The Birthday Visit

On Saturday (6th Dec.) it was my mother's birthday. As usual, her friend took me to see her, with cards and gifts to celebrate her 74th birthday. She didn't really know it was her special day, in fact she said that she was 27.

This particular birthday was a special one for me in that it was a visit that had to happen, had to happen on that particular day and had to happen whether I was ill, mentally or otherwise. It was the second visit since that day when I nearly killed myself with pills. It was, therefore, something of a test for me. I think I passed - no tears, no emotional moments and not a sign of depressive moods. Somehow, I'm actually doing what everybody has told me, i.e., not to feel guilty that I've...put her away in a home...etc., and not to feel guilt at aiming to be happy. I don't know how it's happened, it's possibly a result of the pill-taking-hospital-incident that I turned a corner, found that I wanted to be alive and that I'm possibly not the horrid monster and thoroughly bad egg/person that I've believed for a lifetime.

All of this proves that, for me, I have to wait until the feeling arrives, rather than just accept what somebody has told me. I understood mentally that I had done the right thing with mum, and that I have done right by her, but I still felt like a bastard, a bad son, an addition to the hurt that I've caused friends and family over the years. I just couldn't feel it.

All in all, I feel more at peace with what's going on with mum. I still hate it, I still think it's the worst tragedy to strike my mother and turn her from a fiercely strong, intelligent woman into a shell. It's a rape on a total scale, with no disrespect to the victims of actual rape. I mean that it's robbed so much of her, so much personal stuff, that she is not the same as she was before all of this. I'll mourn and curse and hate what happened for the rest of my life, but I won't let it consume me and leave me bitter and hate-filled. No disgust at mankind or the world. It's just part of what happens in life, it just happens, no vendetta or personal victimisation involved - it just happens and if your number's up, it's up.

One final point...I friend I used to know for sometime in the past and with whom I parted on very pathetic grounds (all of my own mentalist doings) recently made contact with me on Facebook. We made peace. He was graceful and philosophical enough to let the past remain the past and he was very kind. I can't tell you how good and relieved I feel at this. After this parting, I went into a very steep decline and was soon having to actually talk to my doctor about it, as I was so ill and scared. I believed, on the basis of a few things I'd said whilst drunk and probably whilst sober, too, that I was evil and a bad person, a horrid person and I could understand why these friends and this friend in particular didn't want to know me anymore. I was bad, ugly and scum. So, this friend has lifted a big burden that I've carried for nearly a decade and I thank him. Thanks, PD.