Dealing with mental anguish in the aftermath. How did you move forward?
I've been on this forum going on 7 years now. Quick summary: I am an only child, parents moved three houses down from me upon their retirement, then proceeded to bring their substance abuse and marital problems into my life. Up until then I had mostly known a happy couple and I believed I had experienced a good childhood with good parents/role models.
So, dad went down the dementia rabbit hole, which I believe was mostly related to alcohol and prescription drug abuse. Dad was always the kinder parent and the one I really saw as my rock. Mom was often bossy/nasty, traits which accelerated as she got older. She was also down the path of alcohol and substance abuse and became extremely cruel to my dad when he started to decline. The foul language/mental abuse I witnessed (her on him) are things that will stick with me forever. I put dad in a memory care home in March 2017 and he died there in Nov. 2019.
Mom has continued her self-destructive ways and turned her verbal and metal abuse on me. It's been a bumpy several years but her poor lifestyle finally caught up with her Sept. 2020 when she went to alcohol rehab facility for the 5th time, got aspirational pneumonia, which knocked her back so bad she's now wheelchair bound. She's only 78, and now she's in assisted living, hopefully never to be turned loose again.
She has said SO MANY hateful things to me. I've soaked up so much ugliness over the past decade I am forever changed and question my childhood, family, etc. Without any siblings, cousins, or anything, I grew up in a vacuum. What was real? Mom told me this summer that I was an "accident", and that her life would have been much easier without me. She has told me I "owe" her for raising me. She has told me that because their lives are "over", mine is too (she told me that right after I turned 50).
Where are the people who raised me? Wow, what was my past? I wish my dad was here, I cried off and on this Christmas thinking of all that is gone. My memories are not even good now, family albums are put away deep into cabinets, I cannot look at them.
I did try therapy, and the therapist really just annoyed me after several sessions, so I quit. That was pointless. Anybody else experience anything like this, and what did you do going forward?
Your life is NOT over. Your mother has re-written her script, but YOU don't have to act in that play if the part isn't one you want.
Mom is in a "good place" and has folks looking after her. When the pandemic lifts, please consider taking a long trip and let the facility care for mom. If you are her POA consider hiring a geriatric care manager to handle her affairs.
We do not owe our parents our lives, no matter what. That is your mother's deluded and demented thinking on play.
Consider finding a new therapist. But know that therapy is not "easy" or comfortable. Stick with it when there are rough patches and you will be rewarded with the kind improved thinking and emotional skills I believe you seek.
Not similar in the detail at all, but I did go through a horrible emotional whitewater patch with my mother, so much anger. Thanks to the forum, to you and everybody here, I'm now more or less the right way up again and my feelings and memories are back in (roughly) proportion; but it did take ages.
Your mother has only really been safely off your hands for three months. I should give it a bit longer, and see how you feel; and then give yourself another period of time, and check back in with yourself again; and keep doing it. Eventually, I hope, you'll be able to get the albums out and see the good memories without their being so loomingly overshadowed by the last two decades.
There is an interesting section in the book 'Being Mortal' which discusses research into how we assess experiences we've gone through. How you feel about the whole thing is very much influenced by different parts of it including preparation, expectations and especially endings - I haven't got a copy in front of me, I've bought the book several times and people keep pinching it! But the relevant gist as regards your feelings at the moment is that the most recent experiences have been vile, and they are corrupting everything else *even though* those earlier times were just as true and just as valid, or quite possibly more so.
It is a matter of time mainly, I suppose I'm saying; but you also have an opportunity now, perhaps, to change your mother's impact on you and reach some resolution with her. What's the ALF like, are you developing a good working relationship with them?
People change with time. Was your mother ever formally diagnosed with dementia? Just because she says something now doesn't make it the truth or reality. Your parents may in fact have been those nice people in memories of your youth. But, time and events impact everyone. No one stays the same the entirety of their lives unless they lived in a bubble, didn't go anywhere or do anything. Aging usually makes people crankier, not less; less filtered, not more; etc. If you want to console yourself you can read the posts by people in complicated, bitter raging battles with their siblings. Yikes.
We parents do chose to "protect" our kids from some realities out of love and concern. I see one of my parenting responsibilities as providing a loving, safe, and secure home with minimum unnecessary stresses. Perhaps this is what your parents did for you? I totally understand that your mom's current, constant grinding negativity is hard to stand up to without other support. My spiritual belief helps me immensely, knowing that God gives me my immeasurable value and not the opinions of others, even a parent. I wish you much peace in your heart as you endure caring for her and create emotional armor to protect yourself.