of course you know, this means war.

I too, can command the wind. 'I have a hurricane in me.'

I've spent the past month and a half trying my best to live a civilized existence. I've been attempting, despite my deserved resentment, to find a new job. I've been attempting, against my better judgment, to shore up my mother's personal matters and to provide a loving, solid, and supportive role model to my siblings as well as be a defender and support to my tired grandmother. I've helped my sister secure not one, but two jobs, and made sure that my brother's homework is done before dinnertime every evening. I've driven my siblings to and from work, school, bus stops, interviews and visits with friends, as well as driving the 35 minute trip to Portsmouth to visit my ungrateful shell of a mother. I have sacrificed a job that I desperately wanted to succeed in, I have given up over two hundred dollars to avoid an interruption in utility service to a home that I do not live in, and I have, on numerous occasions, endured countless barrages of propaganda and hate being spewed at and to me from my mother. I have set quietly though my sibling's tears and visible and audible emotional anguish on more than one occasion, and I have been witness to numerous pointed speeches to my mother about the importance of not only accepting responsibility for one's wrongs, but also in understanding the effect that they have on those around you. Beyond all of that, I have, for the absolute last time, dealt with the intentionally poisonous delivery of yet another second-hand slander about my intentions, my abilities, my actions, and my feelings.

And I hope that you and all who read this will rest assured that I will not deal with it anymore.

In the hardly cosmic history of my family, there has been one constant- instability. Since I was born, no part of the life of my family has been consistent or stable. Since I was two years old, custody over me was a largely volatile issue, and my current name is not the name that I was born with because of it. My family and I have been emotionally unstable as far back as my memories start- my mother's undiagnosed manias wreaking havoc on my household hourly. My father was rarely present, and, perhaps my favorite shortcoming, neither of my parents have ever been good with money- a sociological trait that they graciously passed onto me and my siblings.

It seems more than unlikely that my siblings and I emerged normal, well-adjusted and socially responsible individuals- it seems impossible. But here we are. And its that magical self-awareness, inherent somewhere in my genetic make up that has made it very clear to me that I must, for the sake of any future stability, go into self-preservation mode.

So with the recent and very scathing attacks from my hospitalized mother on my character ('selfish', 'lazy', 'childish' and 'stubborn'), my motivations ('I can't believe he gets another car', and 'I know now that he just doesn't care or love me and I've got to just come to terms with that'), I have drawn a very thick and pronounced line in the sand. I've stopped going up to see her at the hospital. I still drive my siblings there, because unlike the charges against me, I'm not a heartless tyrant and don't think that they should have to suffer because of the emotional issues between my mother and me. But I don't go up and see her. That naturally infuriates her, but if I've learned anything, it's that her brand of warfare, emotional warfare, has no regard for walls, boundaries or miles. She can exact her revenge upon me at anytime, and all she needs for that is an enabler.

Those aren't hard to find around here.

Which is the why the situation has moved beyond simply unfortunate, sad, and hard to deal with. It's moved into unbearable, tragic and irreparable because of the way that she is able to so successfully manipulate my siblings into thinking or feeling whatever it is she wants them to think or feel. She's been using my sister to her own selfish ends for years, and because of that- because instead of raising my sister, she's drained her and used her to avoid her own responsibilites, neither of them is particularly equipped to handle what has been given to them. In my mother's case, she's been dealt a hard card emotionally, and in my sister's case, she's been forced to deal with very adult issues before she's mature it enough to perceive them realistically. It's a lose/lose.

So here we are. With my brother or sister as the messenger, I hold my ground- my ground being the overtly fluorescent Behavioral Medicine waiting room, with that same, generic burgundy chairs/teal speckled carpet color scheme. I hold my ground when told, 'she's in a really good mood today, she isn't going to try and start anything with you.' I stick to my guns and reply 'I don't feel well and don't want to slough my mood off onto anyone else.' This is a lie, of course.

The truth is that I'm still so angry, I feel like I'm looking through eyes filled with blood. I still burn at the thought of the overwhelming selfishness. I seethe at the recollection of her staggering and uncouth ingratitude. I rage at the lack of self-responsibility and shake at the unfounded (however powerfully poisonous) attempts to transpose the blame from herself to one of us. I'm so angry, that even I wouldn't be able to find a fake smile somewhere deep inside to offer up as a cease fire. Even someone as emotionally ambitious as me is unable to find the strength for a sustainable (albeit artificial) 'how are you?' anymore. The line was drawn, and has been subsequently trounced upon. I'm through.

So what does this mean in the long run? It means the Queen is dead, and we must all mourn. The mother that I knew and loved, though unbalanced and at times hard to bear, is dead. A great pain accompanies my periodic memories of my mother's sometimes pride, her efforts to seem my equal and not an uncool mom, and ultimately, her sacrifices (however poorly managed) to bring me into this world, loved. How sad to think that the mother I loved won't be around the next time that I fall in love (and get it right, this time) or when I win my first Tony or have my first child. She has succeeded, in a figurative sense (since she, ironically failed in a literal sense), in murdering herself.

My mother is dead. How does someone who's never experienced loss on this scale cope with that reality?