persecutor--victim--rescuer

We're in a lunch break right now. We've been at my mother's townhouse since 9 this morning moving all of her furniture into a moving truck and hauling it over to a friend's empty house for storage. Her eviction goes into effect next Tuesday, and seeing as she is still hospitalized, the responsibility falls to me and my siblings and grandmother to see to it that all of her belongings are removed from the house by then. I've been using 'her' as a pronoun, but this is also the house that my brother and sister lived in before all of this started happening. That's an important part of my fury.

Needless to say, I am not happy about having to be here, working to clean up this absolutely unlivable wreck of a house while she is sitting calmly, quietly, cared for, on the psych floor of Norfolk General, claiming to not 'remember' why she's there and what's been happening.

We had a family session on Friday afternoon. She started it off rather cheerfully, espousing over and over that she just didn't really remember things. She said that Brent was 13 (he's 15) and that she was 39 (she's almost 41) and that she had only had one ECT session (she's had 3). I'm completely non-plussed by that sort of talk these days- I'm a good enough liar to see right through the lies of others. And she was and is lying.

But as the meeting progressed and she started to realize that I wasn't going to acknowledge her supposed memory loss, and that recollection or no, she was solely responsible for this financial mess (among other things), she became very hateful. She started spewing hateful words at my grandmother and me, talking about how neither of us love her or care about her, lying about how we try to steal her money and how she can never do anything right.

Then she asserted that when she's released, Brent is coming to live with her wherever she ends up. She could end up on a 'street corner' or in 'a shelter' and Brent would still go with her. I assured her that he would not, in fact, be going anywhere and that incensed her, because Brent is HER child and how dare I tell her where he'll end up. She then continued shouting, gnashing her teeth, accusing me of things and being generally unpleasant and confrontational. At some point, I looked at the social worker and it was if she had never seen anything like it. My mother's rage came out of nowhere, which was a surprise to the nurse and social worker because she had been deliberately guarding that aspect of this conflict. Until that meeting, she was going to be released on Monday (tomorrow). The social worker assured us that after the incident on Friday, that would not be the case.

She is utterly insane. She has resorted to making up new and creative but ultimately untrue hateful things to say to and about us, and she has found new horrible ways of trying to inflict guilt upon us. I learned from the sw on Friday that 'suicide is an angry act, committed to inflict guilt upon someone else'. If I know my mother, I know that she most definitely intended to harm us by harming herself.

So here I am, in the nearly empty living room, listening to my sister try and make excuses for my mother because their role reversal has triangulated to the most unhealthy degree possible, listening to Jerry and my grandmother discuss a plan of action for the remaining belongings and mess, listening to my brother bicker with Gabrielle about just how bad this house actually is, wishing that I was in my queen sized bed in Polos on Park, curled up with Iago and Golden Girls in the comfy sheets and comforter that Michael bought for me for my birthday two years ago. I want to go back there. I am beyond repair here.


At first, I thought that I would want to record all of this. I remember the night that my mother 'fell down the steps because she heard a voice' and ended up at VA Beach Psychiatric. I remember thinking, this is so bizarre that I need to write it down so that I'll remember it. But I didn't write it down, and I most certainly haven't forgotten it. It's still strikingly fresh, and the fact is, the situation has become ... I don't know... otherworldly. I've never seen a story like this one in a movie or on TV. I've never heard friends or acquaintances talk about a situation that even vaguely resembled this one--- and I'm hardly seeking pity for my superlative family situation, instead seeking to find some way of, without going through the entire (and inevitably VERY long) discourse, to convey just how consuming, serious, infuriating, unfair and terrible this whole thing has become.

My mother is a monster, and according to the social worker, will most likely succed one day in killing herself. People who are obsessed with dying usually find a way to participate in the act. And all of this will still have been for nothing.

That's a cheery forecast, idn't it?