Today is the first time all week that I’ve felt “normal” and I’m still not 100% because I did come into contact with some hidden gluten somewhere in my kitchen today and it knocked me down for several hours. But for the past 2 hours I’ve been feeling happy-go-lucky me and I’m relieved.
Being glutenized is terrible and when I felt it today I couldn’t help but think about how I’ve felt this way my entire life and how my own mother labeled me as “moody” instead of looking to see what was wrong with me. So many times in my life I had these outrageous reactions…I would say and do things reactivly and didn’t really know what was going on and now I see so clearly that all along I was glutenized and was reacting to the toxic environment within me.
What I feel a loss about today is that before I knew I had celiac and when I had a bad day I would say to myself “It’ll be better tomorrow”…that’s how I got through the worst of my illness and trials. “Tomorrow will be better….tomorrow will be better.”
I always knew something was “off” but didn’t know what and I knew I would figure out what it was and then everything would be better. I never dreamed it would be a life-long autoimmune disease that would affect me every waking minute of my life for the rest of my life.
And I’m bummed out about it today. Because not only have I lost my favourite foods and a life of freedom to eat anything I want any time I want…I have lost the idea that “it will someday get better.” Now all I have to hope for is that I remain gluten-free more days than not and that I will more often than not enjoy relative well-being. I have no more hope that I will be “normal” be healthy that it will get better.
And that sucks. Big time. I hate it. Today I hate it. Later, I’ll get all passionate about it and I’ll make it my life-long campaign to make celiac disease a household name and to advocate for more options at more stores and more restaurants. And to educate doctors and therapists so that maybe diagnosis can be discovered in one year rather than in 10…or better yet 6 months…
Anyway, I’ll advocate later and I’ll p0ut now because it sucks. It sucks that this will affect my parenting, my career, my marriage, my everything. And only one life we get and I get one with disease…allergies…food intolerances….and aren’t there those who have health and abuse it? Waste it? Take it for granted. And then there’s me…I get the irony of it all…that I’ve been this big health “freak” for years and now I know why…now I know why I was so different than everyone else; why I was so passionate about it when others weren’t.
Here’s my best idea so far…that I become a child and youth therapist specializing in advocating for and supporting those with celiac. It’s the same way some specialize in autism, or alcoholism. Celiac’s have a unique problem and the feelings and the sickness is different for everyone.
For me, it affects my hormones and my emotions. It makes me feel like a dragon. It makes me feel angry and irritable. It makes me feel frustrated and like I’m fighting. Maybe once my hormones are more balanced that reaction will decrease. Maybe there are things that will get better. But in the condition that I’m in right now that is what happens. And that is the worst part because I it takes away my “feeling good” and leaves me with feeling bad…and always feeling bad is how I’ve lived my entire life.
The goodness that i feel right now…body peaceful and without pain. Eyes and mind clear-headed and light…the way I feel right now is awesome. And then here’s the worst part, my daughter is being a pain right now.
So here’s my torment — I feel physically better right now than I have all week and I just want to savour it, drink it in, cherish it, love it, savour it…and then instead of peacefulness, I have a girl that’s bawling her head off because her friend had to go home, because she has to clean room, because she isn’t getting her own way every single minute of every single day.
So, it’s not peaceful. It’s terrible. And that’s what sucks about my life right now.
But that’ll change next week. Next week it’ll be me all by myself me. And I’ll miss DD like crazy and think back to this day and think it wasn’t so bad afterall. So I just take it one day at a time.
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Whew! Right now I’m brimming over with adrenaline from a conversation I just had with D. She’s my birth mother but has never mothered me thought I lived in her house from birth to 15. She’s a very manipulative and hurtful woman and I’m having to set some very firm boundaries because she has been lying to me and doing very hurtful things to me infront of my daughter.
Facing her came as a result of a counselling session that I had with my awesome and amazing therapist, S. She said I should call D. and tell her that “S. recommends no more emails to prevent further communication.” And so I did that.
This is how the conversation went.
Me: Hi, How are you?
D. Good. How are you?
Me: Good. Are you watching TV?
D. Yes.
Me: Okay, well I won’t keep you long.
D. Okay.
Me: I was talking to S. today and she suggested that you and I not use emails anymore to communicate since there have been so many misunderstandings.
D. Good idea.
Me: Okay. So that’s good. And also, I just wanted to clarify that I am not keeping Grace from you. Right now it’s not a predictable or safe environment at your place because of P. (D.’s alcoholic husband with a sex addiction) and until things are a little more predictable I think the best thing to do is to have her over here when K (my hubby) and I are here.
D: Well I never knew you had an issue with him. (Oh my God D! What a lie….I’ve told you for years that I had an issue with him)
Me: Yes, I’ve told you that before and now I’m telling you again.
D: (she was fuming!) Well, and when P.’s not here? (with tone of sarcasm and vengence)
Me: Well, it is unpredictable when he is there or not.
D: (seething) and don’t you think I should be able to take her somewhere outside of the house?
Me: There were times when I let you take her and you would meet up with him and hide it from me.
D: (anger) I’m not hiding anything from you…I have nothing to hide. (mumbling something or other)
Me: Well anyway, just for now, until things are worked out you are welcome to come visit her here.
D: (anger and discust) No, R. I’m not going to go over to your house where you are sitting there and watching everything I say and do. I’m just not going to do that.
Me: I understand that.
D: (srcrambling for words because I wasn’t biting on her power struggle)….Yeah, I’m sure you understand it……Are you going to meet with me to see S.?
Me: Yes. I’m going to meet with her a few more times and then we’ll set up a session with you, so it’ll be not this week but….(by this time I’m getting really nervous because it seems like she is going to burst) within the next couple weeks.
D: Why is it going to take 3 sessions to prepare? I knew nothing about all of this crap. That’s just great…just great…just great.(Exasperated)
Me: Didn’t she tell you about having a preparation session?
D: No, I didn’t know anything about that all I knew is what you told me when you started this whole thing.
(private thought: Oh my good God, D., it was YOUR idea to have a joint counsellor session!)
Me: Okay, she does this for all her family or group sessions where she meets with the people to prepare a head of time and then has the group session.
D: …I don’t really know what she said here something about how fed up she was and sarcasm, then she said, “I sure hope I don’t die in the meantime” and then she hung up.
So that’s how that went. And writing it out here in Purple Chasm sure helps to keep me from holding it all in.
Best thing about this conversation is that I actually did what I never thought I would be able to do…I’ve set a boundary and continued to defend it. I have stopped giving power to the most toxic person in my life. I feel whole for the first time in my life. I feel so great, so empowered, so powerful.
For all the years that I felt helpless and was helpless, finally for the first time in my life I feel powerful.
For my whole life I have feared this woman. I have created tons of negative behaviours in order to avoid her anger and wrath, I have been abandoned and avoided, neglected and abused by this woman; shamed and humiliated and degraded. Now, for the first time in my life, I own my feelings am in control of my feelings and my life.
This feels like the beginning of a whole new opportunity to succeed.
I’m at a place of acceptance of her. I don’t like the way she treats me but I accept that this is the way she is and I feel completeness in this. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how this feels. It feels full and rich and happy and probably a little what “Enlightenment” must feel like, or Nirvana.
This feels like what I’ve been working towards in all of my therapy in all of my healing and recovery. I have come to a place where I can see that D. has never bonded with me…from the time that I was a colicy baby until now…she has always thought of me as “crazy, over-emotional, dramatic, phycotic, and irrational.”
I believed that too when I was 18 but I’ve since become rational, moderate, mature and responsible and so I can see with a clear lense into the drama that she has created in her own life and I do not need to be a part of it.
And I’m not calling her Mom anymore….She’s D. because that’s what her name begins with. And it will take a lot and a lot and a lot of healing before she can ever claim that part of my heart.
I feel whole for the first time in my life. I thank God. I thank God. I thank God that I’ve been given the opportunity to feel this.
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