Sometimes it can get so very frustrating and tiring – watching Emma’s mind battle and lose every day. I feel like I am carrying her around, like a big burlap sack that is full of gloom and doom.
She makes no effort to pull herself up. She wallows in her own self pity. She believes and continuously voices the fact that she has permanent brain damage and she wishes she didn’t do Ecstacy.
I am exhausted.
I am normally a positive person with the attitude that I can achieve anything that I put my mind and effort on. Anything. Set a goal, and I’ll get it. For months now, the goal has been to get Emma well, to take her to whatever doctor, spiritual master, therapy or solution necessary to get her well. My days are filled with being a driver or listening to her anxiety, paranoia, pessimism, and trying to get her to rise up, get happy, make a shift.
The problem is that it is MY goal to get Emma to the state of being normal, whole, independent, well. It’s not working since it is my goal for her. It has to be HER goal, HER desire, HER belief, HER expectation.
If she just says she wants to get better, to be normal, but she believes that she never will be, then she never will be. If she expects that she will be forever tortured by noises that she doesn’t like or lights that are too bright and hurt her eyes, then she will get all that she expects. If she thinks that it is too hard to change the way she thinks and is not willing to do any exercises or practices that are given to her to do, then she will not change. And all the pushing, pulling, prodding, praying from me will not make a difference.
I once asked a very good motivational speaker and teacher, how do I motivate others? Do you know what his answer was? He said, “You can’t.” You can’t motivate others, you can only motivate yourself.
Today was a really bad day for me. I snapped at my husband for something so minor – just an ego thing – the typical “you’re not listening to what I am saying” crap that wives say when their husbands aren’t paying attention. Most of my day was spent doing unproductive stuff like being on the computer or figuring out bills or what to write or what I should do. I went to a meeting that I really didn’t want to go to but felt that I had to.
And every single time Emma was in the same room as me, her self defeating pigpen woe is me attitude just dragged me down and it was super difficult to get her to do a positive shift in her words or her thinking. She was contagious, like a cancer, like a plague. And it really wore me out today.
What about tomorrow? Right now, I don’t give a damn, but I sure hope it is better than today.
I really don’t know if I can continue all this useless effort. It will take a lot of my willpower to keep my true feelings from her. Right now, I want to tell her that if she can’t turn around her attitude and start fighting her own fight, then go walk off of a cliff and disappear. I want to just give up.
What kind of mother am I? A horrible one. Emma picked the wrong family, the wrong mother. This is a terrible situation. A messed up mental case of a daughter with a analytical cold bitch of a mother.
I really hope tomorrow is better than today.