Life has become pretty complicated. I realized just today that I hadn�t mentioned my current challenge. Almost three weeks ago I got a phone call from my father with bad news. My mother had fallen and broken/dislocated her leg at the ankle. She went into the hospital and after evaluation the doctors opted for a conservative approach resetting the bone and realigning the joint as best they could and then waiting to see if it resolved or if they would need surgery. The resulting cast stretches from my mother�s foot all the way to her upper thigh requiring that she be placed, temporarily, in a nursing home. My mother is 73 years old but so very young and active that she feels quite out of place there. My father is struggling along as best he can but he was never at ease with the second time around parenting and now he is completely responsible for the busy household. Two young teenagers will stress the strongest of parent but grandparents forced to raising children are no match for the emotional trauma. But wait, there�s more� My young niece has been practicing a lovely behavior known as cutting. She has emotional problems stemming from fathers less that exemplary care and I believe she may share my illness. My mothers fall has triggered an increase in her unsafe actions and thus has landed her (quite rightfully) in a lock down ward for evaluation.

My mother calls me late at night (hers and mine) incoherent requiring me to spend the first minute of our conversation calming her down enough to extract the problem. She is helplessly waiting for my father to call and let her know what will be happening to my niece as she enters the hospital. She is angry at the person who poorly treated this young girl and upset that she can not be there to support her. She vacillates between rage and desolation and I would give my left arm to reach through the telephone line and comfort her. I am forced to deliver what comfort I can with words alone leaving me to feel helpless as well.

I want to depend on the �professionals� to do the right things for her but based on my own experience I don�t have the confidence I wish I could. They have already begun down the anti-depressant path which if she has the same problem I have is contra-indicated. While I am positive my mother would continue to fight for my niece despite the �professionals� I am not certain my father will. Idiot boy will be of no use as usual and may very well create more problems when he arrives home to discover his daughter has been hospitalized for emotional/mental problems.

All of this is quite exhausting. I know that this is happening to them not me but it is difficult not to let it weigh down on a soul after a while. My mother calls me as though she were the daughter and I the mother and although I know that that is the natural order of things I wasn�t prepared for it. I expected to mother a child before I was forced to mother my parents.

All of the events above have gone to reinforce my decision but I have mixed feelings at how this will affect my life when I get within reach. My brothers speak of �escaping� the reach. I never felt as though I was running away from home so much as I was exploring. My exploration was both corporeal and transcendental and in the end I simply decided that nothing mattered but the connections we choose and the ones we are born to. Friends and family are all that we have, everything else is just a distraction from the reality that existence is temporal. Thus I treasure my friends and I seek to be closer to my family. I also wish to create a family of my own.

Connections.

The trouble with connections is they are two way. While we can exchange great comfort and love through these connection also great pain and suffering can pass as well; you can not have one with out the other. Even with no grand scheme in sight I still feel the connection is worth the pain. I don�t wish to sit alone and wait for the darkness to take me. I have hidden my heart away and it has saved me nothing. I suffered just as much alone.

So here are my five questions:

How do I move home and still protect my potential family from my current family?

How do I comfort my Mother and Father without accepting the burden?

Will I be able to be there for my niece or will my illness simply feed and reinforce hers and vice versa?

Can I depend on my Darling to support me through this? Dare I let go a little, a relief valve if you please.

What would you do?

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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