I'm not sure there is a wrong or a right and that's what I'm having issues with. 

[ModKonnie]

kayasarin,

While I am certainly no expert, you really do need to see professional help to sort through your complicated relationship with your mother. It sounds as though you have a codependency issue and possibly have been a victim of emotional abuse. Are you sure your mother is dying? Is the uncertainty about why she is dying and how she is making you feel ambivalent and almost relieved you will no longer have to deal with the stress of the relationship? While I know people can will themselves to die, it is rather difficult to do. I would hazard a guess that while you may be thinking you'll be happy that she is gone--when it happens, you will plunge into grief.

 

Really, I think you should talk to a professional to help you sort through all of this.

 

We will be here for you.

ModKonnie

[Heartlight]

I agree with ModKonnie that talking with a counsellor will probably bring you a great deal of wisdom and information about your relationship.  As ModKonnie said, there may be a codependence issue and, in my experience, most people don't actually know what that means or what to do about it.  But when it is mixed up with the potential feelings of grief, the more knowledge you have to understand your complicated relationship, the better.

 

Strictly speaking, whether feeling something for the loss of someone who is "of the blood" is right or wrong, I have some info I can share.  I have a brother whom I barely knew and when he died, I felt sadness for his children, but not for myself for his loss.  I didn't actually list him in this forum under "type of loss" because, though he is gone, I did not lose him.  More relative to your situation, a friend of mine had such a relationship with his father that his father had him sign a piece of paper stating he would never "go after the estate" when the father died because he didn't want to leave anything to my friend, only to his new family.  When his father died, my friend had the same sadness he did before his father died: he had grief over never really having the father-son relationship, but not grief at the actual passing of the man.  My friend's grieving started years earlier  when he accepted that nothing was ever going to change and that he would never get to have a real relationship with his father.

 

I tell you these stories to try to illustrate that there is many, many reactions to loss... and to family.  I do believe, like ModKonnie, that you will feel more than you think you will.  Maybe not for the reasons you expect though.

 

It sounds as though you've had a very difficult time.  You are right in your statement that many times what a mother is is what they were taught and are repeating - or rebelling against - but that doesn't mean you didn't have the expectations that all children have when they come into this earth: to feel loved, to feel important and special, to feel protected.  From the very little bit you've said here, it sounds like instead of that, you received a great deal of emotional pain.  That you have any kind of feelings of relief that the emotional pain is going to stop, is - in my opinion - logically natural.  That the emotional pain was brought by your mother is what can set up the great deal of confusion you're expressing.

 

Be at peace that you are in confusion.  That, above anything, is the most natural place you can be, given what you've shared.  But yes, if you can manage it, do go and talk to a professional.  They will help you understand so much that will give you a place to stand within this confusing time.  There is no easy answer, but there is a place to stand while you learn the answer for yourself.

 

<3