Where's My Freaking Manual??

Today, I am less than happy.  Today I’m just sad.  I’m cranky and I’m sad.  It was this time last year that my mom stopped talking to me because I was forcing her to see her cardiologist; she was also mad that I had called her primary care physician and “told” on her to him.  He only made her start taking Ensure in an effort to gain back some weight….obviously that wasn’t what she needed.  She had lost so much weight already and when she stopped eating for a week in October, it just got worse.  And although I think she knew something was wrong, she did nothing to figure out what it was or how to fix it.

It’s not that I’m sad on purpose, it really isn’t.  I started thinking about things this morning and stopped myself, said to myself “no, you can’t do this to yourself, stop making yourself cry”.  But that didn’t last very long.  It’s hard not to think about it when there are times that it feels like it was yesterday that my sister called and said “so Mom told me she isn’t talking to you right now”.  It kind of makes me laugh a little, just because that’s the perfect picture of who she was – you do something in her best interest that she didn’t agree with and she stopped talking to you for two weeks.  That was my mom.  Spiteful, stubborn to a fault, incapable of admitting that someone else was right and she was wrong.  Which sucks, especially in hindsight, because I was doing what I could to try and figure out what was wrong and she fought me tooth and nail on it.  I still wish I had pushed her harder sooner, but I think the outcome would have ended up being the same. 

I try to laugh as much as I can these days – whether it’s by tickling my 2 year old anytime she lays down and says “MOMMA tickletickletickle” while she holds up her shirt or shows you were to tickle her, or if it’s just by remembering something funny from vacation or from a recent conversation.  I’m trying to be happy, but some days it’s just too hard to fight the good fight.

I’m not sure if I’m doing this right or not, unfortunately there is no manual to this process.  But I hope that in the end, I can help someone else go through this with just a little bit of hope and a little bit of confidence in reaching the other side of it.  I haven’t gotten to the other side, and from what I’ve heard, it’s not as rough but it’s not necessarily easy; I don’t need ‘easy’.  I need to feel decent. I need things to be groovy.  I need to think of her and smile more than cry.   I just need to say I’m okay and actually mean it.