Boy Meets Mom…..
February 22, 2010
I wonder……………….. I wonder…………………. I wonder……………………………………………
A new development………. I’ve met a boy. Yes, a real boy who actually doesn’t care that my mom is demented. This has always been one of my greatest fears since leaving NYC: Meeting someone who would happily, openly, lovingly accept me and my family….. my mom. For every boy I’ve met over last year, there’s one thought that immediately consumes me—will he accept her? Will he accept this part of me? Will he still want to be with me after he meets the woman who physically pushed me over so she could get to her crush, the priest?
They’ve all failed….. I simply can’t picture it. I can’t picture these men coming over to my dad’s house, sitting there calmly as she spits on the living room floor.
I think this one can hang. I hope he can hang. He knows. I’ve warned him. Maybe I should have given him a more obvious OUT.
God, will he really accept her, the behaviors?
Would I…. if the roles were reversed? Would I smile sweetly? Pretend it doesn’t bother me?
You know, I don’t know what I would do. If this had never happened to her…………….. what would I be like today?
It is what it is I guess…
So when he meets her……………………………………………………………..
Will he smile when spits on the floor? Will he be patient when she points and laughs at someone because they’re overweight? Will he pat me on the back when she looks in the mirror and starts laughing uncontrollably? Will he accept that, unlike maybe his past relationships, I don’t have a typical relationship with my parents.
I, with my dad, am her keeper.
So,the new man in life is going to meet mom next week. He knows the idea of this big meeting is making incredibly nervous, mostly because I know what she’s going to say………..
Translated for those who can’t read dementia (otherwise insert the word fruita, gatos, pajaritos for every other word)………
“Do you speak Spanish?” Fair question.
“I don’t speak English.” She will likely say this in English as she always does.
“Are you going to get married?” Woman cuts to the chase fucking pronto!
“Are you going to have babies?” Jesus, mom!! Really?
“Are you going to take care of her?” I’m 32 for Christ’s sake. Minus the fact that I can’t figure out my budget and I’m over $40+ in my checking account, I’ve made it thus far just fine!
“Do you speak Spanish because I don’t speak English” Again, spoken in English.
My manfriend is very sweet and compassionate. I think he’ll do OK. I keep saying that. I can’t help it. The spitting for me is the worst part. Every single time she does it, it kills me…….. He knows she might hack one right next to him, but he says he understands, that it’s part of the disease and her behaviors are not who she is……… who are you, dude?
Still, there’s a part of me that’s scared. Not because my mom keeps pictures of my ex-husband (not my ex husband, but she can’t remember his name and that’s how she refers to my ex boyfriend) in the house—I’ve told dad to remove. ASAP—but because what if he decides it’s just too much. Too grotesque. The never-ending burden. She’ll only get worse. There is no happy ending. What if he says, listen…….. I just want a normal girl in my life…….
Normal. Normal. Normal. Normal. Normal. Normal. Normal. Pretty. Sweet. Docile. A mom. A dad. Normal. Happy. Smiling. Laughing. Lunches. Pedicures. Normal. Normal. Normal. Normal. Scottsdale. Normal. Normal. Normal. Healthy. Normal. Normal.
I feel like damaged goods. Damaged in the sense that I know that my load is a heavy one. I don’t come with one piece of carry-on, I come with several pieces of luggage that are clearly way over the weight-limit.
I don’t know how this is going to unfold. I think he’ll be OK. I think I’ve met someone really great. Kind. Patient. Understanding. I’ll post an update. Meeting is slated for next week.
Turning the BIG 33 on Thursday. It’s been 5 years since we’ve known something was wrong. Here we are. Another chapter: Boy Meets Mom.
>>Photo from Flickr’s Creative Commons ECATONCHEIRES
The Boyfriend or A Little Dead Inside
December 30, 2009
I’ve promised anonymity……………….. thank you for contributing to My Demented Mom. Think this piece beautifully captures the grotesque pain.
A Little Dead Inside……………………..
My couples therapist tells me that I am a little dead inside. This is her way of saying that I am living life with the volume turned down. That I am unresponsive. That I am uncaring. That I am emotionally detached and untethered from the world around me. I think my girlfriend would agree, but this is a solo session.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: relationship, year six.
If you are with someone long enough, eventually you start experiencing some calamities. If you are lucky enough, you get to turn these affairs from your crises into our crises. My lucky gal got to watch my mom get cancer, turn colors, and die like a kaleidoscope. While she was watching, she got to hear my dad tell her how awful she was for not marrying me so that my mom could live to see it, even though I hadn’t asked. This was during mom’s yellow period. Still, he made her feel bad enough that she eventually broke down and offered to get married. This was during mom’s gray period. After I said no, we eventually got to spend some quality time in my parents’ home, watching my mom slowly lose her mind from the ravages of cancer and too much morphine. This was during mom’s splotchy magenta period. Then mom died, leading to her second gray period, proving to be her final, glorious color change. My dad would later go on to say that my girlfriend never visited while my mom was dying. This may have stunted their relationship a bit. It also allowed us to live through separate crises, fracturing the shared one.
If you think I seem callous, remember: dead inside, untethered. When I recently found out my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, it just felt fitting; another swirl in a spiral that had gotten out of control a long time ago. It certainly explained a lot of erratic behavior. He has been acting more and more childlike for quite some time. See, my dad was the kind of person that everyone—and I mean everyone—just loved. Funny guy. Self-deprecating. Didn’t take life too seriously. He certainly wasn’t someone who would boss you around, say cruel things, and accuse you of abandoning him for no reason.
Which leads us to our current not-shared crisis. Start losing the people who love you the most in life and see if you don’t feel a little clingy and dramatic. One day while I was talking to my girlfriend, I decided to throw in a desperate non-sequitur about how we should get married. She said she wasn’t interested. Didn’t believe in the whole concept of one-person-for-life.
Do I believe this stuff? No. I think when nearly anyone says, “I don’t believe in marriage,” what she is really saying is, “I don’t believe in marriage to you.”
Still, I can’t really blame her. She has seen into the crystal ball of my fate, and the vision sucks. Marry this guy, and you can expect early death or young doddering frailty.
She doesn’t see the things I get to see. She doesn’t see my dad weeping, wishing he didn’t say these things to alienate her, blaming himself for what has happened. The man knows what is happening when you bring it to his attention, he just can’t help himself. She wrote him off a long time ago. She realizes he can’t be held completely accountable for what he says. But it still hurts to hear it. And she isn’t dead inside. Not even a little bit.
So now we are in therapy, at my insistence, because I want this to work.
I want very badly for my girlfriend and my father to get along. I want her to love him, to love my family, to love me. Maybe I want her to love me unconditionally, the way only parents can. I know that these are the two people who keep me from collapsing inside myself. I desperately need them. They are the proof that I am alive, that I am substantial, that I matter for something.
They both tell me that they love me. I believe them.
