No contact with my mother broken after 7 months

[Meh]

On Sunday my mother came to visit me unannounced and uninvited. From the way my door buzzer was ringing I suspected that it was her. So 7 months of no contact were broken when I answered the door. I tell myself I should have gone to church but I was laying in bed going back to sleep over and over again. I answered the door because she drove a long ways to get to my home. I have not responded to her phone calls, emails, snail-mails, and triangulating with the relatives but I'm not at the point where I would turn her away from my door, I would feel rude for that. After all what kind of person turns their mother away from the door. If I didn't answer the door then I would be left with the anxious anticipation of what her reaction would be to me not answering the door. So out of politeness I answered the door to see my mother even though my stomach was turning sour.

It was a seemingly mild visit. There was no outward drama. It was also awkward. For the first time in my life I found myself spontaneously lying to my mother in reaction to her questioning. For me this is healthy. I also found that I am able to tune my mother out for the first time in my life. My eyes just glaze over while she is blabbing on about something. My mind is not held captive by her, I can actually think about something else if I don't want to listen to her. This is the first period of no-contact I have ever had with her, I plan to continue it as much as I can. It may end up that "no contact" is really contact once a year when she drives out to my doorstep. It's sad. I know it would be sad if I was on the outside looking in.   

I felt weak for answering the door.

I intuitively know that my mother's visit was prompted by my grandmother. My grandmother tried to contact me about me doing unpaid work for her. I didn't respond to my grandmother since the Nar-thing is generational she has the problem also. My mother is driven to respond to my grandmother,  my mother doesn't have a real relationship with me and she wouldn't have come to visit me of her own volition, my mother is trying to be good for my grandmother.   

At the end of Sunday while I was showering I had a combination of feeling like crying and feeling nauseous. I realized my feelings come out in private, it comes out when I'm in the shower because I can't show that to my mother. I can't show her my pain. I can see my own pain now before I didn't even see it myself. Yet it is still something I hide from her. I had a feeling of disgust at my behavior, not at mySELF, but disgust for what I am going through.

Even though it was a mild visit I wish I hadn't seen her, my mother intersperses her on-going dialogue about her world with underhanded comments about me that refer to how I deserve bad things in life, that I deserve all the badness life has to offer.

I remember how when I was in my early 20's I was so confused by my own emotions, I could not put them into a context or make sense out of them, I always thought myself to be rather eccentric but at the same time I always deeply felt that something was not right.

Breaking no-contact with my mother feels like "going back to the bottle" even though I have never been a drinker. She caught me off-guard. And it is like my willpower was weak. Being away from my mother is probably like being sober. 

I simply needed to write this out to make it more real. I'm not looking for advice or commentary.
   

[Meh]

So Limited contact is probably more accurate then NC

My brother emailed me. I haven't opened the email. It is often not good, not bad every time but often not good.

I'm too depressed with myself to want to even open his email. I feel like I am not strong enough to deal with it.

I think about that email, I am AFRAID of not opening it and I am AFRAID of opening it.

There is something messed up about the excruciating aspect of doing such a simple thing. Opening or not opening an email.

That is a sign that something is really screwy. I understand that something is screwy with my family but there are other things that I also react this way with more anxiety then seems warrented.

I'm deciding not to open it right now because it's too much for me whatever it is or isn't. I have my own burdens and I am not really functioning under the weight of them.

It is ok for me to say that and know that, I have my own burdens in life and there are times when they are too much for me and I have to pray or do anything I can to cope. Sometimes coping means not interacting with my relatives.

My relatives pry into my personal life just so they can keep tabs on me but it is not because they care. I'm not allowed to tell them the truth.

I think less and less about my relatives, I really only think about when they contact me.

I'm afraid that my heart is going to squeeze in if I read the email, I don't know that it will happen but that is my fear with my brother. I'm afraid of the fear. My brother tends to be self destructive and it hurts me to see this. He is also sort of a jerk.

I get anxiety when I don't respond to my relatives it is some kind of social pressure.

I deserve a break. I have my own pain. I was never allowed to acknowledge my own pain when I was growing up and I have been living with depression for years.

((((Helen)))) I'm giving myself a hug.

I need ME. I need 100% of me to be functioning.

[Meh]

My brother's email seemed relatively benign, so I responded succinctly.

Although it was benign, it also communicated to me his lack of understanding of my feelings, it was also some BAD advice.
All my relatives give BAD advice. If I am falling out of the air, my relatives will not say, "pull the parachute cord", instead they will say something like "pour a cup of tea". Or they would say, "your not falling out of the sky", or they would say "hey catch this anvil". Gosh, these people don't deserve my love.

I guess what I am trying to say is that my relatives comments communicate to me a lack of the seriousness of my life. That is part of the way I got so cut-off from mySELF in the first place. I learned not to take myself seriously.

Sometimes I think about communicating more openly with my brother, he is no stranger to depression and panic attacks etc.

The flip side of it is I don't want to put too much of my stuff on him.

The other flip side is I think he craves to have honest open interactions with people. Yet, it is not my responsibility to do this for him. It could be bad for me.

The other flip side is I don't trust him to keep our conversations private without telling the rest of the family what I told him.

I don't like the round about of communication that my relatives do, they each interpret things their own way, my NM and NA interpret things based on their own perspectives that usually reflect their low oppinion of me.  Of course they are perfect, their wealth helps justify to themselves that they are the ok ones.

The other side is I have no obligations to my relatives any longer. It is time for me to move on. I was Pinocchio the wooden child prop.

[Meh]

Last night I was thinking about an issue that rolls around in my mind behind the scenes, I know I have to focus on my own stuff, getting a job etc. Still I consider half heartedly (because I know it is not a good idea) to recommended that my brother read certain parenting books.

There are reasons I don't want to act on this thought. I don't want to open up reasons for emotional interactions with my brother.
There is a high probability that he would play offended by it. There is a high probability that it would not make a difference since useful information sometimes can not be implemented by people who are stuck in a disfunctional drama.

A while ago my brother was going to a therapist, nontheless I somehow also think that reading parenting books could psychologically put my brother over the edge. My aunt and mother already had him committed to a mental hospital type place against his will. I don't forgive my aunt and mother for this because I think they are willfully ignorant. Society is so afraid of emotional truth that even most aspects of the healthcare system are collaborating to keep people's distress maintained instead of resolved.

The motivation for me to suggest parenting resources to my brother is the fact that my NM is the grandparent and can not offer parenting help to my brother. Knowing that those kids are probably getting the same type of lame-parenting that my parents gave me or worse results in me feeling angry and sad.

My A-hole aunt said that she thought one of the kids had some sort of developmental problems which turned into some sort of family rumor. This is not the first time my Aunt has started family rumors (without facts) of this sort, it is somehow under the guise of some concern but I don't see the concern in it, it is judgemental and condemning, my aunt looks for evidence that people are less then her or her child and she speaks about it loudly to any person who would listen. It turned out that the kid did not have developmental problems but instead had a higher then normal IQ after testing, that was quite a while ago but I am still angry about it.