No Right to Judge Me

Yesterday I said some things to my mother that I've said before, that never brought about any change in the past, but foolishly I said them again, thinking I might get different results this time. Isn't that the definition of insanity--doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? (But what I've always wondered about this definition, too, is isn't that the recipe for perseverance too?)

I was weary, for the millionth time, of hearing of her pills and going through the I-need-my-pain-pill drama. She is totally concentrated on getting her pill, and cannot focus on a conversation that is not pill-related. Pills are the most important thing in her life. I pointed this out to her for the umpteenth time, and of course she denied it, saying such bullshit about me being the most important thing in her life when she can't even remember what I told her about two seconds ago because she wasn't listening, she was thinking about her pills. She goes through this big thing that she's going to forego her 2 o'clock pill, that she's turning a new leaf, that she's getting off pain meds, something I've heard too many times and I never believe, just like all the other things she says she's going to do but never does--attend activities at her assisted-living facility, go to church, write a letter to Marge, call her friends in Wisconsin, exercise, on and on and on.

Twenty minutes into her life-changing resolve, she was at the nurse's station, whining and carrying on about wanting her Vicodin--this after she had gotten a new morphine patch just a half hour before.

So today I went back for more! What a ridiculous person I must be. I felt sorry for her. I felt guilty. In fact my main emotion associated with her is guilt. She would like me at her side every moment of every day, and I feel guilty that I'm not there because she's a lonely, old lady who has dug the hole she's in and she's unwilling or unable to step out of it.

I brought my laptop to show her photos of my birthday party, Aaron's graduation, my tomatoes, whatever else. We sat in the non-smoking patio, and I plugged the laptop into an outside socket. I had showed her only one or two photos when she started in about her pills and about how she needed to have a nurse look at her toe because she needed the bandage changed sometime today. I told her it was only 1:30, and the day was still young, plenty of time to change her bandage. But she carried on about it, her mind on her upcoming 2 o'clock pill and on someone fussing over her toe.

The day before I had told her that we do not have a relationship because it's very hard to build a relationship when 75 percent of our conversations focus on her pills. I said what she and I have is not like what Aaron and I have. From a baby on, I was forming a relationship with him. She and I have never had deep conversations, she was never someone I could go to as a child or as a woman with a problem, we've never had laughs together. There is no relationship. She is my mom, there is no one else who will take care of her, and so she is here in California. To that she said, "Didn't I tell you how much I liked driving in your car on the way to the doctor?" What planet is she on?

So today I got angry with her. I said I'm so tired of this, of all this pill drama, that it's like being with an alcoholic who is just thinking about his next drink. A woman who was sitting near us on the patio said to her husband, "Some people just have no compassion" and then she went on to say things in a similar vein. I turned to her and said, "You don't know me. You don't know anything about my situation. You have no right to judge me, just as I have no right to judge you." Still she kept it up.

I fought back tears, saying aloud to myself, "I can't take this anymore. I just can't take this."

I told my mother I would see her late in the week. Not tomorrow, not Tuesday, not Wednesday, but Thursday to take her to her doctor's appointment. I need a break from her drug addiction that prevents any kind of a relationship. I don't want to become like my brother, hating her. I have to find some way to distance myself from her, to think of her as a drug addict and to realize that this behavior is due to the drugs. Of course, I knew her before pain meds, and she was self-absorbed then too. But the drugs have made it so much worse.