part 78

My reality checking is going full-force these days. It is pretty much going all the time - it is time consuming and frustrating to have to stop over and over again throughout the day to make sure that where I am and what I am doing and what is going on around me is real.

Sometimes I don't get very frustrated, though, and can let the process ease along.

Every time I have to do a reality check about my mom I don't mind having that information up in the air for as long as it takes for me to determine if it is real. During those moments of it being up in the air, I get a break from it being real.

But it always lands on the real side when it comes down. Most of the time when I reality check I have gotten things sorted out in my mind enough to be able to just take the reality-checking process at face value. Those are the things that have been through the process over and over and over, and also through the back-up process, and also through the back-up-back-up process over and over and over.

Before something big - like all of this shit with my mom - goes through all of that reality checking, it is very difficult for me to think of anything else. The memories or recollections or images or sounds or feelings (emotional and physical) are "intrusive" - that's the word they use on psychological assessments - "do intrusive thoughts significantly affect your ability to function?" (that's not a direct quote, FYI- I don't remember how these questions were precisely worded).

"Intrusive" is one of those words I had not found to apply to myself or to my memories before I went into the hospital, so when I first read the question about "intrusive thoughts," the phrase seemed crisp and sparkly and new. I had a new way to put into words what my brain does, and a word that I and others could reasonably understand. Another of those words is "overwhelmed."

It's like playing Taboo with my brain - I have all of these ways I am trying to describe how it is in there, and I have to keep describing it over and over again with these complicated and vague explanations (this is pretty much all internal dialogue, btw), but my brain can't tell me the one word all of the shit is describing.

So anyway, back to intrusive thoughts. When it comes to processing something big - like the shit with my mom - the intrusive thoughts are very intrusive. I have no power over them. I can't just think of something else. That was something that really drove my addictions - I had to go to extremes to alter my mind enough that the intrusive thoughts would be more blurry, farther away, easier to look at.

Unfortunately, partaking in my addictions really turned around and bit me in ass. Sometimes, instead of making the wall between me and my pain stronger by using drugs or alcohol or food or whatever, it makes the wall totally disappear. I mean, what the fuck?

Then I'm crying and obsessing and being miserable and not living my life and interfering with my husband's ability to live his life, and interfering with my kids' ability to live their lives. I'm doing embarrassing things like falling down repeatedly in public, or drooling, or peeing on myself - I was just thinking about the other bad things that have resulted from using, and I am just going to stop that now and stick with "it bit me in the ass."

I am actually feeling pretty garbled right now. I feel like people will be able to see how crazy I am by reading stuff like this. But then I start the reality-checking again, and I know that I'm not crazy and I know that I have exhaustively searched for the ways the bad things could not be real. And then I remember they are real, and every time that happens its like someone dropped a rock on my chest.

And then I remember that this is how it is, and its not fair, and feels shitty and heavy and sad.

But this is how it is, and those intrusive thoughts are not going to back down unless I do the processing and reality checking.

As I said before, the reality checking with my mom has been very slow. I cannot take the conclusion of my initial reality check at face value. I go to the back-up - is it possible that all of this is not true, and that I really am crazy? And I remind myself that I have substantial physical and medical evidence to support my sanity and that these things did happen, so being crazy is not going to be the reason I remember these things.

So then to the back-up-back-up - am I SURE that I am not crazy? Am I SURE I am not wicked and twisted and making all of this up to hurt people I love very much but might subconsciously hate? Am I SURE I remember what ACTUALLY happened?

That process can take seconds, or it can take years.

If it clears this level, then its back up to the first back-up to reinforce the conclusions of the back-up-back-up, and then back up to the initial reality checking process for yet another recheck, which concludes that the shit is still ending up being real.

It makes me angry that I have to work so hard to believe that something I actually, physically experienced really happened. When I start to feel sad about my mom, and that I will wake up any minute and this will have all been a nightmare, and think about calling her up and seeing how its going, the aforementioned reality smacks my face.

I snap out of it pretty quickly. Maybe that's what it means to be a grown-up - to accept what is real as real and do my best anyway.

The thing about the reality of all of this is that it provides the foundation for the arguments in my head, and arguments with my mom or my sister or whoever. That foundation is very solid - I can't think of anything at all that could make the truth not the truth.

Then I relax a little and move on. I don't have to keep fighting to convince anyone what is real when I have reality backing me up. I don't have to spend all of that time and energy being angry, and when the anger dissipates, and I've worked through the pain it left behind, what is left in that space is my life with plenty of room to go on and live it.

Becoming an orphan at the age of 35 can be quite liberating.