The Downward Spiral

FAIR WARNING: This post talks about generational relationships, questionable parenting, and the problems that arise therefrom. It also addresses issues of abuse, and touches on hereditary mental health (or lack thereof). If any of those topics are likely to be negatively triggering for you, I invite you to opt out of reading.

~and~

CLARIFICATION: Any judgments passed (or inferred) in this post are the result of my own experiences with my own family. This is not about you or your choices; if you see yourself in the scenarios I describe, please know that my frustrations/difficulties are not about you. Please don’t take it personally.

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Recent Events

Over the past several months, I have been hit with what feels like gut one punch after another from the metaphorically flailing arms of my fucked-up family.

My niece – my sister’s oldest daughter, who is a tween – was in “self-harm” mode to a great enough degree a few months ago that she had to be put into psychiatric care. Her father, whose mental stability is less than stellar, refused to sign for her to go to a residential treatment program; as a result, my sister traveled three hours a day for several weeks to take my niece to a day treatment facility. And it’s gone on from there.

Before Christmas, my mother sent me a text message (a text message, not a phone call — I feel like the format of the messaging is significant in this case) that my brother – who has spent his entire life in what might be called Unstable Condition, and who has fathered multiple children over the past 20 years, one of whom never recovered from his teenage breakdown and is now quite a mess – has a new baby. With a new mother. (This is number five that I’m aware of; there are probably more.) My response to my mother’s unwelcome message was, “Maybe he’ll actually take care of this one.” However, my hopes of that actually happening are slim-to-none.

This past week, I woke to another message. My sister is pregnant. The age span between her oldest (mentioned above) and the new baby will be even larger than the age span between my sister and I (which separates us by a generation). And the father – a different father than that of her first two – is not even someone she is in a relationship with.

And there’s more.

There’s always, with my family, more.

It’s a never-ending spiral.

History Repeats

I have pretty strong feelings about my family, especially when it comes to family history. The strongest of those feelings is: Don’t repeat their mistakes.

It is a choice I have consciously made. From my choice in how (not) to conduct my sexual affairs to my decision to not further pursue having children, there are paths I have deliberately chosen to walk because those pathways take me far, far away from the instabilities of my past.

My siblings, on the other hand, have chosen differently than me. Partly, I think, because they are unable to grasp the history from whence they came. But also because, even though there are things they *do* understand, they do not — whether because they are unwilling or incapable — choose a new way.

And so I go my own way.

And they go theirs.

Unfortunately, theirs is less a path than a spiral. And the spiral continually loops back to origins.

My Mother’s Influence

Understanding my mother is not much of an issue. Agreeing with her choices is.

Because her choices affected me. They affected my siblings. And the repercussions are farther reaching than she is ever likely to recognize or acknowledge.

When I was 12 years old, my mother divorced my father. This, in itself, was a good thing.

She subsequently remarried. This – both in the timing and the choice of spouse – was disastrous.

She went from one cheater to another; the form[s] of abuse did not repeat between spouses but the fact of abuse did. Both men were largely absent, and caused great consternation and strain when they were present. Neither could be counted on to keep their word, to provide good family leadership, to control their tempers, or to provide emotional stability.

We would have been much better off if my mother had chosen, post-divorce, to go it alone.

Because she did not make that [better] choice:

• I gladly left home at 18 and have rarely been back. (I will be 46 next month.)
• My brother, pushed beyond his capacity to ‘deal’, was lost — first to my mother, because he decided to go live with his biological father instead of enduring his stepdad; then to us all, because within three months of leaving home he was in the legal system and – though he has a lifetime of on/off periods of time both in and out of jail – has never left it.
• My sister followed the examples set by all the parents and continuously chose unstable relationships with unreliable men, one of whom (the one she had her first two kids with) has a mental health cocktail of his own that rivals the most lethal of unstable chemical ingredients from our own family. Thus, it’s no surprise that my sister’s kid is struggling — spiraling — right now.

Do I blame my mom for making the choice – regarding her second marriage – that she did?

Yes and no.

I understand it. She felt threatened, he was a known entity (the person she married had previously been married into – and divorced from – the same family she married into the first time), and because of her own upbringing, she felt that it was going to “save her” somehow to be married to him.

There’s… A lot… that could be gone into in terms of where that kind of thinking came from. She’s on a spiral of her own.

But regardless of her [poor] reasoning, I understand her choice.

Do I agree with it?

Absolutely not.

Repercussions

My mom is still married to her second husband.

My sister has been married (post-child-bearing) and subsequently divorced from the father of her first two children. And when my mom was visiting me during my husband’s post-transplant recovery time, she said of my younger sibling’s particular poor-choice-in-men situation, “I don’t understand why your sister makes the choices she does.”

I was dumbfounded.

“I do,” I said.

“Look at her father,” I elaborated. “Look at her stepfather. They lie and cheat and make promises they don’t keep. She learned young that that’s how men behave. So she just thinks these losers she chooses are ‘normal’.”

It was my mother’s turn to look dumbfounded.

I was nice about it. I didn’t say to my mother, “She’s following in YOUR footsteps, you idiot!”

(Though I wanted to.)

And because my sister’s less-than-stellar ex-husband is an Absentee Father, my sister works like a fiend. So it’s my mom who is largely taking care of my sister’s children now.

And those children — two, with a third now on the way — are learning all the same lessons.

And unless one of them sees it and intentionally chooses to break away…

History will repeat.

Again.

And with every generation, the spiral downward gets steeper.

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Harder

I have long distanced myself from my family. Geographically, I have removed myself by thousands of miles. Emotionally… Let’s just say I learned young to keep everyone at an arm’s length.

And to some degree that has buffered me.

But it still disappoints me. The constant and ever-continuing poor choices. Even though I can’t do anything about it.

Because I know they *could* do something about it.

But they don’t.

And y’know…

There is a saying: Not my circus, not my monkeys.

But in this case…

While it’s true that it’s NOT my circus…

They kinda are my monkeys.

: groan :

And so I continue to plug my ears when they screech and dodge out of the way when they start flinging poo.

Because what the hell else can I do?

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~ deep breath ~

If you chose to read and have made it this far: thanks.

I don’t have any great purpose for putting this in writing except to just… I dunno, put it out there I guess…

Because maybe in your life you are dealing with a spiral too.

And because in the background, behind the personal challenges and workaday routines and general responsibilities of life and the white noise of everyday detritus, this is the [shit] show that’s playing – in antenna-fuzz 3-channel snow – on my mental TV. And in all honesty, I think that fact is jamming up my otherwise-well-functioning reception.