Da Pitts

Oh I'm there again. The deep black hole that is so easy to fall into where you feel all alone and abused and unappreciated. Call it hormones, bad confluence of events, whatever, but there I am, spending half of yesterday crying and the other half on the verge of it.

You know the problem with being human is that all of your friends and loved ones are human too. Therefore fallible. They will let you down. They will continue to do the things that they do that drive you crazy. They will make efforts to change but not really change. They have the best of intentions and yet, they are who they are. And you have built your life with them in it. And without excommunicating everyone, there you are.

I'm not about airing dirty laundry here, other than about my mom, who can't read blogs due to a developmental delay in the area of machinery (also known as fear of all objects with buttons.) But thankfully, I can complain about her as she is at the root of this big slide I just rode. My mom is bipolar. Diagnosed after 40 years of ineffective psychological intervention and still not really under control.

Or at least I see that now. For the last couple of months I had fallen for it. "It" being her good days that seemed like finally a doctor had found the right cocktail of drugs for her. I now see why my dad fell for it. Although after the 80th time you might think he'd have gotten a clue. I sure have one now. She gets so 'well.' She's still annoying as hell, but she's all there. The brain is clicking away, she's independent, finds things to do, gets physically more healthy and so on.

She seems 'normal' for a crazy lady.

And then it comes. I saw the warning signs. I even tried to warn her current doctor. You all can bet when you see three postings on my blog about mom after months with none that the storm is coming. The doctor just said she thought it meant more signs of mom's health. She didn't listen to me. Even when mom decided my daughter was turning against her. My 20 month old daughter without an evil bone in her body. The doctor didn't listen.

So then mom comes and visits and says that she's having her phantom pains again. And she's been medicating herself. For those of you unfamiliar, my mom is in an assisted living facility specifically because she is not allowed to medicate herself. She has intentionally overdosed herself multiple times, so no, she should not even possess medications, much less be administering them to herself. And the medicine of the moment?

Oxycontin.

Or for those of you in the know, the most addictive damned pain med ever. Mom, the shaky handed 75 year old woman, managed to sneak pills into hiding. When I pay people specifically to watch her take each and every pill each and every day.

Addicts are smart you know. And generally very charismatic.

People trust them.

So, long story short, her doctor went and talked to her and supposedly mom gave her all her extra pills. Surprise, surprise, when a director from the assisted living facility searched mom's room the next day? Still 4 more pills were found. Does the doctor now listen to me? She doesn't return my calls all of a sudden. Does she now see that mom's unstable again? No, she goes ahead and gives her review of mom's mental state to the new facility mom wants to move into and apparently it's good enough that they still want her.

Um, yeah people. Go ahead. Because one way or another it seems mom's going to get what she wants. And it is abundantly clear now that I am not going to be able to control it, convince people to heed my warnings or avoid the drama altogether. And that is disappointing as hell. Mom has convinced another round of people to listen to her, the drug addict manic depressive, over the well therapized, mostly stable grown daughter who has seen it all a hundred times.

Who would you believe? Thats what I thought. But somehow, the people I should be able to trust and lean on? They let me down every time.