My mother has been "battling with depression" since before I was born. I was the one who cooked for, cleaned up after, and changed diapers for my younger siblings when she would decide to "punch out" and lock herself in her room all day, wallowing in self pity. She also claims to have "Borderline Personality Disorder" (not sure if that is deserving of title capitalization or not, considering it's a self-diagnosis, and only the latest in a series of self-diagnoses). Every few years she makes some overly drastic life change. When I was young she decided she wanted to be Amish; the Amish wouldn't take us, so she settled for Mennonite. Then some weird cult, then no religion. She has dragged me through 3 divorces, and my brother & sisters through one; and she almost added one more to the list a couple years ago. I picked up on the trend and have seen another divorce looming for some time now. For the past 6 months or so, she has shown little or no interest in visiting her kids or grandkids, who all live within a 3 mile radius. When I try to invite myself over, she declines with some lame excuse. Last month she tried to hook back up with my dad (again, like the 4th time now) while married to my stepfather. That pissed me off, because I know he still genuinely cares for her, and I know she doesn't genuinely care for anybody; he would just be a stepping stone.
I blew all my gaskets and said every resentful thing I had bottled up in me from the past 20 years. It sent her a couple levels lower into the pit of despair. She has been talking about suicide again. In the past, every time she's shat in the family punch bowl, nobody has been able to fish the turd out and put it in her glass, because she starts talking about suicide. Her acts have gone unchallenged; nobody wants to be "that asshole" that made her kill herself. But I am not willing to stand idly by and let this life-long train wreck continue.
My acceptance for her excuses is completely gone. She has convinced herself and everybody else (except me) that she is entirely a victim to her mental disorder and entirely incapable of change, or control of her own actions/inactions. She says she "simply can't" make herself get up in the morning, put on clothes, and come visit her grandkids. She says "it's like asking someone with no hands to catch a tennis ball; you just don't believe in my handicap because you can't see it." I guess she's right. That's the reason. I can't see it, therefore it must be all in her head, therefore she could be in control of it, if she believed that she was and wanted to be. It's not like she's got Downs Syndrome; that I could understand. I don't fully subscribe to the notion of all these psychological/personality/"mental" disorders. ADHD, Depression, Anxiety Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Attachment Disorder, et. al; To me they seem more like rough "classifications" for observed categories of deviations in normal psychology than actual disorders, defined by an observable and repeatable physical cause. "Oh, you can't find any satisfaction in life? Well, let's stick you over here in group A7B65 (AKA Clinical Depression) with all the other sad bastards. Here's some medication, a member's only get-out-of-jail-free card, and a lifetime subscription to the "it's because of my handicap" club." IMO when you put a name on something and create a drug for it, you materialize some boogeyman to which the finger can be perpetually pointed. I wasn't around 100 years ago, but from what I have read about the time period preceding the invention of all these "disorders", I have formed the hypothesis that people simply dealt with their shit, or wrote melodramatic/nonsensical poetry about it. In the rarest of cases they would off themselves, or become cowboys.
I don't know what to do. Am I wrong? Should I "let it slide" as everyone else in her life has? Should I coddle her like the rest do? Should I drop my resistance campaign and give her carte blanche to wreck another man's life and get out of visiting her grandkids? Should I fall at her feet and beg her not to kill herself? Or should I continue insisting that she can will herself into doing the right thing? Or is there some other better solution?
I blew all my gaskets and said every resentful thing I had bottled up in me from the past 20 years. It sent her a couple levels lower into the pit of despair. She has been talking about suicide again. In the past, every time she's shat in the family punch bowl, nobody has been able to fish the turd out and put it in her glass, because she starts talking about suicide. Her acts have gone unchallenged; nobody wants to be "that asshole" that made her kill herself. But I am not willing to stand idly by and let this life-long train wreck continue.
My acceptance for her excuses is completely gone. She has convinced herself and everybody else (except me) that she is entirely a victim to her mental disorder and entirely incapable of change, or control of her own actions/inactions. She says she "simply can't" make herself get up in the morning, put on clothes, and come visit her grandkids. She says "it's like asking someone with no hands to catch a tennis ball; you just don't believe in my handicap because you can't see it." I guess she's right. That's the reason. I can't see it, therefore it must be all in her head, therefore she could be in control of it, if she believed that she was and wanted to be. It's not like she's got Downs Syndrome; that I could understand. I don't fully subscribe to the notion of all these psychological/personality/"mental" disorders. ADHD, Depression, Anxiety Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Attachment Disorder, et. al; To me they seem more like rough "classifications" for observed categories of deviations in normal psychology than actual disorders, defined by an observable and repeatable physical cause. "Oh, you can't find any satisfaction in life? Well, let's stick you over here in group A7B65 (AKA Clinical Depression) with all the other sad bastards. Here's some medication, a member's only get-out-of-jail-free card, and a lifetime subscription to the "it's because of my handicap" club." IMO when you put a name on something and create a drug for it, you materialize some boogeyman to which the finger can be perpetually pointed. I wasn't around 100 years ago, but from what I have read about the time period preceding the invention of all these "disorders", I have formed the hypothesis that people simply dealt with their shit, or wrote melodramatic/nonsensical poetry about it. In the rarest of cases they would off themselves, or become cowboys.
I don't know what to do. Am I wrong? Should I "let it slide" as everyone else in her life has? Should I coddle her like the rest do? Should I drop my resistance campaign and give her carte blanche to wreck another man's life and get out of visiting her grandkids? Should I fall at her feet and beg her not to kill herself? Or should I continue insisting that she can will herself into doing the right thing? Or is there some other better solution?