Alone
The mother has gone and we’re alone. It’s a very odd feeling after her being here for so long. I knew there would be some reaction after she left, and there was. It wasn’t tears, grief, or even relief; but rather a sense of wanting to “reclaim our territory”. The house, body and reactions almost feel as if they belonged to the mother while she is here. I know that this is our sense of wanting to be the perfect daughter for her, but it’s quite disconcerting to look back on it and realise what had happened.
While she was here, we tried so hard to appear “normal”, and we quite often succeeded. She was much more accepting of the times when any form of normalcy was impossible. This gave us hope that she was more accepting of us, but that hope was put under question yesterday when she stated that she is going to come off the anti-depressants that she’s been on for the last year. Our fear is that this accepting attitude will disappear when the drugs wear off. I know that the drugs have shown that she can be accepting, but that acceptance was covered up by her inability to cope with what life sent her way. She hasn’t been in therapy or learned new skills to cope with life, so with the drug leaving her system, will those stressors mean that she will again not be able to cope?
When we got back from dropping the mother off at the airport, S ended up calling Matthew. It turns out his intentions have changed from talking to his house mate, to something else. This was the trigger for a night of self-injury. We’ve just cleaned the house, mowed the lawns and did some gardening to distract and possibly punish ourselves for allowing S to come forward and act out. Which of course infers that we have some control over the switching, which we don’t *sigh*.
We have a two week break from sessions with Liz as she goes on holiday. She asked if we wanted to text her while she was away, we said “No, we’ll be fine”. Liz said that she knew we would be fine because we were survivors and had the skills to ensure that no matter what happened, we will still function. I think she has more faith in our ability to not self-destruct than we do.
—————-
Now playing: Brooke Fraser – C S Lewis Song’
via FoxyTunes
