Sad, Scared, Confused…

You see that face the little bear is making?  That is the face I am trying not to make right now, cuz among other things, my jaw will pop out of place again. 

Oh, who am I kidding?!  The molars on the right side of my mouth are already completely unuseable.  The joys of TMJ and stress triggers. 

Stupid frickin’ parents.  My parents – to be specific.  😦  My mother and I have been waiting for my step-father to get his hip-replacement surgery scheduled.  He has been in horrible pain for years.  But… all of a sudden, he seemed to be dragging his feet about the hip replacement process.  In the process of making sure his health was in good enough shape for the hip-replacement, the docs discovered that he needed an angioplasty, because his arteries are all clogged and it’s not safe to do the surgery without the angioplasty.  Fine… somewhere along the line, he found out that he would need open-heart surgery.  Who knows when.  All I do know is that he kept it secret from my mother and me.  In the meantime, he has be procrastinating about taking more steps towards angio-plasty, cuz he can’t have one (only he knew this), cuz his arteries are in too bad of shape for it.  So, my step-dad comes out of a procedure that my mother thought was an angio-plasty last night.  When she asked the docs how it went, the docs were giving her confused looks.  There was no angioplasty scheduled… only an exploratory procedure that has something to do with open-heart surgery.  Well, isn’t that a nice shocker for ya.  *headdesk*

My step-father is obesessively secretive.  He raised me from the age of two, but he keeps his age a secret.  He never taught me how to manage money, because he didn’t want me knowing too much.  My mother has no idea where or what their retirement savings are.  Nevermind that she’s been married to him for 28 years.  I think he has some major shame issues…

So, one of two icky things will happen.    a) He may refuse the surgery, because he’s old and frail… and he had a quadrupal bypass about 17 years ago and he may not want to go through that again, even though he is “on the verge” (say the docs) of a heart-attack or stroke.  b) He will have the surgery… which will have me travelling down to where I grew up to live in a hospital for days and weeks – sharing the duty of making sure he is never alone with my mother.  My mother seriously creeps me out to the point that my mental and emotional well-being can go way downhill.  I spent my whole life being abused by these morons and my mother stills plays a lot of the same games she used to when I was a kid.  Sometimes after even just a few words of exchange between me and her I WANT TO SCRATCH MY SKIN OFF, because I feel like she’s gotten under it and I just want her out of my head.  Sigh.

Part of me wants to say that these sleeze-bags have made their own bed by treating me like shit, so I might as well let them lie in it.  On the other hand, my step-father has been mostly good for me in the last 5 years or so and I don’t want him to die.  At the same time, I’m not sure if I want to deal with the consequences to my wellbeing of being near my mother…  Being around my mother even for a weekend is enough to cause a lot of strife for weeks afterwards as I recouperate from the experience.  My boyfriend wishes I never had anything to do with these people, since I usually come home half-cracked, paranoid and feeling attacked.  Sigh. 

So, the sad truth is that I am hoping that my step-father refuses the surgery, because I don’t think my heart or my head can handle my mother when she’s in full-on needy mode.  Frankly, she is still abusive and a lot of what she does gives me flashbacks.  She has no boundaries and I get really bad flashes of sexual abuse.  I don’t feel safe around her. 

To be perfectly honest, I DON’T WANT TO GO.  I would like to never go near my mother ever again.  In fact calling her my “mother”, has always made me feel kinda pukey.  Yes… my feelings are that deep…

On the one hand, I feel a bit ashamed that I feel this way.  Survivor guilt is such a fun ride, let me tell ya. 

How do I even begin to tell this woman that no, your only child isn’t going to help you through your husband having a major surgery with a high likelyhood of dying.  Sure, you don’t know how to balance a checkbook or how to use a credit-card, but I’m not going to help you.  Go find some other man to glom on to, cuz I cannot keep playing the mother FOR MY “MOTHER”! 

It’s like my mother refuses to learn to live independently so that she can continue to be a parasite on those who know how…

I dunno… this is making my head hurt.  I think I need to meditate… and perhaps schedule an impromptu session with the super-therapist.

–AngryGrayRainbows