Lonely

I can really only live one day at a time right now. I had a couple of ok days, and today is not ok. I should have known better – if I’m going to consume more than 1 alcoholic beverage, I need to be prepared to go to bed right after or else with all this chemical manipulation I have going on the alcohol is going to have it’s true depressant effect and send me crashing hard. And after 4 glasses of wine and a margarita, I’m awake and not in good emotional shape. It’s about 1am and I am at my Mom’s. I knew this weekend would be horrible (true to form Mom has not disappointed on the verbal abuse this weekend), and I’ve been putting the visit off since Dave informed me August 23^rd that he could not “do it anymore.” Before this weekend I simply did not have the emotional stamina to deal with her. I’ve stuck to generalities and never gone into detail really on this or my other blog about my Mom, and the precarious relationship I’ve had with her since her massive stroke.  Cue the loneliness. There are so many things I’ll miss about Dave but the one perhaps that is making my heart literally ache at this moment is he had spent time here -  a lot of it. He had witnessed in person the way Mom treated me, and how it would affect me. And the way she still treats me. He understood, and was an unwavering rock for me. Whether he was here, or I could call him he was understanding, supportive, empathetic, and always reminded me that it was not the Mom I knew talking, and that I could not let her destroy me this way. But now he’s not mine to call anymore, or run to anymore for comfort.  I did speak to him last night after she yelled but it’s just not the same anymore. I have to write this blog instead so I can dump all these feelings out into the online world and try and leave them there - as a matter of fact tonight is particularly bad because he’s spent all day with his gaming friends, and was then heading to a party at the apartment of the “other woman’s” best friend, and was deliberately vague about whether the “other woman” would be there or not, so of course I’m sitting here thinking about it having horrible images of him taking her back to our house, with our dogs and my cats and have her sleep in our bed with him. I may be moving on, but I still live there. It’s still ours until I leave. Anyway, moving on from the self-torture, Thanksgiving after Mom got our of the rehab center, there was a huge incident. The day after Thanksgiving, we had left the house for about 1 hour to go to the gym and take some of her stuff to the cleaners. When I got back, Mom laid into me, literally screaming at me telling me I was the most selfish person she had ever met. She could have said anything but that. Because she was telling me I was selfish after I had spent months driving back and forth from Indy to Louisville about 3 times a week for a while, sometimes making the trip in one day or driving at odd hours of the night and then temporarily moving from Indy to Louisville to live with her when she did get out of the rehab center for nearly a month. And during this time I paid her bills, ran her household, cut the grass, did her laundry, did everything she was not yet equipped to do. I had been everything but selfish. As the tirade continues, and my sister, brother-in-law and niece stand there watching in horror, Dave walked over mid-tirade and wrapped me in his arms as if he was trying to shield me from her words, even though they weren’t physically abusive. And I know I need to deal with things on my own, but that for me was the ultimate dedication, commitment and love – that he would do that in front of her, and continue to support me though all sorts of shit that was still to come.  Because he’s been here, and lived with me, he is really the only person who truly gets what she does to me and how it affects me. It’s horribly painful for me to even talk about it in specifics, and he was always the person who I could talk to about it. Ironic that it was mainly the continued stresses of everything with Mom that would eventually break me, and lead to the demise of our relationship. So here I sit, writing this after a Friday night of her laying into me about 3 minutes after I made it in the door, asking me again if Dave had broken up with me because I was fat, or if he liked men (my personal favorite), and then giving me her 2 cents telling me to my face that Dave never loved me, never intended to marry me and I should have never “jumped into his bed” because all he wanted was sex.  And once I gave him sex, he would never commit to me. Part of me felt like laughing at the absurdity – I’m pretty sure a guy won’t hang around for nearly 3 years JUST for sex. And that is just a small snippet of what I have had to endure over the last 36 hours. She has the mental capacity now of about a 12 or 13 year old, so my relationship situation is far too complex for her to even begin to grasp and I realize that she is trying to formulate reasons in her head. But I am 33, and I will make my own decisions now whether she approves or not. I’ve spent my whole life seeking her approval, and doing things intentionally to get it and I had to stop after she had the stroke, because no matter what I did, it would never be right, or good enough. I of course love her deeply like I always have, she’s my mom, but things are different now and they will be forever. I’m seeing someone to try and help me work through these issues, but I feel so terribly alone, so lonely and so empty right now – it’s so sharply painful. I ache.  Because all I want is to crawl in to our bed next to Dave and have him snuggle up behind me and wrap his arms around he like he always would, and tell me he loves me, and that I am perfect as I am, and that it will be ok. But I can’t. So today sucks. I hope tomorrow will be better. Because the shreds of hope I cling to are all I have at the moment.