My mother is dying
Oct. 21st, 2019 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zenolaliaMy mother is dying, so the rest of this post is going underneath a cut so people can avoid hearing about a potentially fucked up topic.
My mother was my primary abuser, for most of my life. She starved me, beat me, locked me in closets for days on end, forced me to eat rotten food and punished me for getting sick afterwards, and far more that I can't even be bothered to write out. Eventually, I managed to escape her by way of marriage, and of course, that marriage too was abusive. In the process of freeing myself from it, I came to realize that she was still going to every possible length to destroy my life and bring me back under her control.
Eventually, I reached a breaking point. She made a stupid, transphobic joke on facebook, and I told her that was it for me. Unless she was willing to apologize, I would not speak to her again.
That was years ago.
She still insists that she doesn't owe me any kind of apology, and though my girlfriend and my brother have both explained to her that it's not the joke itself that's the issue, but this years long refusal to say, "I'm sorry," (she doesn't even have to mean it, just say it), that is the problem. Again and again, she expects me to apologize for her actions, and I reached my limits and refused to continue. Until she can gum up the respect necessary to say two words, no matter how false or scathing her delivery may be... it's such a small request. Such a tiny thing.
To refuse such a small thing.
Anyway, she got legionnaires pneumonia, most likely from the well water in her home, with its 80 year old plumbing and never-tested never-inspected water quality. She's only 58, but she's also asthmatic, so it was a rapid and vicious progression. She was put on extremely powerful antibiotics to control the infection. The antibiotics appear to have successfully done that.
She had a severe allergic reaction to them, however, and as a result has an unknown amount of damage to her liver.
I say unknown, because as soon as she was able to speak again after waking up, she demanded to be released from the hospital and is refusing all further treatment. No one will tell me what her actual medical status is. But they all keep saying, "no one lives forever," and, "this is your last chance," and I just.
I dunno.
There's nothing that I want from her. There's nothing that I want to tell her. And I know that speaking to her again will be hellish.
But I also know that being the ungrateful child who refused to speak to a dying mother isn't a role I want to deal with the consequences of for the rest of my life.
I just don't know what I'm supposed to even feel, honestly. It doesn't feel like a real problem. Like a real event. I've had text based RPs that felt more real than all this.
I'm so tired.
My mother was my primary abuser, for most of my life. She starved me, beat me, locked me in closets for days on end, forced me to eat rotten food and punished me for getting sick afterwards, and far more that I can't even be bothered to write out. Eventually, I managed to escape her by way of marriage, and of course, that marriage too was abusive. In the process of freeing myself from it, I came to realize that she was still going to every possible length to destroy my life and bring me back under her control.
Eventually, I reached a breaking point. She made a stupid, transphobic joke on facebook, and I told her that was it for me. Unless she was willing to apologize, I would not speak to her again.
That was years ago.
She still insists that she doesn't owe me any kind of apology, and though my girlfriend and my brother have both explained to her that it's not the joke itself that's the issue, but this years long refusal to say, "I'm sorry," (she doesn't even have to mean it, just say it), that is the problem. Again and again, she expects me to apologize for her actions, and I reached my limits and refused to continue. Until she can gum up the respect necessary to say two words, no matter how false or scathing her delivery may be... it's such a small request. Such a tiny thing.
To refuse such a small thing.
Anyway, she got legionnaires pneumonia, most likely from the well water in her home, with its 80 year old plumbing and never-tested never-inspected water quality. She's only 58, but she's also asthmatic, so it was a rapid and vicious progression. She was put on extremely powerful antibiotics to control the infection. The antibiotics appear to have successfully done that.
She had a severe allergic reaction to them, however, and as a result has an unknown amount of damage to her liver.
I say unknown, because as soon as she was able to speak again after waking up, she demanded to be released from the hospital and is refusing all further treatment. No one will tell me what her actual medical status is. But they all keep saying, "no one lives forever," and, "this is your last chance," and I just.
I dunno.
There's nothing that I want from her. There's nothing that I want to tell her. And I know that speaking to her again will be hellish.
But I also know that being the ungrateful child who refused to speak to a dying mother isn't a role I want to deal with the consequences of for the rest of my life.
I just don't know what I'm supposed to even feel, honestly. It doesn't feel like a real problem. Like a real event. I've had text based RPs that felt more real than all this.
I'm so tired.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-22 01:02 am (UTC)Honestly, I think you'd be 100% justified, when she dies and people start bothering you about it, in lying through your teeth and saying that the two of you had a tearful reconciliation straight out of a Hallmark movie, or that you tried to contact her to talk things through but it was too late, or something like that. People who would punish you for keeping yourself safe from abuse do not deserve the truth.