Loving The Weekend

Last week I was a mess. A few things cracked me open and ripped my heart out. After therapy I had a ball of used Kleenex bigger than my head.

This week is fine.

So many things have happened. Last weekend we had the 'ohana over for dinner and there was so much laughing and so many hugs. I love them so much. 

This week I invited myself to a dinner at a club that my parents used to belong to, and met really fun people there. Instead of being one of the young people, I am now about average. Can't believe I went by myself because it involved many things that make me anxious: public transit, humans I haven't met before, unexpected public speaking (spotlight on guests, who are asked to stand and say something). I never do such things without mrguy as my manager.

At public transit I saw this bit of awesomeness:

On the way to the dinner I wasn't entirely alone. I was accompanied by celebrity chef David Chang and a pointy fork from my mom's storage space that I brought for self defense. 

The dinner itself was great. I was a big girl and started conversations with people. Awkwardly at first, with the guy giving the night's presentation about labor history. He and most of the people in the room shared a version of my first name, with a few Ragnars and Stigs thrown in to spice things up. So it wasn't as awful trying to remember what people were named.

On the way home the train engineer held the train at the transfer station, so it wasn't a painful trip home with long waits. I was so exhausted, though.

Unrecovered from Thursday's evening of communing with adults, I went to a long but lovely work event on Friday, celebrating the work anniversaries of people who have met milestones in their career. I go as the company historian. Sat with friends and the CFO. I perhaps said too much and am trying to stop flogging myself for doing so.

Yesterday I met precious nephew at the storage space and we cleaned it out for real and closed our account. Only took 30ish minutes. The downside is that now we have lots of chairs in the garage that I haven't managed to shift to other people's possession. But wow. This was one of my projects that I told my therapist would help me feel less burdened. And it does.

After storage space time, I met with nephew's mom, who had just come back from seeing our mom. It might be time for me to break my 8 month streak of not seeing her. According to her Saturday caregiver "It's mama's Time". Also she can't fully use her hands. Her humor is still intact, though. When told by one of the nice workers in memory care that she was coming to give mom a shower, mom said "Maybe next year." Oh, also my mom thanked my sister for visiting and asked how long she's known her. "76 years," said my sister. I can imagine that if my mom doesn't know who I am I could possibly see her. Could it be that she wouldn't remember all of my shortcomings if she doesn't know who I am? That might be worth a try. I am taking the day off on Wednesday because mrguy has an appointment with the eye doctor far away at a ridiculous time. Maybe I can visit my mom in the morning.

I am listening to a book recommended by my therapist about narcissistic mothers of daughters. There's a checklist of behaviors, half of which I recognize. And half I recognize in myself, which is always depressing. But she suggested the book because when I talk about my mom's behaviors my therapist has noticed that I usually explain the behaviors by undermining myself. Apparently children learn to do this because it's conceptually so wrong to think of their parents as not living up to their role as parent. I guess it's something like "If I weren't such a cruddy kid they wouldn't be such cruddy parents." I will be learning how this fits in with my mom's dementia somehow. It's super easy to explain it all away by saying that she has Alzheimer's. But if that's all it is, why did I avoid my mom for a lot of my adult life before she had Alzheimer's?

Digging into this will be interesting, I think. My mom had a narcissistic mom, and she never forgave her. I intend to break the pattern and forgive my mom, but I will not forget. I mean how could I, after the crazy memories she's given me the past ten years?