Dilemmas are the things dubbed 'exciting' to keep us going. They work for me because usually, I don't like to keep things hanging. Therefore, when something pops up, I don't really leave until it's resolved. Usually.
But there's something new with my mother. I may not be able to resolve this one. My mother, as some know, has AIDS. She's been positive for eleven years. That's a lot of years. I don't believe my mother realizes it, but I think she's coming down with [ ADS ], or AIDS Dementia Complex. Every person living with AIDS gets ADC, even sometimes ten minutes after they are infected with HIV. It starts, however, as a depression, and therefore is usually not diagnosed until obvious signs emerge, like lack of motor-control or memory loss. Afterall, the usual reaction to a verdict of HIV is depression, right?
I think my mother has this problem for a variety of reasons. When she was first diagnosed, my mother started a new life. Not so much as a woman LWA (living with AIDS), but as herself. My mother's previous life didn't allow her the time to be who she really wanted to be. She opened up to life and saw all the good it could offer. She found spirituality, she found her children, she found herself. She came out and admitted to the world she was gay (she knew this when she was 17). She focused on her alcoholism and gave more diligence to being drug free. Better, she gained a sense of pride. Proud of herself, her children, and the things she knew she had accomplished all on her own.
She ignores all of that today. I was so proud of her. But now. Now she drinks beer because she wants to "enjoy life before it's over." As you all know, only alcoholics think alcohol makes life enjoyable. She insults me, my sister, and her various lovers. She ignores responsibility yet criticizes that of others. My mother is no longer my mother. And this is where the dilemma lies.
Refer, if you'd like, to my sister's [ entry ] of october 29th (it will open in another window). My sister (jpr, referred to as "my sister") is the saint of our family. She endures what I ignore. She puts up with my mother's insults, which can instill a lot of pain. Now, my sister deals with this in a way that I am as well (almost): anger. Yet my anger isn't so much directed at my mother as it is at myself.
My youngest sister (lr, referred to as "youngest sister") had something happen to her early this last spring. It brought on a bad depression. She was awake nights, unable to sleep, seeing things, and scared out of her wits. When my mother called me in early September to ask if my youngest sister, then four months pregnant, could stay with me for a few weeks while my mother found them new living arrangements, I thought of it as an opportunity to be the big sister I could't be before (we grew up in separate foster homes, though she was adopted and I was not). I was excited to help my sister regain a healthy balance of food, sleep, and activity.
Yet what happened when she came blew me away. She had no interest in eating healthy. I asked her to look in recipe books I own and find something she would like to eat. She took my suggestions as lecturing. I told her I had been reading about women and pregnancy and the things they suggest young women do to have healthier babies. Lecturing. I suggested we go for walks. Lecturing. I suggested she get outside. Lecturing. I suggested she write, draw, sing.
Lecturing.
I realize she's 18 years old, and my ever-wiser 24 year old mystique can be overbearing, but never would I ever think that she disliked living with me so badly that she'd go to my mother who was staying with her boyfriend (I know I told you she was gay, but she's confused), in his one bedroom place. She preferred sleeping on the floor to having her own room with a futon and tv. Next thing I know, my mother is calling me opinionated, comparing me to relatives we all know to be self-centered in their own "let me help you help me" kind of way. Yeah. It hurts my feelings. Yeah. I know it shouldn't.
My youngest sister, in the meantime, has gotten comfortable in her depression. From experience, I found that in depression, you're more afraid to change though you realize you have to. LR isn't interested. I talked to her one night when she was upset. Suggestion after suggestion for helping her sleep or get through "this" was shut down. "No, I tried that. No, I know I won't like that. No, that won't work," etc. etc. Finally, I told her she was the one who had the power to change. In the end, it's only her. She is the one to decide what advice she'll take, what she won't and when she'll choose to act on it. I can only tell her what I hope will help and that I love her. I suggest this depression because she also NEVER talked about her baby and the hope and love and happiness to come with it. She, in fact, ignored me when I told her that the best thing she had coming is something she can feel good about now: her baby. She, however, could only find bad.
Now, when my mother first called me, understanding that I just finished school and am in a pile of debt, she told me my sister would be coming with her own money and phone cards. When she didn't, I expected it. I was never expecting anything back. So I get the phone bill. The first week she was here, the bill wasn't so bad. My mother called and asked about the bill and I told her, and though she offered to send money and I said okay, I never expected it. And it's okay that it isn't coming. But then I learn that my mother is telling jpr I am opinionated. That my younger sister and I don't have a relationship and so it wouldn't work out if my sister came to stay with me again. I learn that my mother and sister wanted to stay in a shelter instead of coming to see me. In the last year and a half, I saw my mother once. She lives in Florida, I live in New York. But she has come up north almost ten times, less than 6 hours away by car--and has seen me only at my graduation. She stays with her boyfriend in a one-room place. I don't know him; I don't want to see him.
Call me selfish, but I do not want to be the parent in this situation. Do you realize how good it would make me feel for my mother to take the time to visit me? When she lived up north, I visited her every month. I drove the 5.5 hours to see her on weekends, holidays and random spots of the month. In the last three years I've lived in New York, aside from one (graduation), I've always traveled to her. I never thought anything of it, until she moved to Florida, and then came up north, but never to see me. Even when my youngest sister was here, I had to put my sister on a bus cause my mother didn't want to drive out here to see me and pick her up at the same time.
I am not writing this to complain, but then...I got the second phone bill. A whole lot more. My funds at the moment are about zero. I tell my sister, jpr. She tells my mother. My mother responds, "If I were the daughter and she were the mother, I would never think to ask her for the money." Fine. But telling me yes one minute and not warning me that I would have to cover this myself does cause problems. Want my funding info? Zero. A girl has rent.
This is not what the dilemma is, but it adds to the dilemma. Money is inconsequential, but a lot of inconsequentials add up. My mother has lost all sense of responsibility. She is asking a lot of jpr, her girlfriend in Florida as well, who expects fully that my mother will marry her and love her. My mother, however, changes her mind everyday as to whether or not she's gay.
My mother is sick. And we are all angry. How do we surpass that?
Furthermore, as my sister jpr can attest, my mother doesn't realize what she's doing by hovering over the eggshell that is my youngest sister. When she decided to live with my mother at the age of 16, she also decided to drop out of highschool. My mother supported her decision. She decided not to work. My mother supported her decision. She decided to play the field and met a lot of men. My mother showed no signs of not supporting that decision. My sister, jpr, on the other hand, has watched, arguing with my mother and sister when she witnesses destructive behavior. I've been up here, hundreds of miles away, shaking my head, wondering when I'll ever talk to my mother--MY MOTHER--again.
Here's the crux of the matter: I know my mother and the woman she is at her own natural, spiritual halo of "she." She is strong, willful, and loves what is handed her, be it dirty or clean. Who sits miles from me now is someone overcome by a disease so awful, depressing and gut-wrenching, I can't begin to imagine the effects that haven't even begun to take shape. She will get worse.
Knowing her bahavior is most likely due to her illness, do I shrug other problems aside? No. I cannot. Because of the way she has treated my youngest sister. When my mother dies, that youngest sister is going to have a hell of a time adjusting to the life she's going to have to lead. My mother won't be there to support her when I lecture her. My mother won't be there to say, "It's okay that you don't have a job" when my sister and I are there saying, "We cannot take care of you."
Jpr and I look at my youngest sister and see something forming. That something stands beside her: 43 years old, living with AIDS, lost. My mother. Her family resents her, she tried to fix it. She resents them. Jpr and I know that we are not like those family members who say "she's on her own." A portion of that is true: but she's on her own when it comes to thinking, not to living. My sister and I will, of course, help with our new niece or nephew. We will, of course, guide her. But we will, of course, be ignored for a long time. If my mother wasn't sick, she would see that at some point, my sister has learn to open her mind, to step back, to look at her life, at others' lives, and say, "There are other options." What happens, though, if she isn't able?
So. I want to love my mother. I want to talk to her. To say, "hey! what's up?" But I don't want to hear her tell me how hard her life is, how awful I am for wanting money, how mean I am to my little sister, lecturing her about how bad drinking a bottle of mountain dew is when she's pregnant. I don't want to hear about the failure she sees in my sister jpr. I don't want to hear all the things in her life that she alone is responsible for, because I think I don't want to say to myself, to fix it, "she's sick."
Until my mother is gone, my little sister won't hear our voices. It's frightening. A lot of things are frightening. That's why we try to work them out. They are lighter to push aside afterward.
Yet this dilemma is the heaviest. It's my mother. It's AIDS. It's death. It's knowing that this is one thing to go unresolved. One thing that'll take more to push aside. Like therapy.
Whew. My most open entry ever. I wonder who sees this?
beam me up, scotty
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