Toxicity and Its Antidote

Don't you love Saturdays? Don't get me wrong---Fridays are awesome too. Fridays are all about anticipation and plotting and planning. But Saturdays are awesome. Especially when you tell yourself that you're going to do something you don't really want to do but feel like you have to, and then you decide to let yourself off the hook.

That's what I did. I was going to drive down to Beaufort and spend the day with my mother so she would leave my Dad alone. He's in Delaware taking care of my ailing grandmother. My mother is one of those unfortunate souls who is never happy unless she is the constant center of attention. So with my Dad in another state and, even worse, paying a lot more attention to someone she considers her rival in many, many ways, it's only a matter of time before my mother explodes. She'll get "sick" or hurt herself or somehow finagle a way to get my Dad to leave his mother and come back to take care of her. This is an old pattern, oft repeated.

So I was going to take one for the team and go stay with her and let her use me as the proverbial punching bag. I'd pay attention and let her say all the terrible things she's been storing up all week---things about my Dad, my grandmother, my aunt, my uncle, me, my husband. We're all her targets because we're all guilty of...well, something. Everything. Who knows. I just know that when she gets going, we're all The Bad Guys, and she's the Helpless Victim.

I probably don't have to tell you that as the days crept closer to the weekend, I started feeling crappy and resentful and depressed. And then my husband, whose soul is much kinder and generous than mine, had a talk with me about the difference in being a good person and being a martyr.

I felt pretty bad about being called a martyr. The word has uncomfortable connotations for me because if you look up the word martyr in the dictionary, there's probably a picture of my mother's face creased in a rictus of suffering. She suffers terribly because of us, and she tells us on a regular basis that she does it because she loves us. She tells me every now and then that she would die for me. You know, I hate it when she says that. I really do.

R and I talked a little more about this martyr thing, and he explained that what he meant was that I could be a good person without putting myself in an unsafe situation. Sad to say that spending time alone with my mother is considered an unsafe situation in our family, but there you have it. The woman is toxic in ways you can't even begin to imagine, and despite years of exposure, therapy, medication, and prayer, I still haven't found the antidote to her poison.

And finally, I figured out that my plan to go spend time with her would accomplish nothing at all. She's still going to crack at some point and insist that my Dad come home. She's still going to make him pay for leaving her behind. She's still going to say terrible things to and about all of us, including my poor grandmother and my stressed-out aunt. So why sacrifice my Saturday and my mental well being to a lost cause?

It might seem like such a little thing, but this realization is huge for me. Despite knowing that my mother is a pathological liar and a toxic person, I carry around a significant amount of guilt about her and our relationship. I've felt guilty for not going down to see her more often, for not talking to her more often when I call every week, for not being more present in her life. I've felt guilty for protecting myself from her.

Did you notice the use of the past tense in that paragraph?

I'm not saying I'm completely free of guilt, that I won't give my mother a second thought today. But I'm not feeling guilty or deficient in my duties as a daughter for not going down there to soak up the poison on my dad's behalf. Nothing I can do will change what's going to happen. And honestly, this is more my Dad's problem than mine. He has a choice in how he responds to her behavior. I can't be the one who pays for his choices.

Whew. Heady stuff for a Saturday, yeah?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take my husband out to lunch. And then I may hit the bookstore. I want to get some more writing done today, and I've got a couple of books calling my name.

Don't you love Saturdays?